Near the start of Season 7 in Shameless, Frank Gallagher stumbles into the family house
while his youngest son, Liam, is watching Rick and Morty.
Immediately we see a strong parallel between the reality of Liam’s life and the fiction
he’s watching.
The show on the TV appears to be the opening of the very first episode of Rick and Morty
Drunk Rick wakes his beleaguered grandson up in the middle of the night
for a dangerous, unnecessary adventure.
Meanwhile, in Liam's reality, a temporarily-paralyzed Frank tries to suck him into helping him
move back into the house against Fiona's wishes,
but even the youngest is long disillusioned with his father’s ways by now.
The Rick and Morty shout-out may seem like a clever throwaway at first,
but the more we think about it, Frank Gallagher and Rick Sanchez are pretty much brothers
from another mother.
They share a special talent for eliciting both disgust and admiration from their family
members, and from us.
Frank and Rick are most often seen passed out drunk, manipulating their offspring,
or up to no good with some crazy scheme.
Frank shows just how ugly the reality of alcoholism is.
And Rick, even when he’s talking about advanced science,
has to pause in the middle of his sentences to burp.
"I’m gonna be able to do -- burp -- all kinds of things with them.
It’s gonna be great Morty --
burp -- all kinds of science."
His face covered in spit or vomit.
It’s as if the creators want to give us this constant visual reminder
that Rick would probably be pretty repulsive to encounter in real life.
Both men are supposed to gross us out -- and they usually do --
Even as we can see the incredible damage Frank and Rick wreak upon their kin,
we’re often just like many of the Gallaghers or Smiths who can’t seem to let them go.
But they also somehow draw us in and keep us coming back for more.
Shameless and Rick and Morty make the case that love and admiration are complex feelings
that can’t easily be understood, especially when it comes to parental figures.
So what is it that Frank and Rick have in common,
that makes them so likeable in spite of their unforgivable behavior?
"Yes!
[Bleep] you God!
Not today, bitch!"
"I'm still here, you [bleep]!"
A key aspect of both men is right in the title of Frank’s show.
Frank and Rick shamelessly do whatever they want,
and it’s very hard to make them feel embarrassed about anything.
They don’t think twice about neglecting and using their children or grandchildren.
"The best gift you can give is neglect.
Neglect fosters self-reliance."
Yet both refuse to admit they're bad parents.
"Okay, okay, Beth, I'm sorry you think you deserve an apology."
They’re alcoholics who don’t see their drinking as a problem
and think of themselves as indestructible.
“It’s the hardest working liver in the galaxy, Morty.
Now it has a hole in it.”
"My liver's been on vacation, and I got a month's worth of drinking to catch up on."
We assume they should be completely ashamed of themselves, obviously,
so when they’re not, we can’t help but be confused and fascinated.
These men offer an escape from responsibilities big and small.
They make us wonder what it would be like to live without regret or worrying about pleasing
anyone.
“I’m the only guy I know that’s been given last rites three times.”
"Whatever your question is the answer is I’m amazing."
Frank and Rick are both brilliant men, even if you wouldn’t know it by looking at them.
Frank can be drunk at The Alibi, drunk at a homeless shelter, or drunk at his house
and still manage to deliver professorial lectures or damning rebukes of the system.
“It used to be that poor folks could get a decent apartment right near downtown, and
then suddenly it’s moved,
40 blocks south, and then 80 blocks.
Where does it end?!”
"It doesn't matter anyway.
Pretty soon, there's not gonna be any Jew or Aryan or Hindu or Muslim or Mexican or
Blacks.
There's just gonna be the rich and the [bleep]."
"They may have female genitalia, but those lesbians are the man."
Rick can be blackout and still plan an elaborate Saw-themed murder game complete with a finale
rager.
"Not bad drunk Rick, not bad!"
Most times they open their mouths they’ve got self-serving motives ,
but it’s hard to say their arguments are wrong.
And they’re also both the smartest and worst off person in the room,
so they avoid that elitism or obscurity that makes many smart people easy to ignore or
dislike.
“Because the world is full of idiots that don't understand what's important,
and they'll tear us apart, Morty.”
Whether he’s holding forth on the homeless crisis, gentrification, the welfare system,
or democracy itself,
Frank’s running theme is rebellion and sticking it to the man.
Rick shares Frank’s anti-establishment beliefs.
At one point he literally destroys the Galactic Federation by changing their currency.
