Breaking the Rules to Survive
Another way Shameless illustrates survival is by showing how poverty changes moral codes. When you’re poor, following the law doesn’t always line up with survival. Instead, people create their own moral rules, often based on necessity rather than legality. For the Gallaghers, cheating a system or scamming a neighbor can be more acceptable than going hungry. This connects to the cultural production of Shameless because the show consistently challenges viewers to question their own assumptions about right and wrong. While society might label Frank’s actions as criminal or immoral, within his world, they make sense. Don-E. Merson develops this argument in his article, “Why Shameless is not about the Working Class”, explaining that Shameless isn’t really about the working class but about people who are outside of it entirely. Merson highlights this when he says, “What is the difference between the poor and the working class? The poor survive without a steady job or income. The poor get by with low paying temporary jobs, stealing, illegal trade, cons, scams, or violence. Shameless shows people using every one of these methods to maintain their life” (Merson 2017). For Frank and his family, survival comes from bending or breaking the rules because the systems meant to help them like the schools, welfare programs, healthcare are unreliable or inaccessible.
Merson’s point matters because it reveals the deeper critique within Shameless. The show is not just about Frank making bad choices. It is about how structural inequality creates situations where following the rules isn’t enough. By surviving through scams and hustles, the Gallaghers expose the limits of systems that claim to support poor families but often fail them in practice. To put it simply, Shameless shows that morality is not fixed. For the Gallaghers, what matters is not whether something is legal or illegal but whether it helps them survive. By developing their own moral code, the Gallaghers reveal the impact of poverty on human decision-making and survival.
