Miguel Claps Back on 'This Is Us'
Leave it up to 'This is Us' to celebrate Thanksgiving with equal amounts of sadness and joy. This week’s episode flashes back and forth in time to reveal how the Pearsons have rung in the holiday, and you might be comforted to learn their dinner table conversations are just as tense and dramatic as some of our own. Even Miguel finally claps back from the other side of the sweet potatoes-much to my own surprise and fascination.
Here’s what went down on tonight’s “Six Thanksgivings” episode.
Rebecca finally admits that she’s a traitor for having Miguel in her home after he left his ex-wife/her best friend.
Don’t get too excited: We’re in the wrong timeline for her to actually make this statement with any real remorse. Rebecca doesn’t say this because she married her best friend’s ex-husband and her first husband's best friend. Because that would be too much like what I've been waiting on since Season 1! Instead, she tells Jack this because they decide to invite Miguel over for Thanksgiving dinner after he left his wife. Rebecca feels she's betraying her best friend by having him over-which she kinda is-but it’s nothing like what she’ll do later in her life.
Miguel comes in the door just as he’s in the middle of an argument with his wife over seeing their kids. He’s still in his feelings about the harsh exchange of words as he watches the Pearsons as one big happy family at the dinner table. Miguel even excuses himself to go sulk in another room, where Jack comes in and gives him one of his pep talks about how he's a great man and father and his children will love him no matter what. Oh Jack, you don’t even know the half of it.
Miguel claps back at his kids, who have not gotten over him leaving their mom for Rebecca.
First of all, kudos to the writers for finally giving Miguel a voice, because he certainly has never fit in-or ever tried to-on this show. In this week’s episode, he completely blows a gasket at his daughter Amber’s house, where she and her brother take turns slighting him about his years-long absence from their lives. Miguel, who admits he gave up trying to contact the two after they continued to ignore him, is willing to accept that his kids are still angry at him for leaving their mom, but he GOES OFF when his son throws a snarky dig at Rebecca across the table. He demands they respect her.
So, kudos to Miguel for demanding respect from his two adult children who are, understandably, still sore about their dad’s marriage. This is a huge step forward in terms of Miguel’s visibility on the show, but it does not let him or Rebecca off the hook. I’d love to see him have a real conversation with his kids about his perspective on how he found Rebecca (so to speak), similar to the one Rebecca had with Kevin last season. It’s the elephant in the room that needs to be addressed in order to make Miguel less of a one-dimensional character.
Speaking of couples who’ve had a rocky journey, Beth and Randall’s new working relationship is already in trouble.
You know, from the moment Randall offered Beth the position as field director on his council campaign, it felt a bit like a Jack Pearson can-do move: Not necessarily a great idea in the long run. This has nothing to do with Beth’s talent; we already know she’s great (though she doesn't actually have any experience as a field director). But offering her a job right after she reveals to Randall that she’s not okay just feels like a Band-Aid for her still unresolved issues, and a convenient placeholder for Randall’s need to build a team for his campaign. Randall hires her to fix one of his own problems and boost his own ambitions, and she winds up being a bad fit. But Randall being Randall, he can’t communicate that to her, instead going along with all her ill-advised decisions, to the chagrin of his campaign manager, Jae-Won.
Jae-Won sets up a Thanksgiving soup kitchen visit for Randall as a publicity photo-op to show he’s involved in the community. But Beth is wholeheartedly against it (for what it’s worth, Randall actually seems on board with this idea until Beth cuts in), and Jae-Won is so annoyed with Beth that they get into a major argument in the middle of the place and Randall has to break it up. Jae-Won calls him aside to plead his case once more, and all Randall can say is that she's his wife-which is his only basis for siding with her. Not because she’s making the right decision, but because she’s his wife. With that, Jae-Won storms off, and Beth, who realizes what Randall is saying, is hurt. She confronts him about whether her hire was out of pity or if he actually values her decisions. It’s the former, though he can’t bring himself to vocalize this, and Beth gets the message and is both pissed and disappointed. But she can’t discuss this with him like she wants to because there’s more drama brewing back at home.
Tess comes out as gay.
Tess spends most of the episode locked away in the bathroom while Kate and Toby try-and fail-to make a Thanksgiving dinner in Beth and Randall’s home while they’re at the soup kitchen. It turns out Tess just got her first period and doesn’t really know what to do. She had an embarrassing moment when Toby tries to check on her and she’s got her hands with boxes of tampons, so Kate comes in to try to console her, even offering her own first-period humiliation story. It's a cute moment between aunt and niece because we’ve ever seen them alone together like this, which makes Tess coming out to her particularly interesting. It’s subtle, with Tess responsding to Kate referring to Tess’s future boyfriend with “…or girlfriend.” I like that Kate, who’s about to become a mom herself, handles this well, promising Tess she won’t tell her parents. So these two characters, who’ve never even spent a scene together, now have a big secret between them.
Jack refuses to accept that cannot save Nicky in Vietnam.
Jack hasn’t come to terms with the fact that his baby brother has become a different man in Vietnam. He went to the war on a mission to save Nicky, but there might be nothing left of Nicky to actually save. He’s completely desensitized at this point, hardened by all the atrocities he’s seen, and even turns down Jack’s offer to have Thanksgiving dinner with the other soldiers. He also turns down Jack’s plea to help a small boy, the son of the Mystery Vietnam Woman, who’s been terribly hurt. Jack goes so far as demanding Nicky help the boy, but the younger Pearson still refuses. He later reveals to Jack that his experiences in the war have given him an unwavering distrust of Vietnamese people.
The writers give us a lot to chew on with Nicky’s devastating monologue to Jack, highlighting some of the horrors he’s witnessed that have completely removed him from feeling any sense of humanity-even toward his own brother. These two brothers, who grew up in the same bitter house with two distant parents, have to come to terms with what war means to them. For Jack, it’s about being a hero. For Nicky, it’s about resolving oneself to the brutality of life here. It’s not about making friends with anyone.
Yet Jack still clings to what little beauty there is at war, because we later see the Mystery Woman give him her chain necklace as a token of her appreciation.
We go back to the beginning of William and Jessie’s relationship.
It’s been a while since we’ve seen William and Jessie in the narrative, but they're brought back this week in honor of the season of giving. The two, who previously met at AA, bump into each other once again on Thanksgiving, when Jessie is seen cradling a wine bottle outside a convenience store. William invites him back to his place for a real meal and an honest conversation about his struggles with addiction. At this point, it seems like a very friendly gathering between two like-minded souls. But later, when Jesse brings a woman to watch William play jazz, William inquires about her. Jesse simply responds, “She’s my cousin.”
We haven’t seen much between Jesse and Randall in the past, and this insert narrative this week makes me think that we might get a chance to see them reconnect.
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