This Is Us (NBC) (1 Viewer)

[Mike Frezon]

We watched last night's show. Peg made the point that it's not a good sign when you are more interested in your sleeping dog than what's happening on the screen.

And it was true. The two of us were much more interested in our Golden Retriever puppy Pete (who wasn't doing much more than simply sleeping on his back) than anything that was going on with Jack in Vietnam, Jack and Rebecca's "getting-to-know-you" road trip, and Kevin's road trip to Vietnam. While it was a nice scene when Jack visited the parents of the dead soldier...it sure was a big lot of nothing. It was emotional...but for what purpose? I think we already get the fact that Jack is a deep-thinking emotional, loyal guy with a deep love of family.

For me, this is a case of a real sophomore slump. I'm putting this all on the writers. It's just...not...interesting. And it's plodding to boot.

 

[Jason_V]

I admit, I've been out of the country for the last two weeks and have three episodes sitting in the queue to watch. I'm going to catch up, likely over Thanksgiving.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Let's get cracking, Jason...SOMEONE needs to counterbalance all my negativity about the recent episodes of this show!

No one besides me has posted for the past three weeks! And this show is the darling of the TV world...or, at least I thought it was.

 

[Jason_V]

Let's get cracking, Jason...SOMEONE needs to counterbalance all my negativity about the recent episodes of this show!

No one besides me has posted for the past three weeks! And this show is the darling of the TV world...or, at least I thought it was.

I noticed that while I was gone. Five countries, eight cities and two weeks away has put me REALLY far behind in podcasts and TV.

 

[JQuintana]

I think the bubble has burst for this one.

 

[Matt Hough]

It's still NBC's highest rated show (other than football, of course), but the Vietnam storylines haven't done the show any favors this season. The road trip with Jack and Rebecca I found involving last night (and I wept during Jack's confrontation with those parents and in his reaction to Beck's song), but I didn't care for either Jack or Kevin's adventures in Vietnam. The whole Vietnam experience leaves a nasty taste in my mouth from remembrances of friends who went there and didn't come back or who came back somewhat off and definitely changed. As I expressed earlier, I missed having to go by <this much> so maybe it's guilt or shame or anger about the whole mess, but films and TV shows about Vietnam just don't sit well with me.

And to keep other storylines on the back burner is rather irritating, too. Toby's predicament is very emotional and involving and doesn't deserve to be secondary to some of this other stuff.

 

[ScottH]

I am only still really watching the show because it's probably the one last show my entire family watches, but I'm not sure I can stay with it much longer. No interest in Jack's Viet Nam past, or the early stages of Jack & Rebecca's relationship. Come to think of it I'm not all that interested in the kids-as-adults either. Perhaps the "jump the shark" phrase needs to be updated to "burned down by a slow cooker".

 

[DaveF]

We watched last night's show. Peg made the point that it's not a good sign when you are more interested in your sleeping dog than what's happening on the screen.

I watch This is Us for my wife, it’s really her show. We both thought the last episode (a week ago) was maybe the best this season. It was good character development and exploration.

I like that it’s exploring who Rebecca is (was) and why she fell in love with and married Jack. I’m interested in Jack’s broken relationship with his father and brother.

Kevin’s obsessive chase of his fathers past is Kevin. He’s been this way since S1. Plus we’re getting development of his relationship with Zoe (?).

Kate and Toby hits me hard. I understand depression and struggling to have kids. That story line is hard to watch.

Randall is my least favorite thread. I don’t like his choice to be the rich savior of this poor community. It’s just ooky and deeply arrogant of him. And I want to see his wife thrive.

As for “realism”, this is much the same as Parenthood, which often took dramatic detours far beyond what is realistic for most families. But TV mostly isn’t built on the mundane realties of scooping cat litter and paying the credit card bills.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

So either everyone here is way behind in the show or we keep forgetting to chime in and talk about it.

When my Ceton card got damaged in my last move, and I had to replace it with HDHomerun PRIME, I went from four recording slots to three. In the case of Tuesdays, three recording slots is one too few for me. I missed recording a couple episodes in a row, and then it became the show that got skipped when there were recording conflicts, because I was already behind.

Even if actors end up leaving this series and the characters we know go away, there are a world of secondary and tertiary characters who can take their places in various ways.

