This Is Us – Don’t Take My Sunshine Away

By: Maddie Ruby

At the beginning of the episode everyone seems to be heading back home from the hospital. Kate (Chrissy Metz) is singing “You Are My Sunshine” to her son, Jack, who was born premature in the last episode. We flashback in this episode to when The Big Three were just kids and headed to their first dance. A young Kevin (Parker Bates) is hoping to get his first kiss with Sophie. Randall (Lonnie Chavis) is too busy studying before the dance for a test he has next week.

Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) are chaperoning the dance. Jack tells Rebecca that he never went to any school dances and about how one time he was going to go, but his dad took the car and went off drinking. Rebecca decides there is enough chaperones at the dance and maybe they could sneak away for a while. They start kissing in the library where they find Randall, who snuck away to the library to study for his test. While Randall is studying, Kevin is toilet papering the teacher’s lounge with other kids, encouraging a skeptical Sophie (Sophia Coto) to join. They share their first kiss when Kevin wraps them together in toilet paper.

In the present Zoe (Melanie Liburd) and Kevin (Justin Hartley) are working through his alcohol issue. Zoe is a direct person and she tells Kevin that she doesn’t want to have kids and nothing can change that. She tells him she loves him, but if having kids is something he needs they should probably end this soon.

Randall (Sterling K. Brown) wants Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) to come to dinner with the other councilmen. She says she has to teach until 5:30pm, which Randall realizes; however, dinner is at 8pm and he thinks she can make it. She wants to go to drinks with her coworkers, but he is insistent that she make the dinner.

Toby (Chris Sullivan) meets another dad (Eddie Kaye Thomas) in the waiting room. The other dad, Gavin, explains what is happening with his daughter and how she was born with a whole in his heart. Toby shares what is going on with his baby and they talk about the fact that not everyone has hope of bringing their babies home and that they are lucky they do.

Kevin runs into Sophie (Alexandra Breckenridge) while looking for AA meeting’s and she asks him if he is okay. She said she always wondered if he was okay. She admits she is engaged. They get coffee and Sophie says she thinks Zoe is good for him. She tells him he needs to decide what he wants and that he usually gets it.

Beth is late for the dinner and not answering any of Randall’s calls. Of course, he just assumes she is ignoring him. He leaves her a rude voicemail, criticizing her being a dance teacher and tells her to grow up. You can see regret of this on his face when Beth shows up for dinner late because there was standstill traffic due to a huge accident and her phone died as well.

Toby confides to Kate that when he looks at their son all he sees is the tubes, but when Kate does he sees their son.

After dinner Randall confesses to Beth that he thought she was late to dinner because she chose her coworkers over him. He explains he left her a nasty voicemail and regrets it. He asks her to delete it before she hears it, knowing how rude it was and saying it wasn’t his proudest moment. Beth tells him she already heard it and she is definitely not happy with him. She tells him if he still has the cot in his office he should go sleep on it.

Kevin goes home to Zoe and tells her he chooses a life with her without children. He emails Sophie and gives her and her fiancé two front row tickets to Billy Joel (the fiance’s favorite musician).

Jack and Rebecca are slow dancing and he ask if she thinks they’d like each other if they were in school together. She says she probably would’ve been too good for the bad boy Jack was. He says he would have saw her and known she was the one.

Toby finally holds his son at the end of the episode. He barely takes up Toby’s two hands together.

Randall and Beth know that they can’t keep this fight on pause forever. She says they are doing this now and for him to shut the door, which is when the episode ends.