Every Season Of Shameless Ranked Worst To Best
Showtime has a tendency, even more so than most networks, to drag its shows on for way too long. From "Dexter" to "Weeds" to "Californication," their shows just can't quite seem to learn how to end on a high note. Whereas HBO tends to leave its audience wanting more, Showtime series stick around until the audience begs them to go away. (Hopefully, at least "Yellowjackets" will stick to no more than its current five-season plan.)
Such is the case with "Shameless," a show that could've gone down as one of the greats of the 2010s if only it hadn't tried to drag things out a solid four or five seasons past its natural expiration date. By season 11 it was in full zombie mode, with one of its leads gone with the wind and the others acting like shells of their former selves. Of course, not all of the latter seasons were terrible, just as not all of the early seasons were perfect. Here's our ranking of all 11 seasons of "Shameless," from those that tested our patience to the ones that riveted us from start to finish.
10. Season 10 and 11
These are the Fiona-less seasons, and boy does the show feel hollow without her. The show is left placing even more emphasis on Carl and Debbie, two characters that are nowhere near as frustrating to watch as they used to be, but who are still so hollow that the show can't really develop any meaningful stories around them. Kev and V are also fun but aren't given many compelling things to work with. Lip gets some strong material, becoming a father and making peace with a life where he's squandered his biggest chance at escaping poverty, but it's not enough to carry the whole show.
What's particularly disappointing is how empty the Ian and Mickey relationship is, especially considering how vibrant and exciting their dynamic was in the show's early seasons. The series seemed to be trying to make up for how much it tortured its Gallovich shippers in its middle years, but the damage had already been done: these are no longer the same characters, and the writing's not sharp enough anymore to make the dynamic work.
The final season's saving grace is that it finally gives Frank something meaningful to deal with, as he realizes that death has finally come for him after he cheated it seven seasons earlier. While it certainly stings that nobody even seems to think about contacting Fiona during any of this — or during Mickey and Ian's wedding, for that matter — it's still touching to see William H. Macy have to put some real effort into his role again.
9. Season 8
Although season 7 was a surprise return to form for "Shameless," promising an exciting new era for the Gallagher family, season 8 quickly swoops in to stomp out any hopes we may have had for a second golden age. Season 8 turns "Shameless" from a dramedy into a live-action sitcom, where now every single character is either going through a zany story befitting a cartoon character (see: Ian's Gay Jesus heel turn), or they're simply going through the motions, living out a storyline that feels like something we've seen them do before, but worse.
One of the few saving graces is that Frank manages to go sober for a surprisingly long time and that Fiona continues to dabble in climbing the economic ladder. Although nobody loves a landlord, it's nice that season 8 mostly follows through on Fiona's ambitions to finally escape poverty and earn some real money for herself instead of just barely making by. This is all, unfortunately, undermined by...
8. Season 9
Season 9 is when the miserable cycle of poverty that "Shameless" bases itself around got a little too depressing for its own good. Fiona's real-estate ambitions blow up in her face, and she spirals into self-destructive alcoholism that nearly ruins her life yet again. Fiona's season 9 arc is basically what she went through in season 4, but without any of the realism or nuance to make it work. Lip screaming at Fiona in season 4 was dramatically earned; Lip screaming at her in season 9 just felt exhausting. If this was going to be Fiona's final season, surely they could give her something better to do than this.
Season 9 also continues the show's trend of unconvincingly ruining a Gallagher's love interest, this time with Fiona's dull boyfriend Ford. Seemingly a nice guy, he's suddenly revealed to have a wife and kids. It's a cheap excuse to break the characters up, almost completely disconnected from anything we knew about him beforehand.
The good news is that most of the other characters' storylines, while not technically good, weren't particularly bad either. Sure, Debbie continues to be a heartless person, but at least Ian and his Gay Jesus cult is finally put to rest. Season 9 might be a total mess, but at least it's not an meaningless mess. Unlike season 8, the ridiculous things that happen here actually matter throughout the rest of the show.
7. Season 6
Maybe the biggest sin of season 6 is the sheer extent to which it butchers Debbie's character. Once a fun, precocious child, season 6 gives Debbie a level of sociopathic buffoonery that very few characters on the show have been able to rival. Raping a guy in season 5 wasn't enough; now she's pretending to be on birth control in a shortsighted scheme to trap her new boyfriend. It isn't just frustrating; it's unbearably depressing. In all the ways "Shameless" could've handled Debbie's character growth post-puberty, why did it choose this direction?
