- Randall
This episode had a lot going on this week. Then again, that describes pretty much every episode of “This Is Us” ever. It seems that it’s been about three weeks in both the present and the past since last we saw everyone. In the 1990s, Jack is still going to AA but he’s finding it difficult to open up to the group and he’s having trouble talking to Rebecca about his feelings, too. Rebecca clearly notices his distance and after having lunch with Shelley (Miguel’s ex-wife) Rebecca decides to “Jack Pearson” her husband by planning a romantic night. They go to the burger place they like and drive to the spot of one of their first dates, where they spent the night in the car because the concert they were going to see was rained out. Rebecca starts getting all handsy but Jack pushes her off. He’s just not ready yet. When they get back to the house, Jack admits that his life before they met was pretty terrible and the program says to deal with that stuff and move forward but he’s finding it hard to hold it together. He wants to talk to her about things but he’s afraid of feeling the way he’s feeling. But they get back in the car and keep talking. Jack admits that he borrowed money from his dad to buy the house. He’s got other things he needs to share in his own time and Rebecca promises she’ll be ready when he is. They end up having sex and for the moment things look like it might be heading back toward normal for these two. They also find the dog that Kate had the night we see that Jack died so we are clearly not too far off.
While Jack and Rebecca are rekindling their relationship, Randall is taking the initiative to try and find his birth parents by putting out a classified ad. He gets a response but Kate and Kevin are skeptical. Well, Kate mostly so they go to the park with him when he goes to meet the woman who claims to be his birth mother. She turns out to be a strung out white lady and Randall very quickly realizes it’s wrong and books it out of there. Good on him! When Kate and Kevin ask why he started the search now, he explains that it’s like this ringing sensation in his ears that comes and goes. I didn’t really get what he was trying to describe but I’m sure for him, it was valid.
Speaking of Randall, in the present, he and Beth get the news that they’ve been waiting for. A twelve-year-old girl named Deja is going to be staying with them. But she’s not at all what they expected. She doesn’t say much and she’s very jumpy. Obviously, she’s coming from a very bad situation but she visibly flinches when she’s in an argument with Beth and Randall comes into the room. Beth manages to calm people down and they’ll talk about it in the morning. But that night, Deja goes into Tess and Annie’s room and starts pressing them for the household rules and what happens if they break them. She kind of can’t believe they both have iPads and punishment for rule breaking is losing privileges. We then flash back to the first night William was with the family and Annie catches him trying to leave. She warns he’ll set off the alarm if he opens the door and then she convinces him to stay by recounting a time she went for a sleep over at a friend’s house and was sad when she went home because she could have had fun. She’s a pretty smart little girl and I wasn’t expecting the William cameo! The next morning, Randall gets Deja’s file from social services and learns that her mother will likely be in jail for a while. Randall tries to soften this by leading into the conversation with the fact that he sees some of himself in her and that since his life turned out pretty great with the extended network of people he had, maybe it will for her. But she can’t seem to accept that her mother won’t be coming back.
Across the country in LA, Kate is visiting Kevin on the set of his movie and she totally fangirls out over meeting Sylvester Stallone. While Kevin is prepping for the first of two scenes, Kate is chilling with Sly, telling him about Jack’s love of all things Stallone and how they used to watch all of his movies when she was a kid. Be it when she or Jack were sick. It really was another bonding moment with Kate and Jack and it was really sweet. Right before the first scene in which Kevin is supposed to give a big emotional monologue, Stallone mentions that Kate told him about Jack and this totally throws Kevin off his game. He can’t even get through the scene. As he tries we see him flash to different points in his childhood with Jack. Afterwards, he and Kate get into a big fight about Jack’s death. It appears clear to everyone but Kevin that he hasn’t dealt with his feelings about his father’s death. But he refuses to acknowledge it in that moment. The next scene is an action sequence and he’s supposed to be saving Stallone. Again, as he’s going through the scene we see him flashing to Jack and we get very brief snippets of Kevin in the hospital with his broken leg, which leads to Kevin falling and reinjuring his leg. He calls Kate to apologize and tells her that he banged up his leg but he brushes off her concern when she says he needs to keep an eye on his leg. As the episode comes to a close, we see him downing some painkillers. Given the family history of addiction, I fear we have to be worried about Kevin!
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