Let's start with a brief recap of last week's show.

"We're the Gallagher family. We're poor but colorful!"

"I'm oldest daughter Fiona. This cute guy helped me out, so I'm going to bang him on my kitchen floor."

"I'm Lip. I tutor for hummers, and can use my boxer shirts as a frisbee. I just found out my younger brother Ian is gay. Doesn't he know that orifice is an exit, not an entrance? Well, unless you're straight, and your girlfriend is willing. Then it's okay."

WANG ALERT.

"I'm family patriarch Frank. If I was a cartoon character I'd have stink lines coming off me and a cartoon thought bubble that said 'Hic'"

"I'm Ian. I'm screwing my married, Muslim boss. Gay recappers are watching my every move to see how groundbreaking I'll be. Thanks for the pressure, Asshats!"

"I'm Steve. I'm a charismatic car thief who's been inexplicably drawn into this poor but colorful family. Gay recappers are watching my every move to see if I'll show my stick shift. Thanks for the pressure, Asshats!"

Now that you're up to speed, let's take a look at episode two!

We start with a montage of the family using the bathroom. Well, separately. Including Ian, who sits on the toilet with a gay porn magazine and proceeds to have a tug of war with cyclops, until he's rudely interrupted.

Okay, I don't care how poor you are, not having a lock on the family bathroom door is inexcusable. When I was a kid and had to "charge the inertial dampeners," I would not only lock the door, I'd jam a chair under the knob (the doorknob!) and create an early warning system outside the door with a tripwire.

We then get another montage, with the family preparing for TV night. Frank heads down to local watering hole The Alibi Room, where bartender and neighbor Kev is setting up for pay-per-view MMA. Frank steals a beer while Santa finishes up his post-Christmas bender.

Back at home, the family (including neighbor Veronica and hummer-er Karen) make a fast food run and then settle in to watch Deadliest Catch. Oh, I think I recognize this episode. It's the one where someone almost falls overboard and a captain is worried he won't meet his quota.

The family is entranced, but Steve looks bored. He was hoping for a Toddlers & Tiaras marathon.

Back at the bar, Frank is having a hard time seeing the TV screen, and asks the guy in front of him to move. Unfortunately, the guy turns out to be Karen's father, who caught her servicing Ian under the dining room table.

He head butts Frank, and then walks away, leaving Frank looking like he took third place at a pie-eating contest.

Franks staggers home, and when he walks through the door, Ian asks, "is that my shirt?" Frank says, "yes," and as Ian tries to back away, Frank head butts him in the face, saying, "the guy at the bar told me to pass this on!".

Nice line, but I was hoping for, "here's some pie ... for dessert!"

As the family starts freaking out, Steve gets up in Frank's face and starts screaming at for him being a lousy father. Frank fires back with, "you look like a pre-menstrual Filipino," which is one of the oddest insults I've heard in a while. I think next time I'm in a fight, I'll call someone a "menopausal Eskimo."

Steve leaves, as Fiona gives her dad the evil eye in the kitchen. Eventually he realizes that he screwed up and simply says, "Okay. Okay, okay, okay."

Upstairs, Ian and Lip share a joint (medicinal, though) and have this conversation, which sums up Lip's mindset about "the gay."

Lip: "You should have hit him back."

Ian: "If I ever do, I'll f**king kill him."

Lip: "So? Eight to ten for manslaughter, get laid as often as you want. Tattoos and everything. It's gay heaven, man."

Ian is dumbstruck by the profundity.

Frank rifles through his wardrobe, but can't find the right shirt to wear, so he simply turns his filthy, blood-encrusted shirt backwards. Hey, we've all been there.

He primps in front of the mirror, and then walks out the door, oblivious to the fact that Steve is in a car ... following him.

It's time for another montage as the morning comes, and we see Kev giving Santa his usual breakfast (beer with reindeer testicle), Debbie stealing newspaper coupons from front porches, and Victoria and Ian doing the classic, "I'll distract the dairy truck driver while you steal milk and butter."

As the family gathers around for breakfast, we get to the main story of tonight's episode.

Where the hell is Frank?

Fiona knows something is horribly amiss when she gathers the mail and realizes that Frank's disability check has come ... and Frank has not swooped in to claim it.

They search the house, but Frank is not in any of his usual places - passed out next to the toilet, passed out next to the bed, passed out behind the couch, passed out halfway up the porch steps. He's nowhere to be found.

Fiona heads over to Kev and Victoria's house, and finds Kev with his head stuck between bedposts.

Kev tells her that he saw Frank at the bar, but not for last call. The mystery deepens as the family calls friends, bars, and morgues looking for him, but no one has seen hide nor greasy hair of him.

On a side note, we finally learn what Veronica does for a living. Nude ironing online. It's not so far-fetched, one time I accidentally left my webcam on while I was naked and cleaning the grout in my bathroom. It was a huge hit.

Frightened, the family goes in search of Frank, but he's not in any of the dumpsters, ravines, or funeral home show caskets he's usually in. Kev mentions that he saw Frank with Steve, which oddly, Steve never mentioned. Hmm ...

