For almost a year, the millions of
people who have avidly been following This
is Us - I include myself in the number - have been dealing with one big
question. How did Jack die? People were pissed when the first season ended, and
the reveal never came, and for the last six months, the writers have been very carefully parsing out details. We
knew that there would be a fire that burnt down the Pearson family home. For
the last month, we have been getting clues as to how the fire started. First,
they forgot to buy batteries for the smoke detector. Then, two weeks ago, we
actually saw the fire start - in a way that will no doubt have Crock Pot
manufacturers making apologies for the rest of their lives.
But the final reveal came yesterday
immediately after the Super Bowl. And to
the very last, it seemed like This is Us was
going to continue to defy expectations. We saw the fire blaze. We saw Jack, Backdraft like dodge flames to save Kate
and Randall. We then saw him jump back into the house to rescue the family dog
with a very long pause that made us think, oh no - and then emerge carrying it
and a few family mementos.
Jack and Rebecca went to the
hospital, and the family patriarch seemed remarkably fine, just smoke
inhalation and a few burns. He was even well enough to make jokes about the
smoke detector. Rebecca left to call for a hotel reservation, and then the
series played its final card. While in the background, we could see doctors
running off-screen, our focus was on Rebecca as she called for a reservation,
and checked in on Kate and Randall,. She then went to get a candy bar from a
vending machine - and the same doctor who moments ago had told her Jack was
fine, now told her that her husband had suffered a massive cardiac event and
had died. The next moments were all about Mandy Moore as she took a bite out of
her chocolate bar, floated in denial, and then exploded in grief.
I can't think of any other series
that would build itself around a single defining moment for two years - and
then not actually show us when it happened. As we now know, everything about This is Us only measures the past as it
affects the present. So now we saw how they handle the anniversary of Jack's
death in how they deal with the Super Bowl. (One could be a true nitpicker and
say that's not the real anniversary,
because the Super Bowl always happens on a different Sunday, but that's a level
of heartlessness I don't want to engage in.) Rebecca deals with it by making
Jack's favorite lasagna and waits for her husband to 'send her a laugh'. Kate
watches a video of her father recording her sing. Kevin usually gets drunk and
bangs a model, but considering he just got out of rehab that ain't gonna
happen. And Randall overcompensates by throwing a Superbowl children for his
daughter's friends, who really aren't the games target audience.
Naturally, nothing goes according
to plan. Kate's viewing of the videotape ended in possible disaster when the
tape exploded. Randall's celebration dissolved very quickly when he stepped on
his child's pet lizard, and kind of collapsed eulogizing it. Kevin spent much
of the day trying not to drink. But because the series has spent the last year
showing how much the Big Three have grown, we saw how much they've changed.
Toby got the video uploaded to a cloud, and Kate realized just how much she
owes to her fiancee. Randall went to see his daughter afterwards, who had been
struggling, and told her in no uncertain terms how much he loved her. Kevin,
who has struggled the most this season, went to the tree where his father had
been memorialized, and gave a very impassioned speech in which he apologized
for not being the man Jack was, and that he would make it better, 'even if it
takes me another couple of decades." And for the first time, we got a
glimpse at the future. For the last few episodes, we've been seeing a boy that
looked like it was going to be Randall and Beth's next foster child. Turned out
this was the series first flashforward, and that the social worker was Megan.
The episode ended with the return of Deja.
Most episodes that follow the Super
Bowl are usually huge disappointments. This
is Us' 'Super Bowl Sunday' may have been the most powerful one, and
engaging one since The X-Files aired
its episode of Leonard Betts. (Check my blog.) This is Us has spent the last month picking up award after award.
It would not shock me if this is the episode that every cast member submits for Emmys this spring as Moore, Sterling
Brown, Crissy Metz, and particularly Justin Hartley, were all magnificent in
it.
Some might wonder where does This is Us go from here, now that the
elephant has been revealed. But so much of this series has been about every
corner of the Pearson's lives that I think that there might be an endless
amount of material to mine. And given what we saw in 'SuperBowl', maybe the future might have some great
moments. This is Us: The Next Generation
- there's a spinoff I'd actually look forward to.
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