The other victim of season 6 is Lip, who gets himself kicked out of college thanks to an unwise, sorta predatory relationship with his cougar professor. This storyline especially stings because it's so easy to imagine an alternate version of "Shameless" where the show actually allowed its characters some upward class mobility. If Lip had succeeded in making something of himself, it would've made for some compelling TV to watch how this change affected his relationship with the other characters. Instead, "Shameless" chose the easy route, keeping Lip trapped in the same cycle of poverty and self-destruction as everyone else. It's more realistic, some fans might argue, but it's not like season 6 particularly cared about realism anyway.
On the bright side, season 6 gives us Sean, who was almost the best of Fiona's boyfriends, and it leaves us on a compelling new low for Frank and Fiona's relationship. It also allows Ian to rebuild his life after a devastating season 5, even if the means with which he did it weren't that convincing. It's also hard not to appreciate Carl, whose misguided white boy gangster phase is at its most ridiculous here.
6. Season 2
We've now firmly entered the good section of the list: season 2 is a solid season, one that does a fine job of expanding on everything that season 1 established and fixing almost everything that didn't quite work. Ian's relationship with his pedophile boss Kash is put to an end, and here the writers finally commit to his far more interesting budding romance with bad boy Mickey. (More on him later.) Maybe most interesting is the way this season handles Frank: not only does it bring Frank's mother back into the fold, explaining so much about the way Frank's come to be, but it brings back Monica throughout most of the season's final few episodes. "Shameless" has always dialed the emotions up a notch whenever Monica's in the picture, and that's definitely the case here.
The downside is that a lot of logic is thrown out the door when it comes to Monica's bipolar spiral this season. The circumstances that lead to Monica screwing the family over in another manic episode don't really make sense — nobody seems suspicious when she goes on a shopping spree, and we're somehow expected to believe that army-obsessed Ian wouldn't already know about the army's age requirements — nor does it feel fitting for Lip to lecture Fiona about it in the aftermath. (You weren't even there, Lip!)
Season 2 also struggles hard to give Ian something to do outside of Mickey, who's in prison for most of the episodes, and it gives us the first example of the writers butchering a love interest's characterization as a convenient excuse for a Gallagher to dump them. This time it's Karen, who descends from a troubled-yet-sympathetic girl in season 1 to the devil incarnate here. It's a shame because season 1 Karen was far more interesting.
5. Season 5
This is the first season after the extraordinary, game-changing season 4, and it almost manages to be a worthy successor. There are some early signs of writing decline (mainly, half-Gallagher Sammi has inexplicably transformed into a cartoon character between seasons), but for the most part, the characters are still going through fresh and interesting storylines. Lip's still excelling at school, Carl's finding his calling as a drug-dealing menace, and even Frank gets a genuinely moving storyline with a terminally ill doctor. (I still maintain that Bianca and Frank are one of the show's best-ever character duos.)
But the highlight is Ian and Mickey, who are now an open couple and trying to make things work — if only it wasn't for Ian's mental illness complicating everything. It's devastating to watch Ian deal with the same mental illness that ruined his mother's life, but it's also lovely watching Mickey step up to support him, going a long way from the closed-off, closeted thug we met way back in season 1. Even if Fiona's relationship drama was a bit much, Ian and Mickey's material is easily some of the most compelling stuff the show's ever given us.
That is until the finale ruins it. The final episode callously and abruptly ends Ian and Mickey's relationship; it's not even treated as a sad moment, but a funny one as Mickey's chased off-screen by a gun-wielding Sammi. After an entire season of moving character growth, the finale expects its audience to laugh as Mickey is dumped and then potentially murdered. It's an absurdly mean-spirited moment, one that continued into seasons 6 and 7 as Mickey was framed as a one-dimensional bad influence on Ian — an abuser, even — rather than the guy who supported Ian through the hardest period of his life.
4. Season 7
After season 5 dropped the ball at the end and season 6 was a total mess, season 7 felt like a welcome return to form. Lip was given his best love interest yet in the form of Sierra, and Fiona was thankfully given no love interest at all. The writers seemed to realize they were testing viewers' patience with Fiona's constant relationship drama, and the simple choice of keeping her single for a whole season really helped to make the whole thing fresh and exciting. Season 7 also includes the tragic death of Monica, bringing the family together for a strong, emotional finish.
