Showtime’s Shameless Season 11 returned for episode 3 on December 20.
Cleverly titled Frances Francis Franny Frank, the fresh episode highlights a new Gallagher team: Frank and his grandaughter Franny.
Their adventure begins when Franny refuses to go full out fem for the Miss Southside contest. Debbie insists she changes into a hideous dress so she can take her daughter’s picture for the chance to win the pageant. No way. Franny wants to wear pants.
Then, during a frantic breakfast scene, nobody responds to Debbie’s call to action. She needs someone in the household to take her child to pre-school.
Finally, the little girl is left looking alone and abandoned even though Frank’s there too. He realizes he needs to get her to where she needs to go because he has work to do. Weed work.
Franny’s school is elsewhere on Shameless
They arrive at a school but it’s the wrong one so Frank decides to let Franny hang out with him for the day.
Meanwhile, Debbie is at a new job when she realizes she had been assigned as the snack lady for Franny’s class that day. She grabs some grub from her client’s fridge and jumps out of a window to deliver the goods to her child’s teacher.
That teacher is thankful for Debbie’s effort even though Franny isn’t at school that day. That’s news to her mom who is then goes on a frantic chase around town to find Franny.
As for Frank and Franny?
These two are having a great bonding experience. Frank doesn’t talk down to his granddaughter as he teaches her about the underground pot trade. She listens intently and then he instructs her to say seven, her favorite number, whenever she is asked her opinion while in the company of his suppliers.
Humorous situations ensue, with Franny holding her ground as Frank makes terrific deals with her help.
At the end of the day, the two of them head to a tattoo parlor where grandpa gets an arm inking that states “Frank loves Franny.”
He tells her she’s “pretty swell” and that she has “earned a place on [his] arm forever.”
Frank analyzes his granddaughter on Shameless
While he is waiting for the artist to finish his tattoo, Frank asks Franny why she refused to put on the dress for her mom, even though he has surmised that she is “not much of a girly girl, but more of a…”
Then his granddaughter finishes the sentence with “….a boy.”
“Live your truth,” Frank tells her but adds that sometimes it is nice to do what others like them to do. He mentions that when he was young, he used to put on a dress once in a while for his dad just to make him happy.
This was Frank’s way of teaching his eldest grandchild how to play the long game.
It was also a way into her heart for when she was finally reunited with her very anxious and extremely upset mother, she changed into the little princess dress so she could have her picture taken to compete in the Miss Southside contest.
New Shameless episodes stream on Sundays on Showtime.