This Is Us (NBC) (1 Viewer)

[Mike Frezon]

I can't believe they had THAT outcome for Randall in his subplot. AND...they really wishy-washeyed out of that entire argument situation between Randall and Beth.

 

[Matt Hough]

I can't believe they had THAT outcome for Randall in his subplot. AND...they really wishy-washeyed out of that entire argument situation between Randall and Beth.

And Zoe and Kevin, too! I found both of those subplots unsatisfying which was why I was so delighted with Toby/Kate.

 

[Mike Frezon]

Right! Both of those two storylines were wishy-washy and, frankly, ill conceived.

Zoe/Kevin: We're together. No, we're apart. No, we're together. Yawn.

Randall/Beth: Don't run. I'm running. Oh, you were right. I won't run. No, you gotta finish what you started. Yawn.

And, frankly, to introduce the "John Stamos thing" at the beginning of the episode (only to reveal it a few minutes later in a short jump back in time) was unnecessarily confusing.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

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

This whole episode was about navigating conflicts, and I really loved how they both handled that one. Kate tried really hard to undo her honest mistake, but couldn't. And Toby saw that effort she made and appreciated it. So when she got replacements for his actions figures, he got a replacement for the stadium that Jack had built for her. In the early going, their relationship was really unbalanced, but over the course of the series it's balanced out considerably.

I can't believe they had THAT outcome for Randall in his subplot.

That was the crucial flaw in the episode for me. It felt like the hand of the writers at work, which this show usually does a fairly decent job avoiding.

And it really lays out a treacherous road for Randall's quarter of the story going forward, because politics isn't a career you're able to clock out of at 5 PM every day. It's going to play a major role in Randall's story going forward, in a way that being a commodities trader didn't.

It also raises the specter of two things that could be the death of this show: being partisan, or being topical. The former -- no matter what the ideological stances taken -- alienates a large section of the audience. The latter takes a show that strives to be timeless in its impact and in its themes and inserts elements that are going to feel dated a decade from now.

AND...they really wishy-washeyed out of that entire argument situation between Randall and Beth.

I liked that Randall fully capitulated on New Year's Eve, with a few weeks left before the election. But if they had to get Beth back on board, I wish it had taken longer and been triggered by something bigger.

I'm also really confused by the timeline of this story, since city elections in Philly -- like most elections -- are held on Election Day in November. I get that they wanted the gap bridged by this episode to mirror the period of time that the show was on hiatus, but it really interfered with my suspension of disbelief. They could have adjusted the timeline to set this episode in early November without changing anything else about the story told and it would have played better for me.

Zoe/Kevin: We're together. No, we're apart. No, we're together. Yawn.

For me, that subplot worked. I understood why Kevin freaked when he learned about the cold way that Zoe had dumped the congressman. And I understood why the prospect of sharing living space with a man without somewhere to escape to was such a daunting prospect for Zoe, given what had happened with the last man she'd shared a roof with.

The tension in their story was whether they'd be able to communicate through their differences. One key difference between Kevin and the congressman is that Zoe had shared with him the abuse she had experienced as a child. Even though Zoe and Kevin have been together a much shorter time than Zoe and the congressman, she had already let Kevin in much closer than the congressman.

And I really loved Kevin for how he reacted when Zoe broke things off with him. He didn't get angry, he didn't make a scene, he didn't make the night about him. He was there for his brother, and then once he wasn't needed anymore, he slipped out quietly to deal with his feelings on his own.

And when Zoe chased after him in the street, he didn't blow up at her or shut her down. He stood there and he listened. And he was kind and empathetic even when he still thought they were done. That speaks to Kevin's growth over the course of the series, and it was a moment of incredible vulnerability for Zoe, who never likes to be seen as vulnerable.

And, frankly, to introduce the "John Stamos thing" at the beginning of the episode (only to reveal it a few minutes later in a short jump back in time) was unnecessarily confusing.

I know nonlinear storytelling is this show's whole jam, and it normally works really well for me. But I've always hated the episode structure where the cold open is set during the climax of the story and then we jump back in time to fill in the blanks up until that point. It's always felt gimmicky to me, and it never felt like it added anything. They could have told this story linearly, and it would have been as effective or more effective.

