Season 2, Episode 6
Original Air Date: October 31, 2017
Unlike most of the shows I’ve watched this Shocktober, I actually do have some familiarity with This Is Us, albeit for dumb reasons. Earlier this year, my YouTube algorithm started recommending I watch clips of the most emotional scenes from this series that ended in 2022 and I obliged the machine, as I am wont to do. Watched out of order and context, I saw enough to pick up the gist of the show and it’s characters. It’s a show about three siblings and their parents. My understanding is that every week, This Is Us would employ a technique now popularized by our diabolical criminal ex-president, “the weave,” to juxtapose pivotal moments in the lives of this family across decades. So, for example, you’ll see the siblings fight over something as kids and then support each other in the modern day, having learned some lesson from their great dad or whatever. Basically it is a well-oiled machine designed to make you cry. But does that actually make for good TV?
Again, I haven’t seen the show before, but it is my understanding that for it’s first season, the show mainly told present-day stories with flashbacks back to adolescence. Season two started adding in even more timelines, including before the kids were born, their teenage years, and even their more recent young adult years, which is where this episode gets its title. “The ’20s” is called that because it’s one of our first times (maybe the first?) that we see the big three (as the siblings are called) in their twenties. Specifically, this is Halloween 2008, which the show milks so much by having (presumably leftover) Obama ’08 campaign merch covering every scene. It’s actually something you don’t see a lot in Halloween media, the idea that Halloween is right before our presidential election, and certainly extremely relatable to all of us right now.
So here’s the thing, Mandy Moore, who by the way is I think the youngest member of the main cast, plays a bunch of ages in the show pretty convincingly. The makeup looks good, her mannerisms are definitely different, the plotline where she signs up for Facebook in this episode is perfectly cringey for a middle-aged woman in 2008. What’s harder to buy are the big three playing maybe 10 years younger than they actually are. Sterling K. Brown, Chrissy Metz, and Justin Hartley all feel like people in their late-thirties dressing up as people in their mid-twenties, which is maybe appropriate for a Halloween episode. But I just found it jarring to see this extremely adult-looking people making childish mistakes. Maybe I shouldn’t complain, I guess I should commend the cast for being game enough to even try this.
I get the impression the show recognized that Sterling K. Brown is destined to be a huge star, because he’s given so much more to do here too. In the childhood story, it’s Halloween and the kids each have an agenda but none more than Randall (Lonnie Chavis/Sterling K. Brown) who has a very specific map and schedule all planned out. His siblings don’t think that’s fun so they end up splitting up, with Randall being accompanied by his mom, Rebecca (Mandy Moore). Rebecca is concerned that Randall is maybe on the spectrum, so she pushes him to deviate from his map but this backfires when the neighbors she encourages him to trick or treat from reveal to Randall that him and his siblings had another brother who died at birth. So Rebecca has to explain the big lore to Randall before she planned on it (although I’m sure this is well known to the audience by this point), that she gave birth to triplets and one died and Randall had been born that same night so they adopted him. He takes it well, but adult Randall is freaking out on Halloween 2008 because his first daughter is about to be born.
Randall vents his anxiety into trying to install a ceiling fan in the nursery but can’t get it to work. His frustration scares his wife, Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson), who vents her own concerns to Rebecca and is overheard by Randall. He goes to a hardware store to buy a new fan and meets a magical employee who gives him the sage advice he needed to hear and recommends a different fan, but at exactly that moment Beth goes into labor. Randall makes it home in time to coach Beth through delivering their baby in the kitchen and later finds the ceiling fan flyer the employee gave him and they decide to name their daughter after it: Tess. Meanwhile the other two siblings are just big fuck ups: Kate (Chrissy Metz) sleeps with a married man because she’s depressed and Kevin (Justin Hartley) destroys a friendship when he tries to go behind an actor friend’s back to try to steal a role at a party Kevin only got to go to because that friend invited him. It all leads to a hammy monologue where Rebecca gives a speech across time and space, introducing herself to the newborn Randall and newborn Tess. I didn’t cry but I felt like I was supposed to.
This Is Us is a lot. It’s a sophisticated concept that demands the audience pay attention, so I respect it for that. But also it is trying so, so hard to tug at your heartstrings. I didn’t even mentioned the plot with the dad and Kate and Kevin, where Kevin trades his candy so a boy Kate has a crush on will hold her hand and the dad silently watches and beams with pride. I genuinely wonder if the show has any other mode besides melodrama? It made for a long 42 minutes on Hulu. And yet I’m still intrigued. Maybe I should start from the beginning like you’re supposed to? It’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off.