‘This Is Us’ Recap: The Pursuit of Happiness
Warning: This post contains spoilers from the “I Call Marriage” episode of This Is Us.
Sure we loved seeing Jack and Rebecca’s big day in all its ’70s blue eyeshadow gloriousness, but now everything feels like contextual buildup to that one moment every fan is dreading.
Per usual at a wedding, optimism is high, including within Miguel’s speech. “I used to call her Yoko Ono until he started using words like ‘forever.’ You guys made some pretty big promises to each other, but if I trust anyone to keep them, it is the two of you.”
That flashback as well as other glimpses of their pre-kid days, including shower sex and bathroom shenanigans, are a stark contrast to the next scene of them getting ready in almost silence in what we’re assuming is the ’90s, as Jack now has a goatee and a teenage Kate comes in asking her mom for a tampon. (Side note: Important to notice that she says nothing to her dad? He only warrants a half smile.)
While at dinner with Miguel and Shelly, Rebecca tells a story about catching Kevin sneaking a girl (assuming it was Sophie) out of his basement room. Jack jokes, “It’s like we gave the kid a bachelor pad.”
Rebecca is just thrilled to be out. “Between the kids and the band and your work schedule, we never get this kind of time for ourselves.” Jack responds, “I pretty much have to go to a show if I want to schedule time with my wife nowadays.”
They laugh and hold hands, but there is clearly tension there. Miguel and his wife decide it’s the perfect moment to drop the divorce bomb. Miguel explains, “It isn’t an easy decision, but things haven’t been right with us for some time.” Shelly adds, “We want to do it before things get ugly and we’re still friends and can co-parent.”
It’s impossible not to discuss the news before bed and wonder if they too are drifting apart. Jack is shocked. “That’s BS. You don’t do that to your family. You find your soul mate, get married, and stay together until you die. Period.” (Foreshadowing much?)
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“It’s not always that simple. Not everyone’s you,” Rebecca rationalizes. “There wasn’t one thing. She’s been unhappy. It just happened.”
Jack’s world is still rocked when he catches Miguel flirting with the redhead at work, and Jack needs to know more. Miguel denies an affair and says they just drifted. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve woken up at 6:30 and make her coffee. One day I didn’t feel like making her one. The worst part was she didn’t notice. We stopped noticing each other. We stopped trying to make each happy. Every couple has a handful of those moments, crossroads. They’re make or break, these moments.
“You either roll up or sleeves and fight, or you decide that you are tired and give up. I had one of these moments.”
After Rebecca’s gig at the bar, Ben, who had been staring at her in a suspect way during “My Funny Valentine,” surprises her with news that a booking agent wants to book them for an East Coast tour on “actual stages” in five states. When she explains that she’ll have to discuss it with Jack because they have a family, Ben oversteps. “You deserve this. If Jack really loves you, he’ll understand.”
Rebecca is having none of that. “Please do not tell me what Jack would do if he really loved me. He works 10-, 12-hour days, and he’s picked up all the slack at home just so I can be here. He leaves work early and goes to every football game [of their sons] just so that they know someone is in the stands to support them. He always leaves me a glass of water on my bedside table because he’s worried I’m not drinking enough. My husband is a freaking superhero. You have no idea what you are talking about.”
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Miguel’s speech apparently lit a fire under Jack’s butt. He sent the kids to sleepovers, packed a bag, and planned a romantic night in their first apartment. When he removes her blindfold, she is wowed by twinkle lights, candles, and tossed flower petals. “I know we are not Shelly and Miguel,” Jack states. “But we need to take the time and remember the newlyweds that lived here, because I miss them sometimes.”
The surprise continues after throwback shower sex when Jack unearths their touching handwritten vows and they read them to each other. Jack’s promise to love her “every day for the rest of his life, to create a home, raise a family, share dreams, and grow old with” her. (And now we are crying again because we know that he doesn’t get to do one of those things.)
Hers confirm that in him she’s found a “soul mate, best friend, partner, lover, safe place. You are my great love story.” But just as they are both feeling like the relationship is solid, she admits that she wants to go on the tour. (Oh man, don’t think we can take it if he dies while she’s on the road.)