 

[Mike Frezon]

I totally had to suspend anything I know about politics for the Randall storyline. But I really did get hung up on the fact that a major election was being held in the winter. Nowhere does that. It might have been a special election (to fill a vacated seat), but they had Randall running against a 15-year incumbent, so that didn't work.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I totally had to suspend anything I know about politics for the Randall storyline. But I really did get hung up on the fact that a major election was being held in the winter. Nowhere does that. It might have been a special election (to fill a vacated seat), but they had Randall running against a 15-year incumbent, so that didn't work.

Exactly.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Last night's episode might have been my favorite of the season. It took these two big sprawling epic storylines this season -- Jack in Vietnam, and Kevin in Vietnam -- and brought them to a crescendo that played in deeply intimate, deeply personal terms.

Sometimes the non-linear storytelling on this show can feel gimmicky, but the geographic parallels between Jack in 1992 and the Big Three in 2019 felt essential to me. They tied the storylines together, and echoed off each other in ways that amplified both stories. One particular striking note: Rebecca standing in the doorway as Jack drove off to see Nicky for the first time in a couple decades, and Rebecca standing in the doorway as the Big Three drove off to find Nicky. She had the same expression on her face: these people that I love are going off to face something potentially quite painful, and I can't do anything to help them. I don't think she knew that Nicky was alive, but I also don't think she believed Jack's cover story for his excursion.

The scenes with Nicky in Vietnam had an unexpected current to them: On one hand, all of Nicky's scenes with the little boy are drenched with foreboding, because we know something truly horrible must have happened for Jack to be so estranged from the brother he went into war to save. We also know that this young man has all sorts of things floating around in his system, and there's a dark angry side to him that seems poised to embark on a My Lai Massacre. So when the whole awful scene does play out, and Nicky gets that little boy killed, it's horrific but it's also cathartic: it wasn't willful murder, it was an honest accident -- fueled by extremely poor choices and enabled by pharmaceutical impairment that clouded his thinking and severely impacted his reaction time.

I always watch a little more intently when the show explores Jack's flaws. He is such a good man, such a great husband and wonderful father, that it's exciting and humanizing to explore that the handful of areas where Jack falls short. One of those areas is Jack's ability to process what happened in Vietnam. Nicky desperately needed Jack to know that the little boy's death was an accident, but Jack just couldn't handle talking about that day. Because his trauma and his brother were so intertwined with each other, he couldn't let Nicky back in because that would mean grappling with his trauma in a way that he simply wasn't prepared to. He wanted to; he judged himself for not doing it; but he couldn't.

But he was such a good father that he saw this weakness in himself and tried to teach his children to do better. The set-up with that convenience store, and the road sign pointing to Nicky's trailer one way and Pittsburgh the other way is the opposite of subtle. It's writerly and simplistic in a way that the show usually avoids. But it works, because of the many layers of storytelling that led up to that point. When Kevin opts to turn left where his father turned right, it's Jack ultimately doing right by his brother because he raised his children to do the right thing.

In terms of casting for multiple ages, they again hit it out of the park. You've got Michael Angarano in Vietnam and you've got Griffin Dunne in 2019, and in the 1992 scenes you've got Angarano aged and made up to be halfway between Vietnam Nicky and Dunne's middle-aged man Nicky.

 

[Matt Hough]

Wonderful analysis, Adam, and I agree with all of it. I was particularly impressed with how completely believable it is to think that Michael Angarano aged into Griffin Dunne.

 

[DaveF]

I’m disappointed that the election story was really about Randall winning. As discussed earlier, I didn’t understand if I was supposed to be cheering him on. He’s a carpetbagger. He’s a rich hero to the poor. He never goes to church...but now he shows up as a regular at the community church to elicit votes. It’s gross. It’s the worst of politics. I hate it. But, in the context of This is Us, I think I’m supposed to think he’s a good guy doing s good thing and root for his campaign?

I’m glad to have a conclusion to the Nicky story that was fully earned. It was more and worse and not what I expected. In the context of the show, it fit and made narrative and emotional sense. Very well done.

I am struggling with This is Us, though, this season. It’s my wife’s show now. I feel emotionally seared by it. It’s become too much, the emotional stakes are at eleven every episode. I enjoy the characters and their stories. But its non-stop emotional manipulation has worn me out.

