I'm not arguing with people who don't like Shannon but I still find her endlessly intriguing. What I have been ruminating about lately is the fan theory that Shannon had Becca with her father or another male family member. It makes me curious what kind of trauma is awaiting her when she discovers that Frank has had sex with both of her daughters. Especially if Becca is pregnant, as has already been hinted at.
They say that history repeats first as tragedy and then as farce. Aristotle said that the primary differentiation between comedy and tragedy is how we feel about the character. If your beloved saint of a grandma slips on a banana peel and breaks her hip it is a tragedy, but the same thing happens to the asshole grandpa that used to tell you to get a haircut and a real job when you were 12 that shit is hilarious. It is all a matter of perspective and how we define a character as either virtuous or vicious.
So how we feel about this comedic reenacting of a Greek tragedy depends greatly upon how we feel about Shannon, because even though Frank is clearly positioned as the protagonist we are meant to be identifying with he isn't the one that made the tragic mistake initially. The moment of hubris that set the story into motion belonged to Shannon, and yet we are encouraged to see it rather as something done to Francis instead of a self-inflicted injury to herself. So far we have been positioned to feel that she is completely without virtue. So we feel superior to her and unmoved by her plight. So when the wheel of fortune inevitably crushes her, as it will eventually crush all of us, we can feel smug about it.
Maybe these are just some more of the thoughts that kept me out of the really good schools, but I continue to wonder if this unusual absence of Shannon from the narrative will pay dividends. Eventually.