This Is Us – Sometimes

By: Maddie Ruby

Last week’s episode of This Is Us gave us two flashbacks out of its three adventure filled story lines, answered some questions, showed us what Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) was like after war with Rebecca (Mandy Moore). It also told us that even though Zoe (Melanie Liburd) has a vulnerable part to her past, she is still strong!

Before we see our characters, we have an important flashback to pay attention to and remember later. We see a woman make Jack’s medallion necklace by hand in a workshop and then it goes off to be sold by an older woman to a young man. This man plans to give it to a woman he likes, but he sees her with another man and sets the necklace down on the bar, walking away upset. The woman we see in the photo with Jack pulls it off the neck of a soldier who grabbed the necklace in the bar, once he dies out on the field.

Let’s start with the furthest flashback and to where we left off in episode four – Vietnam. Nicky (Michael Angarano) has just turned around to face Jack is talking all sorts of crazy, prompting Jack to ask him what kind of drugs he’s using. Nicky calls “Superman” a stupid nickname and you can see the doubt in his eyes about him staying alive through the war. He decides he needs to bring Nicky back to his unit if he is going to survive any longer. When Jack’s commanding officer denies him bringing Nicky back with him, even when Jack tells a tender story about them as young boys, Jack has no other choice but to return to his unit. He was set home on foot so he decides to pay a local man, Bao (Dustin Nguyen), to bring him back. They make a stop on the way where a sketchy Bao delivers a bunch of empty tin cans to other men. These cans make Jack ask him if he is a part of the Viet Cong because he remembers a homemade explosive device his unit found in the jungle that happens to look like it could potentially be made with the same cans Bao was delivering. Hmm. He replies to Jack’s comment with the title of this episode…” Sometimes.”

Later, Jack sees a woman with a necklace on near his camp, the same necklace Kevin (Justin Hartley) has from his father AND the same necklace from the first flashback earlier in the episode.  Also, Nicky’s C.O. pulls through for Jack and brings Nicky to his camp for a two-week long stay in hopes it will be a therapy retreat to help his mental state.

We then travel a little further through time to Jack and Rebecca’s across the country road trip to California… after just meeting each other. Rebecca tries to find out more information about the mysterious Jack, but he doesn’t give the best answers. While there, Rebecca is going to a record company, the same one that put out an album by Joni Mitchell who Jack thinks Rebecca is a better singer than F.Y.I. Jack is going to meet with someone in Reseda and we are assuming its something Vietnam-y because he won’t give much detail about it. At the first hotel, Rebecca throws on her flannel jammies and they get into their separate twin beds. It doesn’t last long obviously when we see her and Jack cuddled in his bed the next morning…naked. The next hotel scene is even more raunchy, but the mood is quickly turned to Jack having a nightmare in the next scene. Rebecca tries to get him to let her in, but he warns her again and she backs off.

We later find out what happens to Rebecca and Jack at their stops. Rebecca’s visit to the record label doesn’t go so well, as we assumed, when they tell her she is “Pittsburgh-good” after she tells them to give it to her straight. Of course, she takes this with stride, telling Jack it’s a compliment. Jack gets a little bit more closure from Vietnam when he visits the family of a lost solider. He says it is his fault for the death, but the parents insist it wasn’t knowing that their son would be alive if there was no war in the first place. After this, we see Jack lighten up a tiny bit, when he hears Rebecca’s singing he tears up and tells her “Let’s go home.”

Finally, in the present, Kevin and Zoe are strolling through the streets of Vietnam. Zoe, def over Kevin’s obsession but dealing with it for him, seems to dodge every question Kevin asks about her childhood. He also figures out in this episode that Jack’s necklace may not have a story behind it or a way they can find out about it because it seems these medallions are sold everywhere and quite trendy in Vietnam. This causes the already annoyed Kevin to have a bad attitude towards Zoe when she once again won’t open up to him. She says she feels sick, but Kevin thinks this is just an excuse until she retches at some Bat soup she had earlier. (Apparently it’s a local delicacy.) We then see Zoe in her “safe place,” the hotel’s bathtub. She admits she doesn’t like speaking about her past because her father was sexually abusive towards her. He still tries to get in touch with her, something Zoe doesn’t want whatsoever. Who could blame her though? Kevin and Zoe reveal their falling in love with each other and she doesn’t want her father to ruin it for her or for them for that matter.