Staff Writer
By JULIET PEREZ
By far Shameless is one of my favorite shows that I have ever watched, of course being Shameless each character has done some messed up things that make the audience cringe or even dislike the character. But the one character that never seems to redeem themselves is Debbie Gallagher. Some people may disagree but she is absolutely insufferable to me and she just gets worse every season, she doesn’t even get any better. This is a sad fact because in the first few seasons she was probably my favorite character, but as she grew up she just got incredibly annoying and selfish. Yes, all of the characters have done bad things but the difference between them and Debbie is that they grow from their mistakes and redeem themselves. Debbie has no growing moment or a point of empathy or decency.
There are so many things Debbie did in the show, first, she had this little phase where she wanted to grow up so bad and in order to do so she had this timeline and one of the checkpoints she needed to reach was having her first time. She starts dating this boy named Derek and halfway through their relationship she decides she wants to be a mother?? So she lies to him about being on the pill and then she ends up getting pregnant and then after Derek breaks up with her she doesn’t give him any rights to the baby but after he dies she reaps all of his benefits. Then her older sister Fiona gets pregnant and because they are so financially unstable and she just doesn’t want the baby, Fiona gets an abortion and Debbie makes her feel bad about it and shames her for getting the abortion. Another thing that annoyed me was when her brother Carl gets into his first healthy relationship with this girl Kelly, and Debbie decides that she has a crush on her too and it is so selfish how she treats the situation by snuggling with Kelly and hanging out with her all the time, taking her away from Carl. Debbie even tries to kiss Kelly at one point and then says that she thought Kelly wanted it, even though she was dating Carl. After Fiona leaves the show she tries to take charge of everyone living in the house, and she decides that everyone needs to pay rent even her little brother Liam, who is literally in middle school, and when he is unable to pay rent she makes him sleep outside. She is an insane narcissistic mother too, when her daughter Franny is having her birthday party, Debbie tells her that it’s going to be a princess fairy theme even though Franny says multiple times that’s not what she wants… Debbie just wants to push her childhood issues on her. She does so much more but the last thing I’m going to include is the fact that she gets into a really good relationship with this girl named Sandy and when Debbie finds out that Sandy left her ex-boyfriend and her son (that she had at 15 and was not ready for), Debbie goes crazy and nearly forces the father to push Sandy to get shared custody of the kid, when Sandy makes it clear that she doesn’t want the kid. Again, she just pushes all of her mommy issues on everyone in her life, and buds into everyone’s business, when NO ONE ASKS HER TO.
I get that she had a bad childhood, but a lot of the time she acts like she is the only person going through the trauma when she has four other siblings who went through the same exact thing. And a lot of the time she acts like she is so perfect and shames Fiona for not raising them correctly when it wasn’t even Fiona’s job to raise them in the first place, Fiona was just considerate and caring for them. Not to mention that Debbie isn’t even that good of a mom shown in so many instances of negligence and narcissism with Franny. Normally I don’t dislike characters, but Debbie is so unlikeable.