Shameless: The Complete Fourth Season

The Gallagher clan's strife and successes grow farther afield in this latest season relating the stormy saga of a proudly pugilistic Irish-American Chicago family. As patriarch Frank, William H. Macy takes even more of a passive role as a result of a rotten liver that has him living out his last days (perhaps) in his son's bunk bed. Even so, he finds ever more inventive ways to keep injecting himself with alcohol. De facto matriarch Fiona (Emmy Rossum) enjoys a great job and a love life that's looking up, but everyone knows that having your boss as a boyfriend probably won't end well. Lip (Jeremy Allen White) discovers that cockiness can be a liability in college, Debbie (Emma Kenney) jumps onto the emotional rollercoaster of adolescence, and younger brother Carl (Ethan Cutkosky) comes up with a clever (and criminal) way to secure drug money for Frank. The Gallaghers and their über-motley extended tribe are sometimes hard to like, but the working-class, bootstrap grit that drives them is equally tough to resist as they continue to embark on rudely funny but often moving experiences. Compiling all 12 episodes from the 2014 fourth season, extras include behind-the-scenes featurettes and deleted scenes. Recommended. (T. Fry)