Kevin
After getting his ex-wife to agree to meet him, Kevin pleads with an elderly couple to switch seats at a diner. “This is a special booth. My ex-wife and I had lunch on our trip to the Statue of Liberty. I got seasick. It was awful until she kissed me. That happened right here. So did the conversation where I decided that I was going to move to L.A. and follow my dreams. We sat here until the place closed trying to convince each other that we could handle the distance. We were wrong. It has been 12 years and she agreed to meet me here today, so I need this booth.”
They get up in exchange for the Manny’s autograph, but Sophie is less nostalgic when she walks in. “What the hell’s the matter with you? Who do you think you are showing up on my doorstep like that? Do you have any idea how invasive that is? You better be dying and soon. You’re not, are you? You’re glowing. It’s so annoying. Why don’t you age? I only came here today to tell you to go screw yourself.”
But when the lava fries arrive, she slides into the booth in defeat. (And we get it. Who can resist free carbs?) Kevin dives in with questions. “I want to know everything that happened to you since I last saw you. Nice to talk to you and pick up where we left off.”
That comment reminds her that this meeting “was a mistake,” and she makes a run for the subway. Kevin gives chase. “Where we left off was you cheating on me and ruining our marriage,” she says, refusing to talk further even though he offers to discuss the adultery. “I don’t want to do this with you.”
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Of course, as luck would have it, that’s when the train breaks down. He goes over to reassure her as he knows she gets claustrophobic, which leads to small talk about his twin and Miguel who he was “always so hard on.” Kevin is sorry to have heard about her mom’s MS diagnosis, which leads to him coming clean about creating a fake Facebook account to keep tabs on her.
She opens up a little about their post-breakup life. “I moved back in with my parents. I dated a bunch of jerks. I wasn’t in a good place for a long time. I’m happy now. I like my job. I have an apartment with exposed brick. And I’m finally dating a nice guy. He’s solid.”
Kevin doesn’t want to ruin that for her, but he also still loves and even remembers that she wore overalls the first day of fourth grade because her walking into his fourth-grade class was “the second best thing that ever happened” in his entire life. It places just behind the day she agreed to marry him. He tells her he’ll be waiting for her in their booth the next morning if she wants to carry on with their reunion. Just as Kevin is getting hopeless, Sophie enters.
Randall
Randall’s headed for an anxiety attack, and the worst part is he isn’t letting Beth in on any of it as far as we can tell. He doesn’t tell her about the nightmare in which he found William dead at the piano.
When Annie wets the bed, they discover Tess is not asleep either. She’s downstairs getting chess lessons from William even though it is past midnight because she has a tournament the next day that everyone forgot about. She pleads, “He’s always napping when I get home from school and I have soccer on Saturdays. You said that he wouldn’t be here forever so I have to play with him as much as possible.”
Randall reverts to denial, claiming she has plenty more nights of chess with William. William ignores his son and says, “She’s right. I’m running out of time.”
Randall also can’t handle his and Beth’s meeting with someone to talk about making William’s last few months less painful as that’s how much time his doctors think he has. Randall erupts, “Should we start digging his grave now or wait until there is a body?”
When the conversation turns to coping techniques, especially for the girls, Randall excuses himself to go to work even though he told Beth he’d take the morning off, and blames the team meeting.
Work isn’t going any better. It’s clear Sanjay won the derivative contest and when Randall offers to take a client he has history with to dinner, his boss tells him to bring Sanjay. Randall’s resistance (“I’ve been doing this for 12 years. I don’t need an assist”) is shot down, and Sanjay suggests they go that night. Randall agrees even though he’s supposed to go to Tess’s match.
He returns home to see Beth showing the girls the memory box she made when her father died. She explains that it came up during the meeting as a way to help the girls with their grief. Randall shoots the concept down, “There’s no grief, the man’s alive. Can you please stop saying things like died or passing or end of life?”
Beth does not back down. “Neither of us was prepared when our fathers died. I want my babies to be ready. They deserve that.” Then she realizes he’s wearing his cool-guy shirt, and Randall explains that he has to take a client out because Sanjay “is kicking [his] ass” at work.
