9x01 Are You There Shim? It's Me, Ian.

After 8 seasons and 1 episode I am tapping out. I had a bad feeling as the episode opened with the "highlights" from season 8 and I thought to myself "I remember the season as being bad, but I didn't recall it being that bad". As the episode went on I started to wonder how much I owed it to stick with the show. The scene in the gym was the last straw.

For me there has always been a simple way to tell that not even the show creators have faith in an episode: the more music that they inject the worst the episode is. They've got to try to prop up the bad writing by letting you know that there is wackiness afoot. Episode 1 had a music bed from start to finish. The only thing missing from this pile of dung was a laugh track.

At its best the show had storylines and excellent character development. At its worst it felt like last night's show where it seems as though the writers are just trying to put in enough filler to get through a scene and then the episode. More music, more wacky, zero story. How many decent story lines has Frank had? Two? That's two more than Debbie has gotten. The show was always at its best when Fiona and Lip had strong story lines and even they are completely lacking. I can see why Rossum wanted out.

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A lot of mixed emotions about this tbh. Some storylines have potential, some are just bad.

- I'm glad to see all Gallaghers got screentime. I was especially worried Carl would just be written out of the season as long as he's in military. He's become one of my absolute favorites during the last seasons and I'm so happy to see him doing so well. Now I'm so curious what happened to Kassidy. It actually made me laugh when that guy said he killed her because it was so random and sudden.
- Everyone is so over the Gay Jesus thing. Please, let it end. I can only hope it'll build up to something huge within one or two more episodes. I can't stand another whole season of him having a God complex. And the prison scenes didn't feel real at all.
- I really disliked the Frank storyline.He had too much screentime without anything really happening. Guess I'm glad all the cheating was resolved within the first episode, but it just felt weirdly pointless and completely unrealistic.
- Glad to see Lip still keeps his shit together and stays sober. I find it cute to see him taking care of the little girl Xan. I just hope it won't pull him down. And I'm wondering where the storyline with her friend will be going. She's supposed to be 10 and the guy was what? 15 at least? I can imagine either Lip will totally overreact even though they're just friends or that guy will actually have bad intentions.