I think there are limits to this. If the storyline doesn't tie into the Pearsons in some way essential, the storyline quickly starts to feel nonessential to me. They only did Deja and Toby episodes once they were well established in the context of the Pearsons, and I think that was the right move.

(The entire Superman parallel with Nicky and Jack also feeds into the ongoing story. Everyone saw Jack was the person who could do no wrong, had no problems and could protect and fix anything. We now see this goes all the way back to his childhood. That's simultaneously a sad thing to see a kid be forced into while giving me hope there are people who will stand up and do what's right in the world.)

This is why the Vietnam episode worked for me. It filled in gaps that help us understand Jack better in the later storylines. Enlisting in the military as late into Vietnam as Jack did is not a normal behavior. Running into a burning house for a dog when you know you have a heart condition -- as Jack clearly knew -- is not a normal behavior. The show venerates Jack, but it is not blind to the negative consequences of Jack's martyr complex. His three kids were very screwed up, in differing ways, by his death, and that is partly because he presented himself as superhuman.

I was amazed that it was an all-Jack episode without even a glimmer of the other principals, and I look forward to the ongoing telling of this saga as Kevin goes through the search for information about his father's time in Vietnam. Any information about Jack before Rebecca is always illuminating.

Because we're following three primary timelines with the show, and Jack is now dead for two out of the three of them, he is less present in many of the episode, which leaves room for him to be especially present in the remaining episodes.

I would suspect there are many people who tune in to This Is Us expecting an intriguing family drama within this time-twisting premise who were put off by what amounted to a one-hour Vietnam-based story.

The thing about the Vietnam episode, for me, is that it was still very much telling a family drama story. The war was window dressing for Jack and his parents and his brother.

This also became my gripe towards the end of the run of Parenthood. I really loved the characters and I really enjoyed the interplay of all the family members. But the writers eventually stopped giving them anything interesting (and realistic) to do. I fear that is already starting to happen with This Is Us.

It's funny you mention that, because Randall's election storyline is really making me think of later seasons "Parenthood". I think this show is more self-aware than that show was toward the end, and even the more problematic storylines generate some interesting scenes for me.

But ever since William came into Randall's life, he's been hopping from one mission to the next. And this election is the one that finally lost me. I'm really not sure if we're supposed to be rooting for him here; he's a carpetbagger from the wealthy suburbs who doesn't live in the district, has no desire to live in the district, but is nevertheless intent on imposing his vision onto the neighborhood. Randall supposedly got into the race because he wanted to clean up the area around the community rec center. But when his fundraiser is a bust because the people of the community are actually happy with the incumbent councilman, and have pretty solid reasons to support him even with his shortcomings, Randall abandons the community and seeks out the Korean American community to swap in as a voting bloc. So now it's more about winning the race than it is about cleaning up the area around the community rec center.

And Randall recruiting Beth to work on the campaign felt very "TV": For one thing, they've got to be strapped for cash with neither of them working. For another, it robs Beth of her autonomy, and places her in service of Randall's vision.

On the other hand, I really liked Toby's depression subplot, especially because we got to see Kate step into the caregiver role that he traditionally covets.

And Kevin's storyline is keeping my interest. Zoe has never seriously dated a white guy before. But Kevin grew up with a black brother, and has a second-hand perspective on racism that most white people don't. Seeing whether that gaps are in that scenario, and the strategies they use to bridge them, is fascinating to me.

 

[Matt Hough]

This week's episode with multiple Thanksgivings I liked a lot. I still think Randall's campaign subplot is the most irksome and unnecessary, and I, too, wonder how they continue their lifestyle with neither of them working. But all the others were interesting and involving for me.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

After a run of episodes that were on the verge of losing me -- really a problem since the start of the season, to varying degrees -- "Sometimes" was a strong candidate for the best episode that the series has done.

While it was a nice scene when Jack visited the parents of the dead soldier...it sure was a big lot of nothing. It was emotional...but for what purpose? I think we already get the fact that Jack is a deep-thinking emotional, loyal guy with a deep love of family.

I couldn't disagree more. This episode was about trauma. More strongly than any episode so far this season, the three storylines -- Jack in Vietnam in the late sixties or early seventies, Jack and Rebecca on the road trip in the mid-seventies, and Kevin with Zoe in Vietnam in present day -- were thematically tied together, each reverberating with the others.