Back at home, Debbie is hysterical because she heard they found a dead body nearby. Lip confronts Steve about seeing Frank the night before, but before Steve can explain himself, Kev bursts through the front door and informs them that the police did indeed find a dead body beneath the railroad tracks.

The family rushes over, and when they learn that it was not Frank, but another poor guy who died a horrible freezing death, they're ecstatic.

Frank is fine, of course, He wakes up, not knowing where he is, but sees various clues. He sees the above flag flapping in the northern wind, and a Mountie, and the biggest telltale sign - Corey Hart!

But how the hell did he end up in Canada?

Frank is carted off to jail, where he slings insults at the guard, saying that Canada is filled with a, "bunch of parka-wearing, draft-dodging, chicken sh*t cowards who didn't have the balls to stay home and fight the Viet Cong to preserve our American way of life." He must have Sarah Palin's speechwriter.

The family learns that Frank is alive and well, but stuck in Toronto because he doesn't have a passport. It can take anywhere from a week to months to receive one, so a plan is hatched for Kev (the only one of the group with a passport) to head north to help him out.

Meanwhile, Fiona finally put the pieces together (thanks to some Canadian cigarettes in the trash) and realizes it was Steve who dumped Frank up there. He admits to it, saying he did it because Frank "has a family he doesn't give a sh*t about." Fiona doesn't buy it, and offers Steve some leftover pie.

The plan comes into focus, which involves Steve driving to Canada and bringing Frank back over the border in a dilapidated motor home with a secret compartment, usually reserved for smuggling weed, illegal aliens, bootlegs of Luba and that hidden camera tape of Celine Dion sacrificing a goat.

Hot blond cop Tony drops by to ask Fiona to a banquet. I'm just awful. The only thing I can think of when I see him is, "please let him start dating Fiona so I can see him in a sex scene."

Frank comes home to the snarky cheers of the neighborhood (all waving miniature Canadian flags) and immediately starts packing his clothes. He's fed up with being disrespected in his own house, and is going to seek shelter elsewhere. Unfortunately, his friends (or friend's wives) have banned him from staying at their houses.

Lip decides to have a little fun goading his father, and follows him around on Frank's journey of despair (but Lip needs a vehicle, so first he steals a little kid's bike). In a scene that shows how pathetic Frank really is, Lip explains that Frank spends over $700 dollars a month at The Alibi, leaving Lip and the rest of the kids to come up with the money for rent, food, ... and everything else.

Instead of owning up to it, Frank blames Kev for spilling the beans, and vows to boycott his bar. Unfortunately, Lip points out that Frank is banned from every other bar around, a fact that Frank is not too happy to be reminded of.

Forced to concede, Frank ends up back at The Alibi, where's he's mercilessly teased for his Canadian trip. He runs into Karen's dad, who buys him a beer as a peace offering, and then tells him the sad story of his wife Sheila, who he's just left, and her battle with agoraphobia, which nets her hundreds of dollars a week in in welfare payments.

Before you can say "meal ticket," Frank is out the door, puts on his cleanest hair rubberband and scrounges up a bouquet of flowers to present to Sheila.

Steve knocks on the door looking for Fiona, but Lip lets him know in no uncertain terms that she doesn't want anything to do with him. They have an odd conversation about the likely percentage that he can win her back, and Lip tells him he will not do anything to help Steve get back in her good graces. Or back in anywhere.

Sheila invites Frank in, but is appalled at the sight of his big toe poking through his socks, and offers him a hot bath while she washes clothes. He accepts, and when she comes upstairs, does his best to seduce her.

By dropping his towel.

What follows is an unintentionally hilarious attempt to hide William Macy's parts with quick cuts, precise edits, and obstructions. Frankly, it calls more attention to itself than if he had actually gone full frontal.

It turns out that Sheila is something of a sex freak, as she handcuffs Frank to the bed, dons long black stocking gloves, and gears up for what looks like a dominatrix session.

In a scene I could have done without, Sheila drags out a giant white dildo and holds it up. We then cut to a view of outside the house as we hear Frank scream from inside, and then watch as he painfully limps down the steps into the living room. Seriously? That is some tired schtick.

And I adore Joan Cusack, but I feel they may have gone a bit too far trying to make her character "colorful." An agoraphobic dominatrix who's obsessed with TV cooking shows. That's more than colorful. That's a Crayola explosion.

The episode ends with Steve dropping by the house with a van load of flowers, but Fiona doesn't want anything to do with him, and tries to pay him for the washer he bought.

And we close with a shot of family TV time, and then Frank coming down for breakfast at Sheila's house, as Karen looks on, stunned.

Ian didn't have much to do except stand around and get head butted by his dad, but we did get another interesting scene between him and his brother.

Frankly, I'd rather the show stick with the grittiness of the Gallagher home life, and try to steer clear of eccentricity and forced humor.

So what did you think of the second episode?