Time To Get Critical About Representation in “Shameless”
A decade since it aired, Shameless (U.S.) has always stuck to its guns (and baseball bats) about character diversity.

A reporter, Nagako Kita, is fired for writing about police corruption. To make money, she hides while a weekly magazine publishes photos of her, and offers a prize to the person who discovers her. A group of three bank embezzlers, So Yamamura, Eiji Funakoshi, and Sotoji Mukui, employ Mukui's younger sister Fukiko as a fake employee at the bank and plan to make her disappear when the real woman appears again and blame the crime on her.
A decade since it aired, Shameless (U.S.) has always stuck to its guns (and baseball bats) about character diversity.
I write for a diversity-focused film review blog, so I’ll be honest: I really wanted to like Pretty Lethal. Starring Maddie Ziegler, Lana Condor, Iris Apatow, Avantika, and Millicent Simmonds, Amazon Prime’s new thriller seemed like it would be a girl power movie about dancers with a horror action twist. Sort of a Suspiria for teens. But with shallow and unlikeable characters, a confusing plot, an overreliance on violence, and cringey dialogue, any fun the movie started out with was quickly lost. What was left was a faint echo of greater horror movies about dancers made before.
2026 ranks highest in Oscars history for its representation of minorities in all categories, and that’s definitely something to be celebrated.
So with the recent (rightful) public apologies to Britney from comedians and media for trashing her image in the 2000s, perhaps some people should also give Crossroads the fair chance it deserves. It won't be everyone's cup of tea, and that is fine. Personally, I will take my girl Britney and her movie, over the next testosterone "Dude Flick" any day.
Remakes. Reboots. Reinventions. Redundancy. It's the common practice in Hollywood of late, sometimes offering us victorious reimagining of what can be considered cinematic classics while also, more often, falling flat on their UN-imaginative faces in utter defeat and lackluster results. Admittedly, with this in mind, I went into the newest incarnation of "The War of the Roses" with typical trepidation and cautious optimism.
Laggies is a fantastic movie, filled with down-to-earth characters, transcendent themes, and witty comedy