A few years ago, my best friend introduced me to the show Once Upon a Time. My Disney heart adored it, and fell in love with the Emma and Hook romance. However, as the show continued it began to lose its luster, and that last episode that I watched wasn’t even from the current series. Although I may return to OUAT someday, I felt ready for a new show. Fortunately, the advertising clips for This Is Us began to debut, and both mine and my best friend’s calendars were marked.
The show begins with Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and his adorable, very pregnant wife, Rebecca (Mandy Moore) celebrating his birthday in their newly purchased home located in Pittsburgh. Then short clips began to show three other characters, Kate (Chrissy Metz), Kevin (Justin Hartley), and Randall (Sterling K. Brown) who all share a birthday with Jack. All four characters are celebrating their 36th birthday.
Kate is trying to lose weight with the hope of having a family someday. Kevin is having his mid-life career crisis as a famous actor, Randall has just discovered the identity of his birth father who abandoned him at a fire station, and Jack is rushing his wife to the hospital to give birth to their triplets. The seemingly separate stories pull at the heartstrings with both genuine and cliché cheesy lines throughout.
The most tear-jerking theme is headed by my personal favorite character, Dr. K (Gerald McRaney). During delivery, Rebecca and two out of the three babies go into distress. Soon after, the viewer sees Jack sitting in the waiting room with bloodshot eyes. He is approached by Dr. K and told that his wife and two of the babies are fine, but one didn't make it. Dr. K then tells Jack that he himself lost a baby, and that he would like to believe that Jack and Rebecca can believe "there's no lemon so sour that you can't make something resembling lemonade."
Jack goes to look at his two beautiful, healthy babies at the hospital nursery. A fireman is standing next to him and points to a baby he brought in from the station followed by offering Jack a cigarette. The camera then pans out to reveal people smoking throughout the hospital in 1970s apparel with a TV playing Walter Cronkite's voice talking about Iran. Everything clicks for the audience in this moment.
The creator of the show, Dan Fogelman, has created parallel stories that are distinctly connected. Jack and Rebecca's story occurs in 1979. Kate and Kevin are the two healthy triplets who survived and Randall is adopted after being abandoned by his birth father. I for one became an immediate fan knowing the cast, but that final twist is what sold me on recording the show every Tuesday night. This show is a heartfelt family story with a unique perspective. My hope is that the audience will get to witness Jack and Rebecca's life raising their three babies as well as life for Kate, Kevin, and Randall in 2016. The parallel of all the characters being the same age in each intertwined story is genius, and I cannot wait to see the next episode.
