Congratulations on the second-season renewal, firstly. Not a surprise, given the show's performance, but still a nice little bit of news.

"Where the hell were you guys last week?" Lip asks in the Previouslies, sitting in jail, and then the first thing that happens is Frank drops dead in the snow from alcohol poisoning. It's become something of a theme, this hopeful little Frank-is-dead scenario, but of course he can't even be trusted to die properly.

Busy busy morning at the Gallagher house, where last night Fiona and Steve got naked on their way to the bedroom and never quite made it there. Liam's out of diapers -- "Put a plug up his butt, didn't I, Buddy?" giggles Lip -- so Fiona's getting together a shopping trip. Carl's been invited to play paintball, and knew they couldn't afford it so he didn't even ask. Something of a theme this week. So Lip's taken the batteries out of a taser and given him that instead. One look at Lip's sad face and Fiona hands Carl her last thirty bucks, and it's smiles all around. Paintball, I suppose, being a healthy outlet for Carl's burgeoning insanity.

Deb notices a text on Steve's phone from somebody named Candace ("Sweetie, call me. It's important") and of course brings this to Fiona's attention, but Fiona's so used to getting screwed her only response is to yell at Deb for reading other people's phones and then kick everybody out of the house. Because of course there was a problem with Steve, she was prepared for that, so she's already ready for him to go.

Kev wakes up Veronica with a creepy little "Mommy, I'm hungry!" They're getting their foster kid today and he's tremendously excited, which Veronica knows is a recipe for disappointment. Everybody this week is about getting ahead of the disappointment. She reminds him they're only taking this kid on for a week so she can pay her parking tickets, and he's all, "Maybe you will love having a kid!" Then he takes it to a Kev place and starts begging to suckle her teat in this weird Cameron Diaz-on-Oprah accent, and it's super weird. Guys and boobs.

Probably you have read The Hunger Games, and if you haven't you should, and even if you haven't you probably know the basics: The authorities keep the country in a state of perpetual synthetic crisis so they can keep power, and force the children from each of the thirteen Districts of the country to fight to the death each year just to make their lives more miserable. Like the Gallaghers, like every generation, the children carry the weight of their drunk parents' mistakes.