10 Things Wrong With Debbie Gallagher From Shameless

I am going to tell you 10 things wrong with Debbie Gallagher from Shameless, proving her obvious character flaws but first I am going to briefly go over a bit of her back story.

When Showtime’s popular show Shameless started, Debbie, one of the younger Gallagher siblings started off as a sweet, innocent girl who would do anything to help take care of and support her siblings while growing up on the South side of Chicago in a bad neighbourhood. With no help emotionally or financially from their neglectful, delinquent parents, Frank and Monica, Debbie still seemed to keep a positive attitude and did her best to help when she was able to. As Shameless went on, however and Debbie got older, she changed.  

She was raised mostly by her older siblings Fiona, Lip, and Ian, but they were all growing up as well and didn’t know what they were doing, making it difficult for Debbie to have the support system or guidance she really needed as a young girl.  

Debbie not having any strong role model to guide her showed mostly through her relationships with other people. Some people would say that her lack of being able to love properly and be in a healthy relationship is due to the lack of love she had from her parents growing up. They came and went as they pleased, especially her mother who wasn’t there for most of her life but each time she came back for a visit promised that things would be different this time, that she was going to be a real mother. Just to disappoint Debbie each time when she left again for something better.  

Although Debbie acted strong and pretended not to care, I think on a subconscious level this really took a toll on how her mind developed and why she did some of the crazy things she did, which started at a pretty young age. Debbie was no exception to the Gallagher siblings becoming more like the parents they swore they would never be like. Frank passed down his questionable moral code and manipulative nature to his daughter Debbie, who used other’s in order to get what she wanted. 

As the seasons went on she only became worse, making it harder for the audience of the show to stick up for her any longer, she was becoming someone who was hated. But there are still many people who seemed to ignore her character flaws. Here is a list of some of the craziest things Debbie Gallagher has done throughout the series of Shameless. (And if you haven’t watched the show, go watch it, trust me you won’t regret it) 

Season 1, Episode 4 Casey Casden: Debbie steals a baby 

Debbie wanted to be a mother from a very young age, she couldn’t wait to grow up so she could do so. Maybe to prove to herself that she could be a better mother than her own and to give all the love and support to her child that she never got from her own mother. Debbie grew up watching Fiona the older Gallager sibling raise a house full of kids and although Fiona wasn’t the most outstanding mother figure, she still managed to figure out how to get food on the table each week, bills paid and chores done, so Debbie assumed it wasn’t all too hard to be a mother. 

When there was a neighbor having a birthday party for young kids across the street Debbie seen her opportunity to take mothering into her own hands by kidnapping one of the children, Casey Casden and taking him home. Her siblings immediately expressed their disapproval and started to come up with a plan to get the kid back to the party and to his parents safely, as well as keep Debbie from getting in trouble with the cops on the look-out for the kid. Debbie is upset she has to take the kid back and shows no remorse or realization of the act she made. It proves at a young age that Debbie’s mind works on a one way track, it’s all about getting what she wants.   

As the seasons go on Debbie never loses her desire to be a mother which is evident in later episodes when she does so by any means necessary. 

Season 1 Episode 8, It’s Time To Kill The Turtle: Debbie forces her newly sober father, Frank to drink again 

Frank has been an alcoholic and addict since he could remember talking probably but when an opportunity to gain $3000 from a medical study that entails him not drinking any alcohol for 3 months, Frank jumps all over it. As hard as he knows it will be. If Frank Gallagher likes anything more than alcohol, it’s money (so he could buy more alcohol, so never mind he would probably just prefer the alcohol given to him).  

Frank was doing good at first, he was even spending more time with his kids instead of wasting his time at the local bar getting plastered. He especially bonded with Debbie over his newfound love for sugar as a replacement over alcohol.  

The Gallagher siblings knew that Frank was going to go back to the unattentive, bad drunk of a father he was for them growing up so they quickly grew tired of sober Frank. Why couldn’t he try harder to be sober as they grew up? The Gallagher’s know he was only doing it for the money and wanted nothing to do with the kindness he was now giving them out of the blue. They rather him get it over with and start drinking again.  

