The eighth season of Shameless kicked off on November 5 with one character being extra patriotic, and the show as a whole being more political. “We live in a world in which everybody is talking about what’s happening,” executive producer John Wells told Variety. “I have very liberal tendencies, but the one thing you can say about what is happening is it’s started a conversation. There is a conversation in America about ‘Who are we? Who do we want to be? How did we get so separate? Why are we not talking to each other?’ And we try and go right at it.”