Shameless: The Eleventh And Final Season [DVD]

Cast: William H. Macy, Jeremy Allen White, Ethan Cutkosky

Release Date: July 20, 2021

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Disc Rating: 7/10

 

Synopsis:

The final season of Shameless finds the Gallaghers at a crossroads…and they aren’t leaving without a fight! As Frank confronts his own mortality, Lip struggles with the prospect of becoming the family patriarch. Newlyweds Ian and Mickey figure out their committed relationship, while Deb embraces her individuality and single motherhood. Lastly, Carl finds an unlikely new career in law enforcement, while Kevin and Veronica struggle to keep the Alibi profitable during a pandemic.

Please Note: Warner Bros. Home Entertainment provided me with a free copy of the DVD I reviewed in this Post. The opinions I share are my own.

The eleventh and final season of ‘Shameless’ rejoins the Gallagher clan as they each struggle with their own personal issues while also dealing with the pandemic and the attempted takeover of their neighborhood by those who want to transform it into the next up and coming area. While Frank finds his memory slipping and is forced to finally begin confronting his own mortality, Lip struggles to settle into the life of father and husband while Ian and Mickey begin adapting to married life. Meanwhile, Carl begins his new career as a police officer hoping to do some good in his hometown while Debbie finds herself taking on the tribulations of love and being a good mother and Liam struggles to find his rightful place once everything around him begins to change. At the same time Kevin and Veronica take advantage of weed legalization in Chicago in the hope of increasing business at the Alibi. But as hard as they might try, it soon becomes clear that things are changing whether they like it or not.

All good things must eventually come to an end, and the long-running Showtime series ‘Shameless’ is no exception, finally concluding after eleven hilarious and emotional seasons with our favorite south siders. It’s a pretty decent final season in most respects, with a few minor elements perhaps not wrapping up quite as neatly as we might have hoped (many of which are surely a result of the pandemic) but it definitely offers up a largely fitting send-off to these characters that we’ve spent a decade watching grow up and combating struggle after struggle along the way. Bringing some real life issues to the forefront and tackling the pandemic as only this series would dare (yet curiously doing so better than most shows who have included it within their storylines) and serving up no shortage of laughs and of course the twisted scenarios we’ve all come to love about this series over its run. Fans of the show who have been following it over the years but haven’t yet had a chance to check out the final batch of episodes will definitely want to make a point of doing so whenever possible. It may not nail everything perfectly, but it does an admirable job of doing so quite capably for the most part, especially during such a troubling time in the world. To say the least, it’s certainly well worth taking the time to watch and see where all of these beloved (and troubled) characters end up.

Overall, the eleventh and final season of ‘Shameless’ brings the beloved Showtime series to a conclusion after a decade, offering a frequently hilarious and morally twisted take on many current events such as the pandemic in a way that only this show could manage in such a believable manner, while offering up a fairly satisfying conclusion to the series that albeit imperfect, does do most of it in a manner that fans should appreciate. As far as Warner Bros. Home Entertainment’s 3-disc DVD release of ‘Shameless: The Eleventh and Final Season’ is concerned, it brings home all twelve episodes from the final season sporting solid standard definition video presentations and multichannel soundtracks on every episode that look and sound quite nice, especially within the limits of the DVD format. Paired with a couple nice extras that fans should have some fun with, anyone that doesn’t mind the DVD format itself and would like to physically own the series should be quite content with the technical merits of this release and it is recommended for anyone already considering a purchase.

VIDEO:

The DVD release of ‘Shameless: The Eleventh and Final Season’ features a 16×9 friendly standard definition video presentation utilizing the show’s original 1.78:1 Aspect Ratio on all of the eleventh season’s episodes. The video presentations look pretty great as a whole, especially within the limits of the aging DVD format. It offers a fairly clean, sharp and nicely detailed presentation on every episode of the final season with no unexpected issues or problems to be uncovered along the way. It holds up surprisingly well even during the darkly lit, heavily populated and fast moving sequences, never causing anything that’s occurring onscreen to become negatively affected or rendered indiscernible. Overall, these are solid standard definition video presentations that look surprisingly nice for DVD and should more than satisfy any fans of the series who are still content with the format.

AUDIO:

The DVD release includes a 384 Kbps 5.1 channel Dolby Digital soundtrack on all 12 Season Eleven episodes. These multichannel soundtracks provide crisp, clean and often fairly active audio presentations on each episode of the final season. They consistently take advantage of all five available channels at their disposal in order to send music, bits of crowd chatter, nature and vehicle activity along with more throughout the various speakers at every fitting opportunity, and never resulting in any dialogue or other audio elements that might be occurring simultaneously becoming distorted or rendered inaudible in the process. Overall, these are great 5.1 Dolby Digital soundtracks that do their job nicely throughout and should not disappoint.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The DVD release of ‘Shameless: The Eleventh and Final Season’ includes a couple of nice extras that fans of the series should enjoy. Included on the release are ‘Deleted Scene(s)’ from ten of the season’s episodes (running approximately 11 minutes in length altogether), along with the post finale special ‘Shameless Last Call’ (running approximately 63 minutes) which features members of the cast and crew reflecting on and discussing the finale and the series as a whole, as well as their journey with it over its impressive eleven season run.

*Please note that the above images are taken from the DVD and resized. They will additionally suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this DVD release are the property of their respective owners.

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Disc Rating: 7/10

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‘Shameless: The Eleventh & Final Season’ is Now Available to Own on DVD & Digital from Warner Bros. Entertainment

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