'This Is Us' Episode 6, Season 1 Review

Image from TVLine

By Darian Scalamoni

            The show has worked its way upward after last week’s episode that disappointed just a bit and it starts again with Kevin who did some great work on the show this week yet again. His track featured him struggling with grief while in rehearsals for the play he’ll star in with Olivia. To get the most out of Kevin, she brings him to a memorial service to someone that neither of them know. When Kevin interacts with the widow of the one who has passed, he brings up the fact that when he was 15, his father passed away. This was a very emotional moment where we finally got some context just how old the kids were when Jack had died and with all of them dealing with their own problems, it’s understandable now to think they didn’t have the right guidance into their teenage years. I just hope this doesn’t mean that Milo Ventimiglia will be headed out after only one season of the show because he dazzles week in and week out. This week was no exception.

            Jack had a central role of father this week as he dealt with an issue that put him in as tough a spot as any so far this season. In this episode, Jack discovered that Randall was gifted. Gifted in a way that other people would look at him differently and he already was getting glances for being the only black kid in a white family. Jack battled between enrolling Randall into a private learning academy and keeping him enrolled within the same school as Kevin and Kate but ultimately decided that the best thing for his son was to push him to a place where, yes, he would be different, but in his own words, it’d be a “good kind of different”. While this is happening, he’s also struggling with his own kind of battle; whether he wants to start his own business. He has an idea to start a home building company called Big Three Homes after his “big three” at home but he ultimately decides against it to take a promotion that is offered by Miguel to make enough to send Randall to the academy.

            Kate on the other hand was without Toby for the first time this season and has her own very good episode in which she goes for a job interview to become an event planner and personal assistant for a woman named Marin, but quickly realizes that this isn’t a regular job interview. She gets the job but then discovers that she was partly hired because Marin thinks that Kate can get through to her overweight daughter, Gemma. This ultimately backfires and leads to a pissed-off Kate kicking Gemma out of the car while chauffeuring her to her friend’s house. This almost causes Kate to walk away from the job but Marin apologizes and gives her a promotion. Before Kate leaves though, she leaves Gemma with some personal tidbits about herself, “I used to compare myself to my gorgeous, thin mom and now we barely talk and it sucks.” The stars are finally aligning with the whole situation between Kate and Mandy Moore’s Rebecca character week by week.

            And then we get to my favorite character, Randall, who received a large chunk of the story this week. Though most of it was his younger storyline, we also see Sterling K. Brown question his career choice as a weather trader for a life as a musician. This all comes to fruition when his father, William, is playing the piano for his grandkids and they ask if he can come to Career Day for them. Randall gets jealous and upset as the girls say his job is boring which leads him to spice things up a bit with a song. Only problem is, Randall according to his wife Beth has “no discernible musical talent”. This leads to a cringe-worthy scene in which he attempts to play a song on the piano and sing at Career Day to which Beth has another hilarious line to her daughters: “look away”. While it is an awful look for the girls, it helps Randall discover something that he wants to do. When William offers to teach his son how to play piano, he declines and then informs the family that he’ll be getting piano lessons. What a midlife crisis huh? Best thing about this show though continues to be the Emmy-winning actor’s presence and even more so, his dynamic with his on-screen wife played wonderfully by Susan Kelechi Watson.

            All in all, this might just be my favorite episode of the series so far because of how triumphant all the main characters become. It’s a feel-good episode, yes, but we see some real emotional moments between Kevin, younger Randall and Jack as well that make “What if?” theme of this episode so beloved.

9.1/10