 

[Jason_V]

Part of me thinks watching multiple episodes at a time is the best way to watch This Is Us. Going week to week, with hiatus in the middle, loses the power and through line for me. The election story still doesn't make a ton of sense and Beth was punted to the side after she said her piece. She should have been furious at Randall and that fury should have manifested in a number of ways. They didn't, sadly.

I'm more engaged with Vietnam. The first big thing Vietnam did was show is graphic detail that Jack is not the perfect superhero we all thing he is. Sure, we knew that already in things I think a lot of us are willing to forgive (like the drinking). But he ignored Nicky despite Nicky repeatedly asking for help over the years. Jack cut him off which had to be devastating to both of them. For Nicky, Jack is his brother...and Superman. Superman helps everyone. For Jack, he likes to swoop in and save people. He couldn't save Nicky. So instead of admitting that and loving him anyway, he pretended he didn't have a brother.

The moment Jack lied to Rebecca I was yelling at the TV. This isn't something Jack does. But then his conscience got to him, partly, and he fessed up when he returned home. For "today" Rebecca to know Jack has a brother she never really knew has to crush her; it's a lie, an omission, a cover up. For the kids, that revelation has to be devastating as well.

The second thing Vietnam did for me was move Kevin into a different kind of character. We've known him to be the free spirit of the group, but not here. He wanted to uncover the truth about Jack, never stopping until he did. Kevin was the driving force behind the road trip (even if Kate showing up was unbelievable). He even said at the end he couldn't leave Nicky behind. What does that mean? That he won't give up on his uncle like Jack did? That he is trying to be the same kind of man they all have in their memory? If that's it, he's in for an epic fail because he's human.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Carl Lumbly cast as Beth's father

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

I didn't care for Part 2 nearly as much as Part 1. This episode felt more disjointed, and the intercutting between past and present didn't have nearly the same resonance.

The subplot with Randall and Kate visiting the home in Pittsburgh that was built where their childhood home once stood was just weird. We're dropped into this family argument with characters we've never met before that doesn't have any payoff later in the episode. And when Randall and Kate are welcomed inside by the family, they have this weird debate about the reliability of memory like the family who owns the house isn't standing right there, waiting to either show them around or escort them back outside.

Kevin falling off the wagon after being frustrated by his uncle is believable, but the execution was weird. If that moment had played out in sequence, and then we saw how ably he covered in later scenes, it probably would have been more effective.

The best part of the episode for me was Rebecca and Nicky's conversations. He's a very broken, very damaged shell of a man. The Big Three came to see if he was still alive, and then fix him. But his problems are too big to be fixed, certainly not without a long time and a lot of hard work. Instead, he was able to give her something: a tiny new sliver of her beloved late husband, who she knew so well in some ways but remained such a mystery in other ways.

 

[Matt Hough]

I agree mostly, Adam, though I didn't like Kevin falling off the wagon; it seemed very much like manufactured drama to give us something else to worry about with him (though I know sobriety is a lifelong process for addicts, and the actor's comments afterward suggested Kevin is now on a downward spiral for the remainder of the season which literally makes me not want to watch any more this season).

And the Kate/Randall disagreement didn't make any sense to me, especially after we were shown what actually happened with the father losing his temper and then coming in to play with them in wild and woolly fashion. My memory of the event would have been the WHOLE THING, not splintered in some (again) manufactured way to let each sibling have a different piece of memory. That was TOO memorable not to remember everything about it.

 

[Mike Frezon]

The episode stank.

I can't warm up to the character of Nicky.

The entire discussion between Randall and Kate about an incident which didn't even take place in the original building. At one point, Randall admits he can't even figure out where he is in relation to the old house yet a few seconds later is pointing out where this was and that was. it's like the first set of writers lost their way and a 2nd set was brought in who did a half-ass job trying to fix things. The rest of it made no sense either (as noted by Adam and Matt above). Even Kate and Randall excusing themselves from the situation with Nicky and Kevin seemed really forced and manufactured.

Kevin falling off the wagon just elicited a groan from me...as it felt like an afterschool special. Forced drama. Yawn. There's just not much interesting about it that hasn't been done a jillion times before. That doesn't make it wrong to do (on the part of the writers) but it sure doesn't seem like it's doing much for Kevin's story except continuing the family legacy, I guess.