Jack may not see himself as Superman, but he carries the weight of that responsibility with him at all times. His home life growing up was fractured, something turned his father miserable and abusive, and he internalized a sense that it was his responsibility to keep the family afloat. That driving force brought him to Vietnam, it explains his feelings for the men who served under him, and it explains what made him so adored by his family and friends, and what made him take the actions that led to his death.

When Jack visited the parents of the dead soldier, his trauma was still fresh. He was suffering from pretty acute PTSD, as evidenced by the night terrors and his reaction to the champagne bottle popping, he'd lost his brother under circumstances not yet revealed to us, and he was carrying the death of this young soldier with him. He saw visiting the parents of that soldier as his responsibility, but the purpose in the episode was to show Jack grappling with his trauma -- not only the trauma of Vietnam, but the trauma of his childhood. The parents of the fallen soldier absolving him of their son's death was one of the most emotional scenes I've experienced in some time, because it spoke to a lot more than this one specific incident. And in a world that is so often bleak and cold and unforgiving, it was an act of extraordinary generosity and empathy on the part of these two strangers: To see Jack not as the guy in charge when their son got killed, but as a young man very much like their late son, a man caught up in forces much larger than himself, and bearing the scars of the experiences that were shaped by those forces.

The key to this episode is the bathroom scene at the end of the present day storyline. All hour we've been weaving between Jack and Rebecca's trip and Kevin and Zoe's trip, and Jack was emotionally closed off in the past and Zoe is emotionally closed off in the present. And it was interesting to see how both Rebecca and Kevin navigated that.

Beth had warned Kevin that Zoe's past was complicated, and tonight we start to get an understanding of why. The journey Kevin and Zoe go on in this episode had to be told at this specific moment in this specific context. Until Kevin went through rehab, he wouldn't have had the emotional vocabulary to have these conversations. Before this journey to learn about his father, he wouldn't have understood the consequences of Zoe's emotional barriers. And when Zoe finally does open up, it's clear that she's not repeating the cycle that Beth has seen many, many times from her: She won't talk about her father because he sexually abused her as a child. Much like Jack, she wanted to leave that in the past, didn't want it to infect the good parts of her life. I loved her explanation for why she was telling Kevin now -- because her father's abuse had ruined too many things in her life, and she didn't wasn't going to allow it to ruin this, too -- and I loved her response when Kevin, surprised and shaken, tells her that he had no idea because she always seemed so strong: "I am strong."

That's Jack too. He has suffered great trauma, and the scars of that carry through with him the rest of his life. But that trauma doesn't make him weak: his perseverance in the face of that trauma, his unwillingness to allow that trauma to make him bitter or cruel, are representative of incredible strength.

In what may be my very favorite scene of the series so far, Rebecca and Jack are sitting in their car, parked in front of the record label. Rebecca's aspirations for stardom have just been seriously crushed. Jack had just taken care of something that he'd been dreading, that brought devastating things back up close to the surface. He asks her to sing him the song from her demo, that was only "Pittsburgh good". The song resonates with the things that are swimming around in his head, the things that he'd locked down after coming back from the war. And Jack, who had recently told Rebecca that he never cries, starts weeping. Rebecca sees this, is surprised and shaken by it, but quickly understands that Jack needs this catharsis, needs to get this feelings out. So even though she knows none of the details of what's making him weep, keeps singing.

For me, this show is never stronger than when it's about people affecting people. And "Sometimes" did that in spades.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

This week's episode with multiple Thanksgivings I liked a lot.

I didn't like it as much as the previous episode, because the literal connection -- various Thanksgivings throughout the timeline -- was less powerful to me than the thematic connection of the previous episode.

One real missed opportunity: I thought the flashbacks to William and Jessie becoming a couple were going to lead to Jessie being invited to this year's Pearson Thanksgiving.

I still think Randall's campaign subplot is the most irksome and unnecessary, and I, too, wonder how they continue their lifestyle with neither of them working.

Yeah, I didn't miss it in the prior episode, and I didn't love its return this week. The one saving grace for me was the cutaways to Deja, where she was serving extra food, because she remembered being on the other side of a food pantry Thanksgiving. Annie was chastising her for not following directions, but Deja gently told her that she didn't understand -- and she didn't.