"They're bureaucrats.
I don't respect them."
Rick is a nihilist who knows from experience that nothing really matters.
"What about the reality we left behind?
"What about the reality where Hitler cured cancer, Morty?
the answer is: don’t think about it."
Frank may not have travelled multiple dimensions, but his experiences made him jaded too.
"I wanted to see the world!"
"I’ve seen it -- it’s a piece of shit."
Both harbor deep disdain for society’s institutions and norms.
They shoot down assumptions that we should work --
"Every day is an opportunity you don’t get back so don’t blow it working."
or go to school.
"I told the both of you school is stupid.
It's not how you learn things."
Because they’re such persuasive talkers, they sometimes manage to make us listen on
these subjects.
"There's no God, Summer.
You gotta rip that band-aid off now -- you'll thank me later."
"The world is a rough place.
Bullying is like getting inoculated."
We almost buy it when they claim to be giving their progeny a real-world education.
"In the war between the have nots and the have everythings, their guilt is our ammunition.
Never forget that."
We get glimpses of both characters’ past hardships, but elaborate backstories are noticeably
absent.
Frank and Rick don’t apologize for themselves,
so likewise the shows don’t offer justifications to excuse why Frank and Rick are the way they
are.
What tends to happen as we watch is that we start providing those justifications for the
show.
We have a built-in instinct to make sense of characters we get attached to.
So over time our minds work out some kind of halfway-decent explanation
for why someone could be as emotionally unavailable, selfish, and flat-out cruel as Frank or Rick.
When we meet Frank’s mom, she’s more cold-hearted than her son.
And she’s searching for an easier ride in life, so it’s clear he learned some of his
tricks from her.
We start to transfer some of the “blame” for how Frank is onto his upbringing,
and that makes us see even more clearly how hard it is for Frank’s kids not to become
like him.
"My parents suck too."
In Rick’s case, we hold on to the idea that his intelligence is a heavy burden,
and his understanding of the multiverse would make anyone struggle
not to become depressed, detached and emotionally distant.
Frank and Rick are also cautionary tales, anti-role models,
warning us that actually not caring about anything has consequences.
Frank’s alcoholism almost kills him any times and puts his children through endless
pain.
And Rick’s suicidal tendencies reveal how profoundly unhappy he is.
So ultimately the shows are encouraging us not to be like Frank or Rick --
"Holy shit, I'm you."
"Oh my God, I'm my father."
to find better ways of coping than giving in to narcissistic, selfish, escapism.
The Gallagher kids and Morty and Summer fight not to be like their patriarchs.
“I don’t want you to end up like Frank, okay?”
And the shows tell us we can escape Rick’s and Frank’s fates if we engage with reality,
emotionally invest, and keep trying hard.
“Why do you keep doing this to us?!”
We accept Frank and Rick as they are, because by now they are so firmly themselves
it's really hard to imagine them changing in a very significant way.
Now and then we get glimmers of hope -- often false hope -- that they might be transforming.
Rick isn’t always happy with who he’s become,
and the show plays with how much his affection for his grandkids could be shaping him.
"A strange...a strange feeling."
In Season 8 of Shameless, Frank is more convincing than ever in his attempts to reform himself.
"When you address me, I prefer you'd call me dad or father or Francis on more formal
occasions.
I'll also accept 'Saint.'"
He creates a new and improved version of himself.
He actually gets a job, and he even discovers a totally new feeling.
"I've discovered guilt."
But he’s seems to be doing this largely so that he can blame Monica, his deceased
wife, for all his past sins.
And the kids, like us are still waiting for the other shoe to drop.
By now, whenever Frank or Rick seems to be acting different, we chalk it up to a phase.
The shows have put us in the position of their kids and grandkids,
and train us to expect the worst.
The moment when things could have gone differently for Frank or Rick passed a long time back
--
way before we ever met them.
It’s really Fiona or Lip or Morty or Summer that we’re watching now to see how they
might end up.
"Okay, getting darker."
So the lesson here is that we have to take ownership of who we are along the way,
when our character aren't yet rigidly formed.
We need to act now, before the point of no return.
Meanwhile, Frank’s and Rick’s family members come to think of themselves
as a detached audience with no real skin in the game, like us.
But despite everything, they and we still continue to like Frank Gallagher and Rick
Sanchez
because they give us new perspectives,
behave more horribly than we thought was possible with a straight face,
and through it all, never fail to keep us entertained.
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