HOUSE OF LIES – My rating: 8/10

House of lies is about Marty Kaan, played by Don Cheadle, who now leads his own consultant firm.  Marty is cut-throat and clever and will stop at nothing to get a high paying client.  His team, formulated from his former company worships his antics and will stop at nothing to get the job done.  It’s all about the money.  The team consists of Marty, Genie (Kristen Bell), Clyde (Ben Schwartz) and Doug (Josh Lawson).  Marty has an estranged wife, Monica (Dawn Olivieri) who’s not so estranged, a wanna be gay son, Roscoe (Donis Leonard Jr.) and a semi-quasi dying father, Jeremiah (Glynn Turman).  Marty has more sex than a hooker and strikes up more meaningless relationships than “The Bachelor”.  To complicate matters, Marty and Genie managed to sleep together and are now so uncomfortable around each other they can barely be civil.   The fast talking, cleaver team is something to watch.  Marty is a legend and together with his team are unstoppable.  This series  is aired on Showtime and is only 30 minutes an episode.

SHAMELESS – MY Rating: 8.5/10

Outrageous is the one word that comes to mind when defining this  realer than real Showtime series.  With William H. Macy at the helm as a fall down, sloppy, disgusting drunk with 7 children, this series makes for a pretty interesting story.  William H. Macy plays Frank Gallagher.  Frank’s children include 1 genus son named Phillip but called Lip, 1 gay son named Ian, 1 (2) year old son named Liam, 1 potential sociopath and arsonist son who stands by Frank, named Carl, 1 adolescent daughter, named Debbie, 1newly discovered daughter named Sammi and his oldest daughter, named Fiona,  who takes care of the entire family while Frank stays in a drunken stupor most of the time.

BTW: the Gallagher’s do have a mom but she’s in and out of the picture, named Monica.  Shameless shows how a dysfunctional family evolves when the living conditions are unfavorable and the children are self raised in poverty and discord when there are no decent parents around for guidance.

There are so many other characters that help make this series successful.  Joan Cusask has a recurring role as Sheila, who is now head of her dysfunctional family since her husband died.  Fiona’s best friend, Veronica Fisher, who is the Gallagher’s next door neighbor and can at best be described as a real character, married to a bartender, who at times, is a bit of a block head.  Should you find this interesting enough to watch, here are some additional facts:

Resource:  Wikipedia
Brennan Kane Johnson & Blake Alexander Johnson as Liam Gallagher

The youngest of the Gallagher children, 2 year old Liam, is black despite having two white parents due to a recessive black gene the Gallagher’s acquired from Frank’s grandmother, who (allegedly) had an affair with a jazz musician. Liam is starting to verbalize more, however, his character has yet to be developed.
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Resource:  IMDB
William H. Macy also plays his brother Jerry Gallagher.

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***SPOILER***
Veronica, thinking she couldn’t get pregnant, lured her mother into getting pregnant for her, using her very own husband so that their child would be half their own.   Since then, Veronica turned up pregnant with triplets and now is expecting 4 babies.  In reality, at the age of 36, Shanola Hampton, who plays Veronica,  gave birth to her first child, a daughter, named Cai MyAnna Dukes on January 20, 2014.  Child’s father is her husband, Daren Dukes.