Frank’s alcoholism was the main reason he was a bad father and an even worse human being. His alcoholism becomes so bad to the point where he gets alcoholic dementia in the later seasons and ends up dying alone. His children should have never tried to mess with his sobriety. Debbie deliberately forced Frank to start drinking again. One drink was all it took for him, he was back off the Wagon.  

Season 3, Episode 2, The American Dream Debbie shows her violent tendencies 

All of the Gallagher siblings seem to have some underling anger issues going on and is this episode The American Dream, Debbie proves that she is no exception. When Frank accidently breaks her school project, a recreated Abraham Lincoln house made out of popsicle sticks, and then he also insults the project, Debbie took matters into her own hands. She filled a pillow case wil bars of soap and attacked her father pretty badly.  

This is one of the first but many times we see Debbie Gallagher become violent. In Season 3, Episode 5, The Sins of My Caretakers, Debbie gets bullied by the girls at the local school and once again takes matters into her own hands. She brought sandbags to the pool to help hold herself under water as she tried to drown one of the girls who bullied her.  

In Season 5, Episode 5 Rite of Passage, when Debbie is now in high school, she gets insulted by a girl and sucker punches her. A little later on in the show Debbie is pretending to be homeless in order to make some extra cash for her and her infant daughter, not knowing that she took another homeless ladies spot on the street where she usually pan handled. She got into a physical altercation with the lady, beating her up in front of her daughter and bunch of other bystanders. She even tackles the father of her babies new girlfriend, to serve her with child support papers. It is almost as if something snapped in Debbie when she got violent with her father after he broke her school project and she only got worse and worse as the series progressed. 

Season 6, Episode 11 Sleep No More Debbie Neglects her daughter  

Debbie was finding it difficult to balance school, work and taking care of her new baby and on this episode she falls asleep while holding her, dropping her about 4 feet to the ground. It seemed unlikely that her daughter would be okay after that but she was. This definitely wasn’t the last time she neglected to take care of her daughter properly. She would pawn her off on whoever was willing to watch her and would constantly berate her siblings if they were unable to drop their own responsibilities to care for her, although Fiona specifically told her if she decided to have this baby she wasn’t going to be there to help her all the time, she had enough responsibility as it was.  

Debbie started growing to resent being a mother and spent as much time away from her daughter as she could to drink, party and do drugs. She was slowly turning into the mother she swore she would never be like, a lot like her own mother. It was sad. Just as Debbie deserved better growing up, so did her daughter. 

Season 7, Episode 6, The Defenestration of Frank Debbie takes advantage of a handicap  

After two failed relationships (both Debbie’s fault) she sort of gave up on thinking she would ever have real love so she convinced herself that she was good enough with being with someone she didn’t actually care about or love, as long as she had someone to help support her and her daughter. Debbie met Neil, a innocent man who was brain damaged due to an accident and although she wasn’t at all attracted to him, when she found out he had money and an apartment to live in, she couldn’t marry him faster. She pretended to others that she did care for and love Neil but she treated him pretty poorly and it was obvious to Neil after a while that she really didn’t care for him.  

She left him alone for hours with nothing to do but watch her kid while she was out drinking and flirting with other guys. Neil’s brain damage caused him to say the first things that came to his mind therefore he was very upfront and honest about everything which was a little off-putting for Debbie considering she was the opposite but she still did her best to convince him that she loved him so that she could use him and spend his money. He eventually he seen through her act, he luckily fell for someone else and left her.  

Season 10, Episode 6, Adios Gringo’s Debbie bribes a child to get what she wants  

Over the Series of Shameless there are more and more examples of how Frank was a horrible dad for his kids, one of them being when he would use his kids in illegal schemes in order to get what he needed at the time. Debbie again took after her father when it shows her having the heart to do the same sort of thing, except this child wasn’t her own. 

When Franny’s (Debbie’s daughter) father’s (Derek) family wanted to fight for custody after Derek’s tragic passing, Debbie bribed a young child similar looking to her own to impersonate her daughter. Derek’s new girlfriend was supposed to have Franny over for a couple days to get to know her “new home” since she fighting for full custody of her. Instead, Debbie sent over the Franny impersonator who was bribed to cause chaos in the house so that Derk’s girlfriend didn’t want custody. The young child impersonator destroyed the house and traumatized the other children there. After this Derek’s girlfriend wanted nothing to do with Franny or Debbie and stopped fighting for custody. Another example of how Debbie’s manipulative ways gets her what she wants. 

