This Is Us – A Philadelphia Story

By: Maddie Ruby

The most recent “This Is Us” episode has some of the most character defining moments to date. There is more character development from all of the big three, we see how Rebecca was holding up near after Jack’s death, view an unusual side of Toby and we even get to see more on screen time from a personal favorite of mine – William.

Let’s start with the aftermath of Jack’s (Milo Ventimiglia) death. Naturally, it is depressing as all hell, but what hits us the most is how hard it is on Rebecca (Mandy Moore) compared to the kids. Of course, Kate, Kevin and Randall (Niles Finch) are grieving in their own ways, but you can see the despair physically on Rebecca’s face. She is like a walking zombie, even hearing Jack’s voice from time to time and responding to it out loud. They go to look for a new house, and after a little family quarrel in front of the realtor, Randall and Rebecca go outside to talk. As Rebecca seems to be losing it, Randall is the one keeping it the most together. Afterall, he had just gotten into Howard, his dream school, at the beginning of the episode. A young Randall tries to put Rebecca in her place as a mother, saying she “lied” when she said everything would be okay and she would take care of it all because it is not all fine and dandy for the Pearson family. Rebecca is so out of it she seems to care less about Kate’s (Hannah Zeile) rapid weight gain and heavy eating patterns along with Kevin (Logan Shroyer) beginning to be an alcoholic, walking around plastered half the time.

Later, Randall feels a bit remorseful and tries to apologize to Rebecca. She just wants to explain to him how hard it is for her to be here anymore, she is having trouble getting out of bed every day, feeling like she has nothing left and blaming Jack’s death on herself when she admits he wanted to buy a new house before the fire had occurred. Randall realizes Rebecca is trying her best her and that the family really needs him. He makes a drastic in the moment decision that he cannot leave his family like this and calls the admissions office at Howard to retract his acceptance. Obviously, we know he meets Beth when attending Howard so somehow he does end up there. Maybe the Pearson family just needed Randall to tie them together for a little bit longer before he goes.

In the present, Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Toby (Chris Sullivan) are getting ready to go to Kevin’s movie premiere with Rebecca and Miguel (Jon Huertas). They are desperate for no one to find out about the IVF treatments because they ALREADY know how hard it is and how at risk they are, so they don’t need to hear it again from Rebecca if she found out. But this is a dramatic tv series…so it doesn’t come as a surprise when Miguel looks for a snack in the kitchen and Kate’s treatments and syringes fall to the ground. This leads Toby to make a controversial funny joke about how he is a heroine addict, trying to cover up and avoid the conversation about Kate’s treatments. At first Rebecca doesn’t say anything, not wanting to upset Kate. Kate knows she has something on her mind to say about how bad the risk is, especially with someone with her weight. She tells Rebecca to just go ahead and say it and, of course, Kate was right. That is exactly what Rebecca was thinking. Nevertheless, it doesn’t stop there as Rebecca begins questioning Kate and Toby if they really know all the risks. This leads to a side of Toby we’ve never seen before as he starts lashing out on Rebecca saying they are doing this for them not for her. This outburst is most likely a side-effect of him dumping his anti-depressants in the end of last episode.

In Randall’s world, he is trying to balance enrolling Deja (Lyric Ross) in a new school when he decides to take on yet another challenge. In order to try to help Deja make new friends, he takes her to a local rec center that is near the building William (Ron Cephas Jones) used to live in so that she can meet Sky (Drew Olivia Tillman), a girl her age. Randall has small talk with Sky’s mother, Chi Chi (Yetide Badaki), who we later find out in flashbacks knew William quite well. Anyway, Randall looks around and notices the place has a few problems with it. After talking to Chi Chi, who says they have complained with no avail, according to Randall the most logical situation is to go straight to the city council head while he is at the barber shop and try to make a change. He comes back to tell Chi Chi and mentions a fixed light. Chi Chi stops him after he uses the term “we.” She says all he has done was look at the problems with the place instead of getting to know the people first. She says, “We are not our problems.” On a sweet note, she mentions she sees so much of William in Randall, which personally made my heart melt.

Randall finally makes it to the premiere, meeting with Kevin and the rest of the family. Not much happened to Kevin today, but he does admit he is upset that Jack never got to see him act and that he believes Jack pushed him so hard because he truly believed in him. He had invited Zoe (Melanie Liburd) to his movie premiere, but she makes a big deal out of saying their relationship was always supposed to be casual. However, we see that she has a change of heart and takes a little bit more of an interest in him after watching him do an interview with Mario Lopez. She even asks him to pick her up from the airport. Let’s just hope that she isn’t the heart-breaker/man-eater Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) warned. She better not chew up our sweet Kev and spit him out!

As Beth and Randall get to talking, she notices something is up with him. He has had a complicated day, feeling like he is either “trying too hard or not trying hard enough.” Randall has only ever wanted to fit in and it seems like still now even in his late 30’s he cannot. You would think it couldn’t get any worse for our pal Randall. Then, Kevin fills Randall in about what had happened that day. He mentions how Kate really wants to have a baby so she can “pass on a piece of their dad” and that is what hurts Randall the most. Randall has beautiful children and, yes, he may not be BLOOD but he can still pass on the memory of Jack and lessons taught by him and that is what matters. The episode ends with Randall’s face looking in disbelief and hurt. Randall, I feel you. That’s exactly how I felt when Kate said that.