So there are surprises and you’re unfolding this family a little bit, because now the cat’s out of the bag about the device of the show, and now we can start expanding the audience’s knowledge. By the end of NBC’s new drama This Is Us, which premiered last night, the laziness of the opening feels like an omen. They start commenting on each other because of the way the series progresses and all the stuff that happens in the pilot.
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This Is Us is the kind of show that has its dim, earnest characters saying dim, earnest things like, “How did I get here?”
Planning on having triplets, Rebecca (Mandy Moore) successfully delivered two of the three babies, leaving husband Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) heartbroken.
Randall (“The People Vs. O.J. Simpson’s” Sterling K. Brown) is scouring the internet, searching for his biological father from his cushy job in a high-rise. Kevin is a sitcom actor, who is attractive but not very intelligent.
“We have four main stories”, creator Dan Fogelman told The Hollywood Reporter. He’s a man that loves family, loves his wife and would do anything for them.
At first this could be seen as a simple coincidence, but at the end of the episode … Cradling her tumescent belly, Jack coos, “In any state, my wife, you arouse me”. Jack asks about his child.
“I came here today, so I could look you in the eyes and say that to you and then get back in my fancy-ass vehicle to finally prove to myself and to you and to my family who loves me that I didn’t need a thing from you; even after I knew who you were!” Do I trust the guy who left his kid at a fire station and has sobriety issues but now claims is clean, or do I stay wary of the heartbreak he might cause Randall and his family? “We’re about to have triplets”, she says. Pointing out his expensive auto, he tells William, “I bought it for cash because I felt like it”. He’s pretty sure The Challenger explosion (yeah, the one way back in 1986) really messed him up.
Meanwhile, Kevin is facing the consequences of his meltdown on The Manny set. “God forbid we have real emotion in this show!”. I’m not adopted, so I can’t speak for how it feels to meet your biological father, but this arc embodied everything I imagine it be – wanting to yell and scream but also wanting to fight for a connection you never got. The camera pans back, and the extras’ clothing reveals we’re in the early 1980s.
The show follows three stories, all entwined with the fact that the characters are all 36. So I wrote about people I knew, or better-looking versions of them. When he points out that she laughed, she says, “That’s because I live across the line”.
Kate attends a support group for overweight or obese people.
Kate agrees to go on a date with Toby, even after she said told him she couldn’t have a “fat” friend. Thirty-six years ago, you left me at the front door of a fire station. Instead, Kate giggles and lets him in. I was telling my wife, ‘Ryan, you’ve got to read this! Right off the bat, these are characters we care about, our tears are vindicated. Rebecca welcomes her first of three children – a boy – without incident. She’s screaming in pain, but the chaos of the delivery is registered only through Jack’s overbearing concern. They need to monitor Rebecca, and that they have a healthy baby boy and a girl, but the third baby boy didn’t survive. Watch full episodes on NBC.
Baby-interruptus: Rebecca’s water breaks, which shifts the mood completely.
The couple take home the abandoned baby along with their twins.
Rebecca and Jack have two twins, then adopt a third, suggesting only one thing: Could they all be related?
There is a good show here, buried under the layers of schmaltz. But it basically gives us an opportunity to have touchstones through different decades as well as showing change or difference. With its sepia-toned, shaky-cam aesthetic, the show is clearly aiming for gritty realism, but its vision of human struggle is far too broad and exaggerated. He also says that the life he is living now is punishment enough. We hope that relationship extends out to Randall as well, but we’ll have to wait and see on that. It glosses over the ugliest, scariest parts of its characters’ conflicts in favor of big speeches delivered by brash men.
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Jack (Milo Ventimiglia): Jack is both a Pittsburgh Steelers fan (hence the Terrible Towel loincloth) and the owner of a fine set of glutes.