Season 5, Episode 3, The Two Lisa’s Debbie has an inappropriate relationship with Matt  

Debbie made a couple girlfriends in high school who were already experienced in the sex department so Debbie wanted to follow suite and be just like them. Debbie met Matt who was about six years older than her so she lied about her age. Matt had an interest in Debbie at first but when he found out about the age difference he told Debbie they could remain friends but that was it. Debbie agreed and acted as if she was just in friend but really she was trying to make him jealous by dating other guys hoping he would want her.  

Matt started dating someone else and Debbie was jealous enough to try to scare her away by giving her threatening notes and even putting a snake in her car, warning her that if she didn’t stay away the next one would be poisoinous.  

When Debbie had enough of pretending to like Matt as only a friend she made a bad decision of inviting him to a party, spiking his drink and when he was too drunk enough to resist she forced herself on him, completely her goal of losing her virginity. Since Matt was worried about the age difference and assumed he would be the one to blame, he never reported the rape but instead told Debbie they could no longer be friends. Once again, Debbie showed no remorse for her actions, it was all about what she wanted. 

Season 5, Episode 10 South Side Rules Debbie Manipulates Derek 

Debbie’s first real relationship with someone her age was going great at first, Derek seemed to really like Debbie and vise-versa. Debbie wanted to take things to the next step and asked her older sister Fiona to bring her to the clinic to get started on birth control. She planned on spending the night with Derek the same night and take it to the next level even though the nurse at the clinic told her it would take a couple days for the pills to start working. 

When spending the night with Derek only a few hours after returning from the clinic, Derek asked Debbie if he should wear protection but she told him that she just started the pill and they wouldn’t need it. Debbie was aware of the consequences but with her obsession to be a mother, as well as her desire for love she had no regard for anyone else in the situation except herself. She was hoping she could possibly trap Derek into staying with her forever and loving her if they had a child together. Derek quickly realized what she was trying to do and when he was told they were going to have a child he knew he wasn’t ready and ended up moving half way across the country.  

Season 6, Episode 2 Abortion Rules Debbie Exploits A Cancer Patient 

When Debbie realises that Fiona was serious with not helping out with Franny due to her own responsibilities, Debbie becomes aware that she needs to figure something out to make money for her and Franny. She becomes a nanny at home with one child whose mother was dying of cancer. Frank gave her the advice to seduce the husband in order to have money and a nice place to stay for her and Franny once the wife passed away. She decided to go forward with the plan but when the husband rejected her she decided to find comfort in the wife who was dying of cancer.  

Frank then tried to convince her that the wife was a lesbian and she should seduce her instead to secure a safe place to live. Debbie went through with that plan.  

Season 10, Episode 1 We Few, We Lucky Few, We Band Of Gallaghers! Debbie uses the families money for selfish reasons

When Debbie was still a new mother, she took Franny out for a walk in the park one day and realized how easy it was to steal a stroller from one of the other mothers at the park. She started doing this often, taking all of the money from their purses as well as selling the strollers. She started to get a taste for the luxurious things. When Fiona left to start a life of her own in season 9, she left Debbie with a check for 50,000 to take care of her and the family.  

Since the check was made in Debbie’s name she made the decision to split the money up between all the Gallagher’s, including Frank and the rest was for utilities, rent, necessities, or emergencies. She also decided to hold her siblings money until she decided they were responsible enough to have it. She decided to spend the money on a storage room’s worth of luxury clothing and accessories. Her plan was to wear the luxury clothing as much as she could before the return date and then return them for cash. Her plan started to unravel when she wore the close pass the return date and couldn’t return them. She was careless and lost a lot of the inheritance from Fiona, again caring for nobody except herself.  

If you are interested in reading about a variety of different subjects such as mental health, inside the minds of disturbed artists, the importance of being an introvert, importance of body language and non-verbal communication, the importance of mental rehearsal and imagery, the power of our minds, mindfulness, metaphysics and the cosmic world and how all the great genius’ of the past have tapped into this power to achieve seeming miracles, addiction, abuse, the effects loneliness and so much more, please check out some of my other posts: