‘This Is Us’ Recap: Blue Christmas

Warning: This recap of the “The Last Christmas” episode of This Is Us contains spoilers.

By the end of the episode, someone’s going to need a Christmas miracle.

JACK AND REBECCA

We open on Christmas Eve 1989, as the Pearsons are busy decorating the tree, planning to go caroling, counting presents, getting in some last-minute naughtiness, and discussing “Jesus stuff” as the reason for the season. As she is planning a family trip to church so they can learn the true meaning of the holiday, Kate complains about tummy pain. Her mom chalks it up to her eating the cookies meant for Santa, but turns out she’s in need of an emergency appendectomy.

Kate’s freaked out — as are her brothers, especially her twin, who won’t leave her side until forced to by the operating room door, so Rebecca thinks fast and grabs a bit of branch from the hospital’s decorations and tells everyone that the greenery is filled with Christmas magic. Kate’s going to be fine because “nothing bad ever happens on Christmas Eve.”

While getting snacks out of the vending machine, Rebecca hears a familiar voice, and the information that follows is going to test her recent promise. Dr. K, who delivered the babies, was in the hospital as a patient. He hit some ice on the way to the airport to see his family in Montana and wrapped his car around a lamppost. He fears that with the weather his family won’t get there in time to say goodbye. There’s an internal slow hemorrhage between the heart and the lung.

“I’m sure they’ll try [to operate], but don’t let the flattering hospital light fool you. I’m old and the odds of digging around in me without causing either a massive stroke or bleed out are close,” he says.

Rebecca decides they’ll be his surrogate family for the night, and Jack explains to Randall that he delivered Kevin and Kate and “without him we wouldn’t have found you, so he’s kind of responsible for our family.”

Jack feels it is not just coincidence. “The only reason you delivered our kids is because our doctor’s appendix burst and Kate’s appendix brought us back here, on Christmas Eve of all nights. You’re going to be fine,” he insists.

Dr. K is his usual sassy self. “Glad to hear you became a doctor in the years since we met. Are you trying to wax poetic? I’d rather you wax that mustache. If your musings on the circle of life are going to be the last thing I hear, dear God, take me now,” he says.

Randall, whom Kevin previously accused of hoarding his money because he was cheap, buys the doctor a snow globe and tells him it’s because he was “the reason they adopted me.”

The doc is visibly moved. “That is a fine snow globe, but the only thing I did that day was nudge a man in a direction he already wanted to go. If at some point in your life you find a way to show somebody else the same kindness that your parents showed you, that’s all the present I’ll need,” he says.

KEVIN

Apparently Olivia has gone AWOL since that confrontation at the Pearson family cabin, and without a lead actress, the producers cancel Kevin’s Broadway debut on Christmas Eve. Sloane the playwright blames him. “You slept with the Tony-nominated star of my play and ruined everything,” she tells him. “And now I have to go to Hanukkah dinner and tell my parents and my perfect sister that the play isn’t happening after years of hearing I would never be a playwright.”

Feeling badly, Kevin asks what he can do to make it up to her. She already has an idea: He’ll be her dinner date, as she apparently blurted out that she was dating the Manny to get her mom off her back. Kevin explains that he can’t because he has a family tradition of his own at Randall’s house. “I’m not asking. You owe me,” Sloane says. “I can’t show up with no play and no Manny.”

Luckily, Kevin did that storyline on the show twice so he doesn’t think it’s an insane plan. Kevin is charming and gets a taste of Jewish mom guilt and competitive sisters. As Sloane recounts the Hanukkah tale of Jews fighting to get their temple back, and how God made one jug of oil last eight nights as a reward for having faith and standing up for themselves, Kevin gets an idea and in the process spills the beans about the play. “No one believes I am a real actor or you are a real playwright. Screw these producers. Let’s put the play on ourselves,” he says. “I’ll put up my own money. I have faith in us. What do you have to lose?”

KATE

Kate and Rebecca meet with a specialist regarding gastric bypass. The woman gives the laundry list of horrors that could occur postsurgery, which include malnutrition, osteoporosis, and the shakes, vomiting, sweats, and diarrhea if she eats too much — although she says it is still “a very positive choice for most people.”

Rebecca shudders. “I thought the surgery itself was the only thing I had to be concerned about,” she says. She gets a further eyeful when she stares at Kate’s weight and finds out that her daughter takes Prozac for depression (“Because I’m not always jolly,” Kate explains) and that she binged as recently as last month.

Kate decides she doesn’t feel like going to Randall’s, either, and the silent car ride home forces Rebecca to ask the hard question: “Did I do this? I did, didn’t I, with the food. Was I bringing it up too much? Not enough? I never knew what to say. Did I do this to you?”

“I don’t know,” Kate says. “You know what I want? I want one person to tell me I am doing the right thing.”

Rebecca recalls the appendectomy and being so scared for her “little baby girl.” Kate asks what she told her back then and her mother answers: “That nothing bad happens on Christmas Eve.”

“I bet I liked it,” Kate says as she softens, and they both have a good laugh at Miguel trying to find his inner Clark Griswold on the lawn.

WILLIAM

William recalls the moment that turned his life around at an AA/NA meeting, enabling him to reconnect with Randall. He remembers seeing a monkey on the street in the middle of the night that gave him a look that rocked him. “I can’t say if he was real, but I knew in general, if you are out on the street at 3:30 in the morning, at some point you made a very wrong turn. So I stopped the drugs and learned to tame that wildness from the inside until I could eventually walk in the daylight,” he says. “That’s why when a man knocked on my door one day I was there to open it. I don’t know if it was from God or what. I did not expect God’s grace, but I had to open myself to the pain of it to feel the joy of it. The holidays are hard times, but tonight I will go back to my son’s house and have Christmas with his beautiful family and stay up late enough to feel Christmas Eve turn into Christmas Day one last time. You gave me that and I want to say I’m grateful.”

His story is followed by Jesse’s (welcome, amazing Denis O’Hare!) heart-wrenching one about being in a good place, habits under control, a year earlier thanks to diligent meeting attendance and finding love — until the object of his affection disappeared. “I thought he had died or had been killed or was in jail. Then I found out he was fine,” Jesse says. “He found a new love — his family. I wanted to be happy for him, but I was very bad at it. I turned to my old habits to chase away the question about how a person could behave in so inhuman a way. Now to get better I have to learn a new skill — forgiveness — and so far it seems I am also very bad at that. This group is the one thing I can depend on.”

Turns out William was the bad guy in that story and that he was hoping Jesse would show up to that meeting so that he could tell him how sorry he was for leaving without giving them “a proper goodbye.” He also informs him that the cancer has spread and the prognosis is grim.

“Three months ago, I didn’t think I’d be anywhere tonight. I was so broken I would visit your old neighbor so I could hold your damn cat,” Jesse says before offering up a proposition. “I loved you and you left. Now I would like to spend whatever time you have remaining together. Would you?”

RANDALL

Randall and Beth are stuck at his work holiday party when he hears that everyone is canceling on the festivities at his house, including William. But Beth has something else she needs to talk about: She overheard in the bathroom that Randall bought a co-worker’s boat.

“This boat isn’t a boat. This boat is sadness. When you get depressed, you buy things,” she says as he argues that “sadness” is a terrible name for a boat, denies being depressed, and claims he understands what his mother did. “Baby, please! Your dad is dying and your mother kept a secret. Understanding and forgiveness are two very different animals,” Beth says. “The adult in you is probably all good, but the little boy in you is still hurt. Go un-buy the boat.”

Randall says he can’t at the moment because the boss is still giving out bonuses. He holds the annual party on Christmas Eve because he doesn’t have any family.

Randall jokes, “Neither do we. They all canceled. I want it to go back to the way it was before, before I went and stirred everything up, found William, and opened the door to everybody’s drama.”

Related: Toast of 2016: Sterling K. Brown Talks the Power of His 1-2 Punch: The People v. O.J. Simpson and This Is Us

Randall wanders off to find the guy he bought the boat from, and now we have our second awesome guest-star gift of the night, Jimmi Simpson (Westworld, House of Cards). Randall catches him on the balcony with a note to his daughter, a finished drink, his dad’s vintage watch, and a wedding band all residing on the railing. It does not take long for Randall to put two and two together and start trying to talk him off the ledge.

Turns out his marriage is ruined, and his wife, Katharine, filed for divorce because he had a long-term affair with a girl. “Katharine was good; always there. I worked and she took care of me, our family, and our lives. At some she went from a wife to a teammate and you don’t have sex with your teammate. You have sex with Tina from payables,” the man says. “[Our marriage] is done. She filed. It’s broken. I broke it for no reason. My wife, my best friend, is gone. My kid is gone. While I was here, Katharine built our life. Our family, our friends, they all went with her. My career is gone and I’m dealing with it all by myself. I found myself making crazy trades, taking huge risks. I lost a lot of money — mine and other people’s.”

Randall realizes that’s why he sold him the boat and says he won’t back out of the deal. He continues to push and say he shouldn’t do this irreversible thing. “Good God, man, you made a mistake, and I know what it’s like to feel like you aren’t allowed to, but you don’t get to just quit,” Randall counters when the co-worker says he doesn’t get it because Randall’s life is perfect. “You don’t have a monopoly on pain. My father left me at a fire station, and this year I found him and I forgave him. My mother did some things too, but she’s still in my life. He is too, because there is always a chance things will get better. If you love [your daughter] Chloe hard, she will love you back. She will forgive you. But not if you can’t, not if you make this the story. It is your job as her father to stay here until she is ready, and if you can do that, Chloe will forgive you.”

Just as Beth comes out to find him, Randall thinks he’s failed, but he sees the man putting his watch back on and returning to the party. Beth wonders why he is so worked up and he says the family Christmas Eve motto.

US

Beth and Randall return home with the daughters in tow. Just as he gets right with a quiet Christmas for four, Kevin shows up with Sloane and his mom. Kate and Miguel follow. The kids think they see Santa on the lawn, and it turns out to be Toby in a Santa hat.

Kate is shocked: “Are you really here?”

Toby makes yet another grand gesture. “I just spent six hours in a middle seat on something called Zoom Airlines, so I am as surprised as you are. Kate, I am taking the first steps in overcoming our insanity one last time for both of us because it’s Christmas and because we’re good together. I went back on the diet. I can live without pizza and cookies and potato chips. The one thing I cannot live without is you,” he says. “Six hours in a middle seat gives a guy plenty of time to prepare an entrance.”

Toby complains about feeling like death, but is cured by Kate’s offer to sneak off to have sex upstairs. They get caught returning, disheveled and Toby breathing heavily, by Beth, who giddily points out that his shirt is buttoned wrong.

William arrives with Jesse, and as the evening wears on, Randall notices Jesse rubbing William’s back at the piano, and he asks Beth if William ever mentioned this friend or what he means to William. And in one of the best, most realistic, yet surprising, moments of This Is Us so far, the oldest daughter nonchalantly says, “It’s like Roy at school with two dads. Grandpa’s gay. Or at least bi.”

“What’s that now?” Randall asks incredulously, smiling and perplexed simultaneously. (And that’s the kind of line delivery and subtle body language and facial expressions that bagged that Emmy for Sterling K. Brown.)

At least momentarily, all the drama and secrets are forgiven, and all that’s left is a room full of love. Everyone is playing with dolls, getting to know each other better, reading stories, doing karaoke, laughing, and eating. But as I warned in the beginning, things are always darkest before the dawn in these parts. As Randall takes the kids to bed and Miguel naps on the couch, Toby gets up to help clear the table and suddenly collapses. (Our money is on deep vein thrombosis given the middle seat, his weight, and the heavy panting earlier.)

The show flashes back to 1989 and Dr. K heads off to surgery. There is a flurry of operating table sequences and dialogue snippets. We knew Kate obviously survived appendix removal, and they reveal that a shocked Dr. K also survives the night. They then pan up to reveal that the person being worked on and getting the paddles is Toby before fading to black.

Now we’re all left to wonder if the episode’s ominous title is referring to him or William or even Jack for five weeks — the show is on break until Jan. 10. This is worse than getting gifted with fruitcake.

This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.