Again Beth stands her ground. “So is taking care of your father and our two freaked out daughters. No, I call marriage tonight. I’m sorry baby. I need my teammate. And take off that shirt. It wasn’t cool on Sisqo in 2001. I love you. I just don’t like that shirt.”
Tess wins the tournament and William is beaming with pride, which makes Randall finally open up a tiny bit. “I didn’t make a mistake by bringing a dying man into their lives, did I? It’s not going to break them is it?”
Beth argues that it was a good thing that brings them joy. By the time she asks if he’s OK, Randall is back to denial mode even though Sanjay has ignored his text about the dinner. Turns out he has reason for concern. The client is at his work when he arrives for a meeting with Sanjay. Before he can go in and say hi, his boss asks to talk. “I want to split your accounts between you and Sanjay. This isn’t a punishment. For 10 years, you have been the first one in and the last one out. You need the support. You are still my top guy, but this is happening.”
At home that night, when Beth is already asleep, Randall gets the shakes when trying to pick up a glass. Will he finally admit he isn’t all right to Beth?
Kate and Toby
Kate is settling into a routine at fat camp and concentrating on giving her all to hiking uphill, yoga, and boxing. Duke is still in hot pursuit and also still a “prick,” as evidenced by his need to rain on another female camper’s parade when she excitedly tells Kate that she’s so close to nailing the dreaded crow pose.
But before she can protest too much at this, she gets a text from Toby that includes pictures of him in ridiculous tuxedos and directs her to the front office to collect a package he sent her. The care package of her favorite things like magazines and body wash also includes a life-size Toby who is eager to see the place and then duck out to a hotel room in town. “I got cleared for low-impact lovemaking. None of that crazy stuff you’re into,” he jokes.
But Kate turns him down, blaming the program’s “tight schedule.” He says he doesn’t want to screw up her progress like he has in the past, and that earns him a “you’re the sweetest man in the whole world” title. As Toby is leaving, dreams of afternoon delight dashed, he runs into Duke, who confuses him for a camper. Duke promises he will clean up as the place “is crawling with women who have lost a few stones and are feeling frisky especially on Thursdays. That’s when everyone gets 5 ounces of white wine.”
Toby clarifies that he was visiting his fiancée, Kate. Duke starts to back away and says, “This just got awkward. Just kidding. Cool girl. Good for you.” But it was enough weirdness to make Toby feel threatened, so he gets a day pass and shows up in her drumming class. Between his light-up shoes and Def Leppard jokes, Kate is beyond annoyed. “You aren’t supposed to be here. I take this place seriously, and you were acting like a total ass. I thought you were leaving.”
He tells her about his run-in with “her friend Duke,” the “real dick,” but there’s more to his crashing the class, including his surgery incisions not healing as quickly as anticipated. “Do you ever think I need you to do something nice for me? I was alone in New York. I wake up and my chest is so tight I think it is going to happen again. I want you to be here, but it also hurt that you didn’t want to spend the day with me.”
He gives her the goodie bag again and this time takes out her “last surprise” — a ring box containing his grandmother’s jewelry. He leaves with his head in his hands promising, “I won’t cramp your style anymore.”
Later, Duke finds her trying to sweat out her feelings in the gym and inquires about the lovers’ quarrel. She swears she will not “eat and self-sabotage,” like that’s the old her.
Duke offers some words of wisdom. (Maybe? It is hard to tell if he is sincere or manipulative or possibly both.) I get it. “I used to be like you. Thought I could will myself to be a different kind of man. I could lose the weight, get a job my parents could brag to their friends about, date nice girl Molly. Met the fiancé, good guy. Guess he’s your Molly. It’s a hell of a lot easier to accept who you are in all your damaged glory than try to be someone you’re not; a lot more fun too. The offer still stands.”
That night Kate looks at her message-less phone and heads toward cabin 13. Hope next episode she doesn’t do what it sure seems like she’s going to do. Did she learn nothing from Kevin’s torrid history?
This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC. Watch clips and full episodes of This Is Us free on Yahoo View.
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