The biggest flaw is that this is the point of the show where the writers seem to have forgotten their own characters' histories. The defamation of Mickey continues, but maybe the most damning omission is how the show's seemingly forgotten that Fiona is a convicted felon, or that she became her younger siblings' official legal guardian in season 3. There were so many instances where these two facts should've come up, but they didn't. Season 4 established that Fiona's criminal record would be a problem that stuck around for life; season 7 established that no, that criminal record would just disappear altogether after a few years.
Season 7 also continues the trend of ruining love interests for convenient plot reasons, as both Carl's girlfriend Dominique and Ian's boyfriend Caleb transform into completely different people once it's time for them to leave the show. Still, the season shines because of how much it keeps the siblings together; whereas Fiona, Lip, and Ian spent the past few seasons on their own separate adventures, here they're much closer than they've ever been, and it's refreshing to see.
3. Season 1
The best part of the show's debut season is just how close the family feels. The Gallagher family is a tight bunch here, often working together with one scheme or another to avoid losing their home. It's almost jarring, in hindsight, just how many of season 1's episodes feel like heist stories; the Gallaghers in this season always seemed like they're one bad day away from being out on the street, and that brought an immediacy to the show that it never quite had going forward. This was the family at their most fun, their most scheming, their most charmingly shameless.
The reason it's not at the top of the list is that there are a handful of weird, off-putting elements that drag the whole thing down. There's the fact that Frank is raped by two separate women, which the show largely treats as hilarious. This is also the season where baby-faced 15-year-old Ian has an ongoing sexual relationship with his 30-something boss; the show seems at least moderately aware of how terrible this dynamic is, but it was a big relief when Kash finally left the series in season 2.
Still, the vibrancy and passion of season 1 can't be denied. Fiona in particular is at her most sympathetic here, acting truly as the mom of the family while navigating a complicated romance with Jimmy/Steve, her best boyfriend in the series. The season's highlight is probably the episodes where Monica returns for the first time, and we can see so much of the family's tragic history playing out before our eyes. As disappointed as we might be with where the characters ended up, season 1 at least helps us understand that, with a childhood like theirs, these Gallagher kids never really stood a chance.
2. Season 3
After a slight sophomore slump, season 3 is "Shameless" firing on all cylinders, not just giving all its characters plenty of strong material to work with but also bringing the Milkovich family further into the fold. For the next few seasons, Mandy and Mickey are both honorary Gallaghers, and it's one of the best decisions the show ever made.
It's also a devastating season for Frank, as his unbelievable selfishness has now even lost him the love of Debbie, the one kid left still young enough to hope he'll improve. Even for his older kids who thought they already understood the depths Frank will sink to, it turns out there's still plenty of room for extra disappointment, as shown in Fiona's standout scene where she discovers the phone call of Frank reporting them to the CPS. Frank's the worst this season, and his cancer diagnosis in the finale perfectly sets him up for a more introspective storyline that season 4 mostly follows up on. (More on that later.)
Season 3 has perhaps the darkest ending of any of them: Ian has his heart broken, Mickey seemingly embraces a closeted, miserable lifestyle, Lip and Mandy's relationship falls apart, and Fiona and Jimmy/Steve finally call it quits. But unlike season 5, this season properly understands the weight of all these moments, and lets them hit in natural, satisfying ways. Season 3 may have had a few weird subplots (particularly regarding Kev and V's absurd strategy for having children), but it's strong overall, and it perfectly set the groundwork for the best run of episodes the show's ever had.
1. Season 4
This is the only season in "Shameless" where every single storyline was compelling. We got to watch Debbie navigate her early teenage years in an incredibly fascinating (if uncomfortable) way. We watched Lip as he struggled through his first semester in college, finally flourishing by the final few episodes. We saw Frank grapple with his own mortality, Carl become Frank's right-hand man, Ian struggle with the first clear signs of his bipolar disorder, and Mickey finally gets the coming out storyline fans had been waiting seasons for. The show switched things up a bit with how it portrayed Mickey, turning him into the protagonist of the Ian/Mickey love story for the first time in the series; it was an unprecedented move that somehow turned out great.
But of course, it's Fiona stealing the show here, as she has her role as the family's most dependable figure suddenly snatched away from her. She makes a series of bad decisions, including one really bad one in the middle there, and man does it take a toll. Season 4 Fiona has the most convincing fall from grace in the whole series, to the point where it's almost agonizing to watch at times, but it's so compelling and well-portrayed that you can't look away. Season 4 is easily the show's darkest season, but it's also "Shameless" at its most grounded and nuanced. The show might not have ever been able to reach these heights again, but season 4's still a miracle of television either way.