‘This Is Us’ Recap: Swimming Lessons
Warning: This recap for the “The Pool” episode of This Is Us contains spoilers.
This Is Us used a very effective memory/flashback to effectively and realistically explain where Kevin, Kate, and Randall find themselves in the present. And once again, it made us cry.
Jack and Rebecca
The boys are fighting over toys, Rebecca has been trying to read Misery for two years, and Jack can’t fix the A/C, so he decides on a family day at the community pool. Besides, he’s already packed a cooler of soda — he’s managing to stay on the wagon — and Kate’s Care Bears bikini isn’t going to show itself off.
It’s packed, and Jack is on the hunt for chaises. Rebecca applies sunscreen to the kids, albeit very poorly. (But hey, it’s the ‘80s, so I guess the kids are lucky it wasn’t baby oil and a reflective screen.) She also doesn’t know the answer when Randall inquires if he needs sunscreen. Rebecca tries to get Kate to put a shirt on over her bathing suit. When she walks off after declining, Rebecca is positive someone will make fun of Kate, and Jack assures her that it’s just baby fat. They are exhausted trying to keep track of all three kids. “Yep, it’s a war. They got the numbers. We were beat before we started,” Jack surmises.
Kevin begs for his dad’s undivided attention while he’s doing handstands (so not much has changed in 32 years), and suddenly Rebecca notices Randall is missing. As they go off in search of him, Kevin dives down into his own little world. Rebecca finds Randall playing with all the black kids on the opposite side of the pool and gets into a confrontation with one of the moms who says it was fine for him to be down there as she was watching him. Things get a little heated as the other mom tells Rebecca she needs to get a barber who can cut black hair to get rid of the bumps on Randall’s neck. She explains that she knows who Rebecca is because they all pay attention when a white lady adopts a black kid and doesn’t introduce herself to any of them. Rebecca stands her ground saying that Randall is in trouble because he was not supposed to go away from their spot and throws in, “That’s my son and I’m his mother. I don’t know if you have a problem with that, but I don’t care.”
Related: Read All of Yahoo TV’s ‘This Is Us’ Recaps
Kate keeps trying to play mermaids with the skinny, mean girls, but they hand her a note and you know it can’t be good. It isn’t. Basically, it reads, “We don’t want you to play with us anymore. You embarrass us.” And they throw in a pig face for good measure. She is crushed, and she stops eating and sulks with a towel around her.
Rebecca finds the note, and Jack plans to give those girls a talking to, but Rebecca says he will make things worse. While they are discussing it with their backs to him, Kevin almost drowns. Now his feelings are truly hurt, so he marches over and yells, “You are too busy making sure Kate doesn’t eat too much and that Randall isn’t too adopted, and you never watch me. ‘Oh, where’s Kevin?’ He’s dead.”
Jack fixes Kate’s issues by giving her a magic T-shirt that makes your enemies see you how you want them to. She chooses “princess,” and he explains that he already sees her that way. Then he tackles Kevin with an apology, explaining that he is doing this, fatherhood, for the first time, so he’s likely to mess up again.
Rebecca realizes that Randall has requested going to that pool specifically so that he could meet other black people, because as Randall later explains, Bethel Park, Pennsylvania is basically the whitest place on earth. So she does the right thing and seeks out that other mom again to ask if she has a barber’s name — and if they could set up some playdates. She also asks about the sunscreen and gets a big laugh.
Randall
The kids have apparently been told off-screen that William is grandpa, and they are so accepting that they ask him to do their hair instead of mom. When they inquire about a scar on his arm, Beth assumes it’s drug-related, but William tells them that it’s actually from a protest to integrate schools.
When William goes out for a walk, the security guard of Randall’s mostly white neighborhood stops him after a loitering complaint from the neighbors and demands to see I.D. When he’s in the midst of refusing and calling him out, Randall runs out to smooth things over and the neighbors apologize. Randall decides it’s time to buy William some new clothes.
Their shopping trip quickly turns into Randall feeling like his dad is judging his life. “You didn’t like me apologizing for you. Would you have liked it if I made a big scene, got up in Tony’s face, had the cops roll up and turn the hoses on us? Because history would not have memorialized our stand,” Randall says. “Because I grew up in a white house, you don’t think I live in a black man’s world.”
But, Randall argues, the security guard is still clocking them and that the saleperson will still ask for ID even though she hasn’t asked for it from anyone else that day. “Plus, a million things I have to let go every day just so I am not pissed off all the time,” he says.
The family attends a play at the kids’ fancy public school — which has a farm and a goat — and it still seems like Randall is feeling antsy about William’s true opinion of his life. One of Randall’s girls is playing Snow White, and he looks around noticing people laughing about lines like “a maiden so fair.”