"Tongue-and-groove, Nicky."

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

It's always a risk when a show ventures off and builds an episode around a supporting character, but in the case of "This Is Us" it usually pays off in spades. That is certainly true of this episode, which uses the occasion of Beth returning home to check in on her injured mother to explore her backstory.

You could take the teleplay by Eboni Freeman for tonight's episode and perform it on stage. Even without the larger context of the show, and Beth's journey with Randall and their daughter, the episode gives you everything you need to know about this particular facet of Beth's life. The specificity of the dialogue and the staging of scenes was exquisite, while hardly drawing at all from the bag of tricks that television usually relies on. Probably 90 percent or more of the episode takes place in a few rooms of Beth's childhood home and a couple rooms of the dance studio.

"This Is Us" is Freeman's first staff writing gig. She was a trained ballet dancer growing up, and interned at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy. She studied sports management and communications in college, and spent eight years as a producer at Fox Sports. One of the strengths of "This Is Us" is that it hires very different writers from very different backgrounds, and then encourages them to weave aspects of their lives into the lives of these characters. I don't know which bits of Beth's story tonight are drawn from her life, and which bits were invented to serve the needs of the story. I just know it all -- with one exception -- felt completely real and true.

This show has some of the most remarkable casting on television. There really aren't weak links. But the casting of Phylicia Rashad and Carl Lumbly as Beth's parents was a reminder of just how good acting for television can get. This show has shown us many different models for relationships, with varying degrees of success. The relationship between Beth's parents is as perfect in its way as the one that Jack and Rebecca shared, but completely different.

Rashad plays Beth's mother Carol as a stern matriarch. Carol cares deeply about her students, and even more deeply about her children. But she also knows how unforgiving a place the world is, and how little margin for error there is. For her, discipline is a lifesaving necessity.

It would be easy to assume, then, that Beth's father was a doormat, that Carol ruled the roost uncontested. That assumption would be wrong. Carl Lumbly plays Beth's father Abe with lightness and joy. It is not naive lightness, or simple lightness. It is the determined lightness of a man who has experienced many hardships, and refuses to let his world or the world of those he loves be defined by those hardships. Carol and Abe have a true partnership; Abe never undermines Carol, but he does nudge her away from pure pragmatism.

Beth had a pretty great childhood, and a big part of that was that Abe and Carol balanced each other out. It is a tragedy whenever a child loses a parent as young as Beth was when she lost her father. But it wasn't just having to deal with the horrible fact of his being gone. Without his joy and his kindness and his optimism, the household became unbalanced. Carol set Beth on a very smart, very successful path. She made sure her daughter had the tools she needed to thrive in the world. Odds are that Beth never would have made it to the pinnacle of the elite level of professional ballet, and the Carol's decision saved her much disappointment. But Abe would have understood the value in Beth continuing to try, even if she ultimately came up short.

The casting of younger actors continues to be on point. In Akira Akbar they found a young girl with a ballet background who deliver what the episode required. But in Rachel Hilson they found a teen Beth who looks exactly like the middle photo in a morph between Akbar and Susan Kelechi Watson. The only thing I'd seen Hilson in before was "The Good Wife", where she played Nisa, the friend/girlfriend of the title character's son. She was perfectly solid in that role, but never really stood out. Here she delivered such a rich internal performance as teen Beth, where you see glimmers of the little girl Beth used to be, and glimmers of the adult Beth she'd one day become. Teen Beth actually has very little dialogue, but Hilson's performance tells you everything you need to know.

I also really appreciated the characterization of Beth's ballet instructor, played by Goran Višnjić ("E.R."). Usually those characters are opportunistic and/or adversarial. But this teacher was honest about the odds without being defeatist, a strong advocate for Beth's dream, someone who never saddled Beth with the preconceptions and biases that are so deeply ingrained in ballet, and was willing to go the extra mile for Beth when Beth made it clear that she was willing to go the extra mile. It would have been easy to make him a reason for her to quit. But it feels richer and truer to have a teacher who did everything right, but sometimes that's not enough to overcome outside forces and the realities of a brutally competitive endeavor.