I appreciated the contrast between Miguel's continued estrangement with his kids, and Deja deciding -- despite everything -- to reach out to her mom and wish her a happy Thanksgiving.

But all the others were interesting and involving for me.

I continue to be captivated by the Vietnam scenes. I especially appreciate the effort put into establishing a sense of place. A lot of the present day stuff with Kevin and Zoe was actually shot in Vietnam, while most of the flashbacks with Jack were shot north of Los Angeles at a massive outdoor set. Tim O'Brien -- a Vietnam vet who wrote The Things They Carried, arguably the most widely read and influential novel/collection of stories about the Vietnam War -- wrote the Vietnam-centric episode a few episodes ago, and was a consultant for the show figuring that storyline out.

Clearly Jack's brother is headed for a bad end, since he never makes it home from the war. But Jack doesn't carry the same sense of responsibility for Nick's death that he did for the soldier under his command, since that was the one that haunted him the most. I'm fascinated to see where that ends up.

I liked that the necklace that was so important to Jack and has become so important to Kevin is a mass produced trinket that would have been within the means of a young mother in a rural village. And I liked that it was important not as a memento of some great in-country romance predating Rebecca, but a cherished gift given in appreciation of him being kind when he didn't have to be, and when the circumstances would have argued against it.

Tess's little subplot with her first period and then confession that followed was also revealing. As Deja, Lyric Ross conveys a deep well of emotion underneath still waters. As Tess, Eris Baker has the opposite gift: Tess is an open book, and you can see everything she's thinking and feeling on her face. Kevin has a very close relationship with his two nieces, and there is a level of familiarity there that is not present with Kate. And in a way, I think that lack of closeness makes what transpires in this episode easier. Tess knows that Kate and Toby are going to be flying back to the West Coast as soon as Thanksgiving's over. There isn't the prospect of constantly running into them and being embarrassed all over again. Likewise, Kate is a less daunting person to come out to because she's family but there isn't that really deep level of emotional investment that she has with the people she sees all of the time. This emerging sense that she likes girls and not boys is probably pretty new to Tess, and pretty scary, and telling Kate makes it real in a way that it maybe hadn't been up until that point. But she still knows that Kate's going back to LA, and then Tess is back in control of that particular piece of information. I don't think she's necessarily fearful that she'll face rejection from her parents, because nothing we've seen from Randall and Beth would provide a basis for such fears, but I do think she's afraid of being seen differently and I don't know that she's ready to be seen differently yet. There's a part of her that just wants to be their sweet, innocent little girl a while longer and not a young woman with any sort of sexuality.

Rebecca is the circa-Season 1 Miguel of Miguel's family, but she handles it with more acceptance and grace than he did -- probably because she had her own largely wonderful family to fall back on. Miguel's son takes potshots at Rebecca the whole meal the way Kevin used to get in little digs at Miguel. And the interesting thing is that when Miguel makes his big speech defending Rebecca, his daughter reaches out and takes his hand, the first bit of human connection the entire meal. One gets the sense that Miguel never really opened up much emotionally to his children, well into their adulthoods, and this might be the first time his daughter got a real sense of how much he wanted to be in their lives, and how much their rejection hurt him. So even though it's a meal that left a lot of things unresolved, there was at least that glimmer of hope.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I loved Tess's coming out scene. Man, Eris Baker killed it. That exhale of: This thing that I've been dreading isn't so bad after all. Beth and Randall were a perfect unit in that moment. It was real, it wasn't preachy, it ached with adolescent uncertainty. Definitely made me tear up.

Randall's political race storyline zigged when I thought it would zag in a really beautiful way: he wins the crowd over with a rousing speech, he's articulate, he's sincere, he gets the standing ovation. And then, after it's over, his campaign manager lets him know that any bump from the debate won't be enough. He's cooked. He's lost.

Solomon Brown is an entrenched incumbent with deep ties to his community, and an extensive political operation. Randall losing is the realistic outcome. But it opens up a rift with Beth: At the beginning, he told her that she could pull the rip cord at any time. But when she does, he's not ready to let the campaign go. He has been a gifted individual since he was a little boy, who excelled at pretty much everything he set his mind to. Because of this, he has been indulged for pretty much his entire life. That trait has been exacerbated since William came into the picture, and reopened some very old wounds. Beth has been extremely supportive through all of it. She'd been promised a veto, she'd earned a veto, but Randall is used to being indulged, and his sense of self requires him to back up the promises he's made to this community.