After the play, William finds Randall drinking wine alone at home. “I’ve offended you somehow,” William says. “You think I am judging you, but I am in no position.” Randall comes clean about his confusion as a black kid in a white family, explaining the notebook that the audience saw in the flashback — it was a tally of all the black people he’d met. He also admits, “I couldn’t say it out loud because I loved my father, my white father, and my white mother.”
Randall also says he’s proud that he’s “a strong successful black man” who’s raising his girls to not see anything wrong with them playing Snow White. It is William’s turn to apologize, because he sees his son hurting and tortured: “I’ve been here three weeks and I need to say this. I am so deeply sorry. I did wrong by you. You are doing everything right, son.” (Not a dry eye in the house.)
Related: ‘This Is Us’ Postmortem: Justin Hartley Talks Kevin’s New York State of Mind
Kate and Kevin
Kate, now jobless, is having lunch with Toby. She catches him hugging a skinny, pretty woman in lace-up heels. After finding out that this glamazon is Toby’s ex-wife, Josie, Kate spirals into online stalking and self doubt very fast. She worries that Toby is just fulfilling some sort of fat fetish with her and later complains to Kevin: “Everything about her reeks fabulous. … She’s been to Argentina.”
Kevin says that he didn’t leave her in LA so she could self-sabotage. “She’s his ex. He’s with you now,” he assures her. But it does not stop her deep dive into this woman’s life. Next up, she goes undercover as a shopper at her clothing and accessories store. Unfortunately for Kate, she does not go unnoticed. The ex confuses her as a job applicant and Kate goes through the interview process. The stalking ends up getting her the job because the ex likes “someone who does her research.”
She has to break the news to Toby. “The good news is I got a job,” she says walking into his apartment.
“That means there is bad news,” he worries. “You stalked her like a serial killer.”
And boy, does he take it badly. Kate tries to explain: It started out as just wanting to see her up close and figure out why “one of these things is not like the other.” Then the job thing happened, and she thought the ex was great. But, Toby informs her, his ex was terrible to him: “She cheated on me, lied to me, and then took half my life savings. I gained 95 pounds one year after. l [considered] suicide when I got drunk alone and disgusted myself. You haven’t cornered the market on problems. Josie and I weren’t good together, so we’re not.”
Kate admits, “I am really sorry my issues are not going away overnight.” In the show’s usual style, they make up with a well-placed and well-timed moment of levity. You just can’t help but root for them.
Kevin is very proud of himself for making the big move to New York. He even calls Randall to get validation before his first big audition, but Randall is preoccupied with his bio dad, so he puts the nieces on the phone and they make things worse by asking Kevin to do the Manny voice and catchphrase.
After getting lost because he tried to “walk like a New Yorker” and mismanaged his subway travel time, he finally arrives late to the audition and makes a fool of himself thanks to nerves. He assumes he knows Ms. Maine because he judged a pageant for Donald Trump once, but she’s actually a Tony-nominated actress with a state surname. He compliments her good accent, but it’s actually real, and he misreads her dramatic pause as screwing up. She’s filled with disgust and basically tells him that he sucks. He leaves in the dumps and calls Kate to talk more. Just when he realizes he’s lost again, he runs right into the actress. He swears he doesn’t suck that bad usually and adds that she could have also been nicer. At that, she invites him to go get a drink.
Unfortunately, it’s all a ploy to tell him to go home. She lumps him in with all the other movie actors who come to Broadway, never having had a genuine moment in their lives, and warns that just like them, he will realize it is hard and not for him. As his new friend, she tells him he should just go home, because he’s in over his head and needs to get some training.
“Just feels like you are using the word ‘friend’ wrong,” he says, just before her phone rings and she crushes her cocktail glass. They’ve decided to cast him.
“They think the Manny will sell tickets,” she says storming off. Obviously her negative attitude and his nerves are a lethal combination. He calls Kate but can’t reach her. “Usually you are the one who tells me how great I am and you are not here,” he complains. Instead, he heads over to Randall’s house for the validation he didn’t get earlier and gets another shocker when Randall introduces his bio dad.
“That is probably going to be a longer conversation, but good to meet you,” Kevin says before running off to play with his nieces. Then just to keep the audience surprised, William says, “Was that the Manny? I love that show. I’m going to go get my autograph book.”
To end the episode, the story returns to the past for one last shot at the end of the day at the pool. All three kids lay on and next to Jack, who’s laying in Rebecca’s lap. Suddenly, all is right in the world and it seems like they can cross any bridge together.
“Is now a bad time to mention having another kid?,” he jokes.
Rebecca just rolls her eyes and proudly says she’s finally gotten to that last page of Misery. Seems symbolic, no?
Watch the cast discuss the episode:
This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC. Watch clips and full episodes of This Is Us on Yahoo View.
