This Is Us – Our Little Island Girl

By: Maddie Ruby

Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) is traveling to D.C. to see her mother Carol (Phylicia Rashad), who hurt her hip during work as the principal of a highschool. Beth wants to tell her she has to retire. She hasn’t told her mother though she has gotten laid off. Her cousin Zoe (Melanie Liburd) is coming with her for support.

While driving there Beth has a flashback on when she was a kid. Young Bethany (Akira Akbar) grew up in a stricter household, per her mother, and auditioned for a dance academy behind her parents back. Her mom doesn’t seem very intrigued by this but says they will go look at it anyways. While there, Carol seems to think these dance classes are a waste of time and she will not succeed with this as a career. Nevertheless, her parents decided to do it for the daughter if she promises to work hard at dancing every single day.

WHen Beth and Zoe arrive Carol serves them dinner. As Beth brings up the idea of her mother retiring, she gets very defensive immediately. Zoe supports what Beth is saying, but Carol being the way she is thinks that Zoe’s job is just a “passion project.” She feels zoe has no path, unlike Beth. Beth then reveals she got laid off months ago.

We see Beth when she is in dance class. She keeps practicing, as her mother sews her dance outfits at home and her father works late nights so that they can afford it. An older Beth (Rachel Hilson) grows in dance and four years later she still needs to work ten times harder to get where she wants to be. As she comes back from dance class, her parents sit her down and it is revealed that her father Abe (Carl Lumbly) has lung cancer. Beth thinks that it is her fault he has it because he worked too hard paying for her dance classes. She wants to quit, but her mother won’t allow it because this is the path she chose and she has years of training.

Beth is worried about a new girl in her dance class, but Abe tells her the story about how she was 18 months old and still hadn’t walked. No doctor could figure out why, but soon after that a song played and it just got her up and she started dancing. He calls her their “little island girl” who danced before she could walk.

In the present Carol is quite upset that Beth hasn’t told her about her losing her job sooner. In the middle of the night Zoe finds her secret stash of drugs and Beth and her partake. Beth apologizes for her mom saying things about Zoe’s job and comments on how Zoe doesn’t seem to care. Zoe says this is because by the time she came to live with Beth’s family she felt like it was the only place that was safe. Zoe admits she knows something bigger is going on with Beth and that she needs to figure it out before it explodes. Before going back upstairs to bed Beth looks at the chair her father used to sit in. She admits to herself that she lost that part of her, the dancer; the part she shared with her father.

Beth doesn’t get the dance solo. She loses it to the new girl because her father has recently passed and she was not in class. She tells her mom she didn’t get the solo, but not to worry because she is not going to give up. Her mother comes upstairs later saying that the dance path is not for her anymore. She has to pick a college to go to.

Now, Beth confronts her mother. She says that she was so free when she was a little girl, always doodling and dancing. She says that she didn’t have to take that away from her and that’s why her brothers and sister don’t ever come around. Carol says that it’s fine they don’t come around because she knows that they are good. Beth says she is not good. She never dreams like she used to.

In the past, Beth arrives at college. She goes to a new student mixer where she puts on a name tag that reads “Beth.” She also meets Randall (Niles Fitch) for the first time.

Carol admits to Beth that, in a way, Abe was her air. He was what let her breathe, the perfect balance. She was too serious and he wasn’t serious enough. Once her father was gone her mother had no air and had to make choices quickly because it was just her and her worries. Beth says she didn’t fail as a mother.

Beth comes back home to Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and decides to tell him what she wants to do next, saying it is crazy. She goes to a dance studio and begins practicing. She tells the woman at the studio that she doesn’t want to take a class, but that she wants to teach.