"Shameless": Can Amnesia Double as Gay Conversion Therapy?

With Brothers & Sisters, Desperate Housewives and The Amazing Race having completed their seasons, and True Blood not returning until next month, AfterElton.com was looking for a new show to recap. But which show?

When we remembered The Sundance Channel was airing the new season of Shameless which has featured loads of queer storylines over its first five seasons, we knew had our new recap subject. Why? Because while most of our readers are probably aware of how gay-friendly the show has been with gay characters including Ian Gallagher and Mickey Maguire (just to name two), it's a safe bet that most of you probably haven't watched many episodes. And with Showtime remaking the series for U.S. audiences, we figured the time couldn't be better to get everyone familiar with the wacky world of Shameless.

Off we go!

On paper, Chatsworth Estate doesn’t sound like the kind of place you would want to visit more than once. After all, it's a place where you have a gangster family living next door to a grifter family, and where a retiree supplements her pension by turning her home into a whorehouse.

But there’s also an unconventional sense of community to this place where the residents of the estate stick by each other. True, everyone knows each others business, but since there’s so much dirty laundry that needs to be aired out, you don’t see the shaming that usually goes on in such places.

Sure, people gossip but everyone seems self aware enough to realize that they’re in no position to actually be judging anyone else. That leaves the area with a sense of community that overcomes the dysfunction.

Or maybe that sense of community comes from the fact that there’s only one place to hang out — the pub. How bad is it? Even when the locals are avoiding the pub in protest of a new smoking ban, they just gather outside until management relents and agrees to ignore the law.

Let's meet the local residents, or at least the gay ones we care about.

The guy picking up after everybody above is Ian Gallagher. He’s been through a lot in Shameless' first five seasons. His father Frank is an alcoholic who has, at times, forgotten his children exist until he needed someplace to sleep off his latest binge or to wait for the next government assistance check to arrive.

Meanwhile, Ian's mother Monica, abandoned the family back in Season One when she fell in love with a truck driver named Norma, but she eventually returned a few years later. Norma, not content to be dumped, followed Monica back to Chatsworth estate where she permanently parked her truck outside the Gallagher home waiting for her chance to win Monica back.