If you pay attention to your Facebook feed often or have even slightly heard your friends or colleagues dish about television, you've most likely heard about "This Is Us." This was me for awhile, until I finally decided to give it a shot.
What I was so confused about was why was a network like NBC, that is so well known for its sitcoms (i.e. "The Office," "Parks and Recreation," "30 Rock," "Community" -- I could go on) and sketch comedy programs like "SNL," has a brand new drama that literally everyone is talking about.
Believe the hype. Anybody, and I mean anybody, will like this show. Watching the first episode I was thinking to myself, "Okay, this seems good and all, but I feel like I've seen this type of show before." But once you wait until the ending, you'll find that, like the rest of the season, this show is as unpredictable and unlike anything you've seen in a prime-time drama.
The fact that this show is on a prime time network like NBC so that it is available to everyone in the nation with a working TV, proves that when a quality show comes around, it doesn't necessarily have to be on an HBO, Showtime, or a premium cable channel.
At its core, this show is about family, in all of its aspects and that is why it resonates with so many of its viewers. It doesn't just gloss over the youth, adolescence and adulthood of our lives, but includes instances during those time periods that reflect what each of us might have had to deal with as well.
Because "This Is Us" is not just focused on the kids and their parents' version of the story, but both the parents' and their kids' sides, we are able to look at both the Pearson family and even our own families' lives in a whole new perspective.
"This Is Us" is not trying to showcase an all white nuclear family as its foundation, but a unique family in which one of its adopted members lived a long time without even knowing who his father was. As more and more people walk into the Pearson's lives, we learn more and more about each individual and their pasts.
I think above all else, this show values truth. Truth in how we identify ourselves, and truth in how we identify ourselves among others. This show has one of the most truthful portrayals of anxiety, weight struggles, and marriage and family that I have seen recently.
And as I am embarrassed to admit that I sob during every episode I watch, it's not just fictional emotions you're feeling from a TV show, but emotions you're feeling based on the good and sad times you have already experience within your own family.
If you haven't started watching "This Is Us," and are even remotely thinking about it, I really encourage you to watch this show. It's sad, it's happy, it's funny and it's even nostalgic. And with the season finale coming up (and two new seasons already confirmed), I think binge watching could be an even better option... or a really sad and emotional way to spend a couple of days.
