One of my favorite "not a soap opera" returned today, and it is emotional as ever...
In this two hour premiere, they took the first 15 minutes to settle into the new normal while also going through the recent events like BLM. Setting up the new normal felt like moving pictures than a coherent story. But once the title card came the show went back to its normal way. To make this happen they took a clear route of setting the episodes in the cabin. This might have forced them to go with the Rebecca flash-forward this early in the season.
Some nice touches were spread out throughout both the episodes. The Pearson men texting each other was very good and is a positive step towards healing for both of them. What is an episode of This is Us without any inspiring and heartfelt speeches? So we have Toby comforting Miguel with his One Day At a Time speech for inspiring speech and the Kate and Randall speech at the backend of the episode for a heartfelt episode.
The conversation between Kate and Randall was so good when he asked her what specifically is she sorry for. This was the Randall we missed in the last few episodes. Randall Pearson's scenes have been so great so far, especially his reply to the most daunting question of Rebecca. When she asked about the kids the second time, it really was more daunting than any other thing in this episode for a Pearson.
The baggage to the episodes were the dragging story of Jack and William. They have come to a point where only a handful of meaningful scenes can come from Jack or William. In this episode at least the William part was there to reveal a new twist and also to support Rebecca. Jack's story wasn't anything new we haven't seen so far, so this felt like stretching the episode more than its runtime(even though it doesn't). That said even this storyline yielded us two of my favorite moments from this episode. One is the telephone call between Jack and Stanley and the other is Rebecca asking for Jack to not have a goatee or a plain mustache if he shaves his beard.
Spoiler Alert!!! So coming to the final twist, another dead character coming to life. This time it is Randall's birth mother. I feel like this is really not a good sign for the show unless they somehow miraculously works with it. Yeah yeah, I know that everyone would have felt the same when everyone found about Nicky. And it turned to be the best plot and even the best character in the fourth season. But that is so different from here. And this now feels like a cheap trick they are trying to pull every time.
Little Things:
Exactly a year ago my friend and I were discussing how Randall never gets any money problems. But I didn't expect to see them going forward with that line in this season. I personally think that will be a very good plot
Miguel following the ODAAT method was very sweet
Now officially my favorite TV season "Fall" has started albeit only two months late. At least we can say that it is good to be now than never.
So with the start of the busy TV season tune into our reviews or ping me upon on any social media for every latest TV reviews and essays.
Episode Rating: B+
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