At first, I was a bit put off by dance being such a huge part of Beth's backstory with so little buildup or foreshadowing. With the exception of the flash forward to her teaching a dance class, I don't know that it's ever been mentioned that Beth was a dancer. But the truth of a matter is that a lot of us have passions that we put away for one reason or another, and then haven't thought about much since unless something happened to give us a reason to. Beth redirected her energies to college. She found interior design, which fulfilled her in different ways from dance. She met Randall and started a family with him. She moved on with her life, and it was a happy life, so she didn't have much reason to dwell on the past.

I loved conversation between Beth and her mother at the dining room table the last morning. Beth had said really hurtful things to Carol the night before, but things that needed to be said. And to Carol's immense credit, she heard them and processed them and then engaged with them. And to Beth's immense credit, she recognized it and understood how hard it was for mother, and demonstrated her appreciation. A lesser show would have had Beth angrily tell her mother that forcing her to quit dance ruined her life. This show had Beth thanking her mother for the path that she'd set her on, and all of the happiness that that path had brought her. It had Carol recognizing what Abe brought to the table, and her own inability to replace on her own the alchemy that he had brought to the occasion. Beth had things to say to her father that she never got to say. Thanks to this visit, she got to say the things she needed to say to her mother.

Susan Kelechi Watson is trained in multiple styles of dance, so I'm excited to see where that takes us. She comes from Jamaican parents, which guided the decision to make Abe a Jamaican immigrant. Lumbly's own parents were also Jamaican immigrants. The director of tonight's episode, Anne Fletcher, was a professional dancer and had provided choreography in film for the last quarter century. She directed the original Step Up so it's no surprise that the dance moments work.

It was also nice to get a bit more of a window into the cousin-sibling relationship between Beth and Zoe. Zoe is different around Beth than she is around Kevin, not nearly so guarded. I loved the scene between the two of them, getting high together in the laundry room.

By telling a little side story, this episode sidestepped the issues plaguing a couple of the show's main contemporary storylines. The only issue I had with this episode was teen Beth bumping into teen Randall literally the first moment she stepped off of the dancer's path. It felt writerly in a way the rest of the episode did not. I would have found it more believable if some time had passed -- maybe a couple months, maybe a couple years -- before Beth met Randall.

 

[Matt Hough]

Superb analysis, Adam. I felt similarly,

 

[Mike Frezon]

I didn't.

I watched tonight. Frankly, I was disinterested in Beth's story. Nothing about it was interesting to me.

I'm glad you both enjoyed it so much. I'm not feeling compelled to rain on your parade.

But it just wasn't working for me. It all felt rather predictable, actually. Passion vs. practicality. Firm-minded mother vs. caring children. It was about half-way through the show when I turned to Peg and said, "gosh, you don't suppose Beth is going to open her own school of dance, do you?"

The weakest part of the whole effort for me was Rashad. I found her reliance on her facial expressions to set her attitude in a scene to be off-putting. In almost every conversation, she was giving other actors in the scene her "I'm not going to take that crap from you" look--even when it wasn't her husband or daughter. It's not the kind of trait I find endearing in people, so I stopped caring about what happened to her, I guess.

 

[ScottH]

I bailed on the episode when I saw my local affiliate had school closings flashing on not just the bottom of the screen, but the top as well (not to mention an audible beep). What in the world are the networks thinking with that? Do people in this day and age seriously depend on those alerts to find out if their child's school is closed? In any event, glad to hear that it sounds like I missed nothing as I have no interest in a Beth backstory that sounds like it was forced.

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

In any event, glad to hear that it sounds like I missed nothing as I have no interest in a Beth backstory that sounds like it was forced.

It might be my favorite episode of the season. Your mileage may, of course, vary.

 

[Mike Frezon]

1.) Kevin is drinking.

2.) Kate had difficulties with her pregnancy and may lose the baby.

3.) Rebecca had difficulties after Jack died.

4.) Suddenly, Deja is brilliant but is having difficulty with the completely non-realistic proposal that she skip 8th grade.

5.) And Randall and Beth are still clueless idiots in their relationship and role as parents and breadwinners.

6.) And that final scene in which Randall & Kevin promise Kate that her baby won't die was simply...sappy. And the promo for next week's episode looks like a nightmare of a cliche melodrama. (Will the baby live/die? Will Kate live/die? Hugs and sad faces all around.)

Unfortunately, that's how I saw tonight's episode. I think its really time for me to give up soon (if not now).