The show’s opening claims that Wikipedia says that 18 million people have the same exact birthday.
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Is this the first television series on record to rely on Wikipedia as a credible source? Yes.
This is especially true of Brown, who makes his character Randall into a swirling ball of internal conflict, which is somewhat sharpened by knowing it’s his birthday.
Milo Ventimiglia hopes that the show can do the issue justice. As Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and his very pregnant wife, Rebecca (Mandy Moore) celebrate his 36th birthday, she goes into labor. In one story, a hunky actor named Kevin (Justin Hartley) is exhausted of delivering inane lines and pointlessly taking off his shirt on a sitcom called “The Manny”. And in front of “Growing Pains” star Alan Thicke, too (playing himself). He quits his job Jerry Maguire-style because he’s exhausted of taking his shirt off and wants to make art. Chrissy Metz and Justin Hartley star as twins, one of whom is dealing with a weight problem and the other is a sexy TV sitcom star who’s exhausted of being thought of as a brainless hunk. Kate meets Toby (Chris Sullivan) at a weight loss group and they go on their first date.
Newly-announced Emmy Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series victor Sterling K. Brown is also in the “This is Us” ensemble.
Left, Ron Cephas Jones as William and Sterling K. Brown as Randall, a businessman with a chip on his shoulder. With the help of a private investigator he tracks him down.
Kate and Kevin take up the other chunk of the hour, followed by Randall.
The show – created by Dan Fogelman, who wrote the film “Crazy, Stupid, Love” – stands out in a TV landscape filled with “high action, high impact, over-exposed type storylines and characters”, he added. The 36th birthday gimmick is made clear by the end of the pilot, bringing the disparate threads together.
It’s hard to talk specifics about “This is Us” because it’s got a twist that puts the show into a context that clears up initial doubts about how a series about three seemingly disparate groups of characters will work on a weekly basis.
Is it any good? If it makes the transition from promising pilot into a reliable feel-good-but-cry-a lot family drama, NBC could have a victor on its hands.
Without a doubt, This Is Us has the buzz and potential to lead the season’s freshman pack. They don’t quite do that, but, like the aforementioned dramas, in a few episodes this should be a well-honed emotional manipulation machine that can make you cry easier than a combination of Old Yeller and a long-distance commercial from the mid-90s.
Watch “This Is Us” tonight on NBC!
Still, the success of most every series rests on the appeal of its characters, and “This Is Us” appears to be full of appealing characters.
However the final twist is intriguing indeed and suggests that the rest of the series might be very inventive and worth investing in.
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Those shows tethered drama to an unmistakably raw reality, making moments of levity all the more earned.