I just hope the resolution to this story is that he can't keep hopping from whim to whim to whim. My fear is that he will somehow pull off some miraculous victory. He needs to lose, realize he was wrong, and make amends with his wife. Maybe in the process forcing Solomon Brown to not take his constituents so for granted.

Kate and Toby's pregnancy subplot is just kind of there for me at the moment. Either they'll be successful in having a baby, or they won't.

The reveal about Nicky was a pretty huge one.

 

[Mike Frezon]

The stuff with Tess is gold. I was actually angry along with Tess when Rebecca started opening her mouth to Tess about it. And I'm thinking if I'm Tess I wouldn't be talking to Kate again for a VERY long time. That's how well-played all that stuff is. It drew me right in.

The Randall campaign plot is just stupid. I'm probably way too close to that kind of material for it to work well for me. But I LOVED the interaction between Randall and Beth about it. When we saw her walking away from the couch after placing the pillow and blankets next to it, I laughed out loud.

He needs to lose, realize he was wrong, and make amends with his wife.

If Randall is smart (and we know he is) he'll make amends to Beth BEFORE election day.

The Vietnam stuff continues to bore me. As for the Nicky reveal, I felt manipulated (and not in a good way, like the pilot) and to have the voice over announcer later intone that the Pearson's are the family that keeps surprising you (or something to that effect) made me wonder if that was now going to be the new goal of the show. I hope not. There's way too much other good stuff to mine. When the writer's find it, it's so good. But when they don't...(I keep thinking about the rollercoaster ride that was Parenthood).

 

[Malcolm R]

And this show is the darling of the TV world...or, at least I thought it was.

I think it's the darling of the entertainment press. EW seems particularly obsessed with the show lately. But I don't know anyone in my circle who actually watches it. I gave up on it halfway through season one and never looked back.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

If Randall is smart (and we know he is) he'll make amends to Beth BEFORE election day.

Agreed!

I think sometimes about how poorly conceived the character of Jasmine was on "Parenthood" is, and how "This Is Us" manages to avoid falling into those traps with Beth. Beth is allowed to be flawed and human, and she isn't nearly as smug or controlling or condescending. So when the show asks us to be in her corner, it's not nearly as big of an ask as when Jasmine gave Crosby ultimatums.

Even Kate and Toby; when Toby was struggling, Kate stepped up. There is a give and take in these relationships that I see in all of the successful relationships I see in real life but too seldom see in TV relationships.

As for the Nicky reveal, I felt manipulated (and not in a good way, like the pilot) and to have the voice over announcer later intone that the Pearson's are the family that keeps surprising you (or something to that effect) made me wonder if that was now going to be the new goal of the show. I hope not.

Me too. I think the show actually played fair with the Nicky reveal, because Jack hardly ever talked about his life before Rebecca, and his experience in Vietnam in particular. It could be that Nicky faked his death and went AWOL, or it could be that the brothers had a fallout so severe that Jack no longer wanted anything to do with him. I'm fine with either.

But the show should never be about solving the jigsaw puzzle. If the mechanics of the nonlinear storytelling ever overtake the emotional journeys of the nonlinear storytelling, the show as a whole will suffer. They skirted that line with the mystery surrounding Jack's death, and delayed providing answers about as long as they could without abusing the audience's investment. I would guess that very few people watch the show to be shocked by unexpected reveals. If the characters are honestly written and resonantly observed, the show doesn't need gimmicks to keep my attention.

 

[Mike Frezon]

If the characters are honestly written and resonantly observed, the show doesn't need gimmicks to keep my attention.

Yet, sadly, the clear majority of television shows never figure that out.

 

[Matt Hough]

I really liked the episode very much, especially all the scenes with Tess.

Hard for me to believe that anyone in this day and time would think you could get a license to teach school without a college degree. Even when teachers are so desperately needed nationwide, I think the basic minimum is a college degree (and if you don't have education credentials, you can start to get those after you're hired). Back when I first started (and that was the early 1970s), I think maybe vocational courses like auto mechanics and agriculture teachers didn't have to have degrees, but everyone else did.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Phylicia Rashad cast as Beth's Mother

 

[Matt Hough]

I really loved Toby and Kate's subplot this week. They should make great. loving parents.