JQuillon I see your points.
By the way, I wonder what Crystal's reaction would be if she found out that Frank was involved with his ex's daughters. We know from a flashback that she wasn't on good terms with Shannon and might be even less so after Shannon's affair (“You had the same expression after that nutjob dumped you”) and that she also seemed to have a good relationship with Jess (Crystal was actively trying to get Jess and Frank together at the campfire, when that didn't work she said “Frank, I love you, but you are a moron. .”, and at the campfire when the three of them are sitting together Jess says that she's sitting with her best friends) and so I think she would find it funny. Since she and Jess got along well, and she has no positive feelings for Shannon, I also think she will have had a serious talk with Frank after he got back together with Shannon. I think she was also concerned about her niece and daughter of a good friend (aka Abby). Obviously because of Shannon, but also because she wouldn't have known how Becca and Lilly tick. I think she may have met the girls at some point before the wedding, simply to reassure herself, as she was already a mother at the time and the maternal instinct is not so easy to switch off.
The fact that Abby quickly built up a good relationship with the other two girls and that Becca, unlike her mother, was quiet and introverted must have been reassuring for her. But I think she will also have talked to Frank about Lilly and her problems. Who knows, maybe she also gave Frank a few tips about Lilly.
Come to think of it, I have to say that Crystal was probably one of the few people who didn't take any shit from Shannon. The other two obviously Jess and Abby.
I'm also very pleasantly surprised that seemingly everyone in the family (I'm unsure about his father, as we don't hear much from Frank's father other than “We moved when my dad got a promotion and moving was inevitable”) was so supportive of Jess. We do know that Crystal was an active Frank+Jess supporter and I now believe that everyone in his family more or less shipped the two. That would also explain his mother's reaction (“Finally!”) when Jess informed her that Frank had finally proposed.
In general, when it comes to Shannon, I can't help but notice that pretty much the only person who calls Frank by his real name “Francis” is Shannon. You could say that this might be because Shannon was brought up strictly by her mother, but at least I think I recognize a certain pattern:
Jess called him Frankie. I think the only times she called him something else were when they introduced themselves (here she called him Frank and then Frankie when she started teasing him in a friendly, playful way) and I think after Frank showed her the engagement ring and she explained what he had just earned.
Shannon called him Francis pretty much from the point she knew his name. There may have been exceptions, but the fact that her face looked so much like her 39 year old face when she was about 16, combined with her hair style at the time, which didn't suit her at all, disturbs me so much that I'm not going to look into it any further.
Abby usually calls him Dad or Daddy, except for the brief period when she was unsure what to call Frank.
Becca only secretly called him Dad for a long time, in front of others Frank. She does say that Lilly was her primary reason for this, but I think another massive factor was Shannon, who very likely would have read into it that Becca was on Frank's side and therefore would have seen a threat to her power role.
Apart from that, pretty much everyone who calls him by his first name really only calls him Frank, including Lilly, who wasn't particularly enthusiastic about Frank most of the time, and Crystal, his sister.
So if we put Abby and Becca in the father-daughter dynamic bucket, regardless of any legal or potential blood relationship factors, that leaves Shannon and Jess.
With Jess, it's more, in my estimation, playful, friendly. Maybe a little flirty, who knows. With Shannon, I get the impression that it's a little bit top-down. The only people I would actively see calling Frank “Francis” would either be his parents, grandparents or people in authoritarian roles, people who would be above Frank in familial or social hierarchies. It may be far-fetched, but if we look at Shannon's further development, I can certainly imagine that she has always seen herself above Frank, even if she wasn't actively aware of it at the time.
Maviarab
Thanks, I'm unsure how much of this is due to my language tool. But it's pretty obvious that how Becca and Shannon exert their dominance and with what motivation is fundamentally different. Shannon is a tyrant through and through. With Becca, it's more loving strictness with nudges in the right direction, usually in the direction of Frank. Although I can totally see that if someone were to cross her loved ones, she could destroy them so badly that even Shannon would be afraid of Becca.
