Its storytelling suffered slightly in its second season, as I recall it. I think people who talk about narrative structure would describe it as having “too many balls in the air,” but you can’t say that about Shameless because one could assume this is meant in a literal sense; let’s just say it may have taken on more characters and stories than it was able to convey effectively for a while. By the end of season 2, it seemed to regain its footing, focus in on a couple of the charaters more closely, and salvage a sophomore season that didn’t quite measure up to the first, at least in my view.
Season 3 has given us something different. The characters that were introduced in the previous season became fully formed, and in an incredibly efficient manner. Every episode has been solid, without the occasional drag in tempo that the previous season had suffered from. And the way it has done this is by turning a former weakness into a strength. Now, instead of some storylines taking away from other, better ones, we have all of them intersecting in episodic climaxes whose complexity and excitement is comparable (though not equal of course, let’s not go crazy) to the simultaneous climax (so to speak) sequence in Inception. Shameless doesn’t have different times being presented at once, but cross-cut spaces cohere brilliantly in some beautiful moments in the third season. It’s like they’ve cracked their form and are in a storytelling zone I can only describe as masterful.
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Published: Apr 1, 2013 12:46 pm