This Is Us - Kevin Reaches Out For A Piece Of Jack's Past Essay

Last week it was Kevin’s movie premiere, but it became more about Kate and Zoe refused to come to it as Kevin’s date. Kate hurt Kevin and Randall by declaring she would be the only one to carry Jack on to a new generation. And the backstory had Randall giving up going to Howard University to stay home to help Rebecca cope with Jack’s loss.

The show opens with Rebecca as a child being told her father is coming home and she needs to pick up her toys. She lives through many more times her father came home and her mother made a big deal out of it. Then she’s a teen in home economics class and she’s horrible at it. So she joins woodshop class instead. A boy named Alan helps her saw some wood. The boy who helped her, Alan, shows up at Rebecca’s doorstep. They dated for three years, but broke up when he asked her to go away with him. Now he’s back. He has flowers. He kisses Rebecca and Jack sees. She invites him in and doesn’t see Jack.

Jack goes home to his parents house. He’s drinking a beer. His father throws the food his mother put on a plate for him on the floor and tells her to make him something better. Jack stands up to him, and he taunts Jack about letting his little brother get killed. He tells his mom to either pack her things or he’ll stay and kill his father. Reluctantly, she agrees to leave.

The movie premiere continues. Randall is crying and everyone is congratulating Kevin. Randall confronts Kate about what she said about her being the only one who can pass a bit of Jack on. He says so she doesn’t think he can pass any of Jack on because he’s adopted. He calls her on not considering to adopt a child instead of having a biological kid. Kate gets mad at Randall for disdaining her for not wanting to adopt a child instead, saying he doesn’t know what she went through when she lost her baby. Then she storms off.

Outside by Jack’s car, his mom doesn’t want to leave his father. He tells his mother she deserves more than living with his father. It’s a pity she can’t see that for herself. She agrees to go if they get a coffee cake for the woman she’s going to stay with. Meanwhile Alan has taken Rebecca home to his parent’s house for dinner. Alan’s mom is the opposite of Rebecca and Jack’s moms. She says she applauded Rebecca when she refused to give up her dreams and go away with Alan. Rebecca says she was the one who inspired her. When Rebecca mentions going to California to try to jumpstart her musical career, Alan doesn’t want her to go. Instead he wants her to go to New York with him to follow their dreams.

Kevin brings Zoe flowers. Zoe doesn’t want to accompany Kevin on his last interview until she hears who he’s being interviewed by. During the interview she fangirls all over the interviewer. Since Kevin’s moving was about a Vietnam vet, the interviewer asks if Kevin got his inspiration from Jack, who served in Vietnam. He realizes he knows nothing about his father’s time in Vietnam and that he never even asked. He recalls how upset Jack got with him when he was a kid when he was playing with a grenade at a gun shop. Later Jack explained he was in the war and saw a lot of people get killed and that’s why it’s not cool to play with a grenade. He offers to tell Kevin about Vietnam but Kevin isn’t interested. Well, now he is. He asks Rebecca to give him what she has on Jack’s time in Vietnam, which is just a few pictures and some names. Zoe offers to help Kevin track down some of the men Jack served with, probably because it’s something that interests her and something she can use for herself, otherwise she’d blow Kevin off, again. Yeah, I don’t really like Zoe and think Beth was right about her in regards to Kevin. For a guy who grew-up always feeling like the odd child out, being involved with Zoe isn’t going to change that feeling.

Randall calls the councilman, again, trying to get him to keep his promise to fix the rec center but he blows him off. Says he’ll do it in his old time, which probably means not at all. When Randall comes home, frustrated, Beth tries to get Randall to apologize to Kate. She says he has a hard time apologizing to his siblings. Kate isn’t very receptive. She freaks out when she gets this huge flower arrangement from Kevin wishing her luck. She says everyone is making her feel like she’s going to die having this procedure done. She hangs up saying she can’t deal with him right now. So Randall decides to fly there to be with her. As he walks out the door, Beth says Miguel is right, he also over-compensates when it comes to his siblings.

Rebecca keeps thinking of kissing Jack as Alan keeps trying to get her to go to New York. She agrees to go with him and goes out to get a bottle of wine to celebrate. Jack is at the store with his mother trying to pick out a coffee cake. So, if Jack’s mother hadn’t insisted on getting a coffee cake, Jack and Rebecca would never have seen each other, again.

Kate preparing to go into surgery. Kate tells Toby if she dies to find someone. But not Madison. While under the anesthetic she sees herself going to the hospital nursery but the crib containing her baby is empty. She’s confronted by her teen self telling her she has no business having a baby. That up until recently she couldn’t even cope with having a dog for a pet. Teen Kate seems to be the devil and Young Hopeful Kate is the angel, who is all for Kate having a baby. Then in strolls Mustache Jack who makes ice cream sundaes for all three versions of Kate.

Meanwhile, the doctor comes out to tell Toby and Randall that Kate seems to be having trouble waking up from the anesthesia. In her Dope Dream Kate is urged to stay with Jack and the Kates. Kate decides she has to go back but tells Teen Kate they will have a baby and things will get better for her, it’ll just take a long time.

Beth is asked to come into her boss’ Bill’s office. Bill tells her they’re letting her go, but that it’s purely for economic reasons and someone has to go and he’s chosen her. His assistant shoves a document under Beth’s nose for her to sign to agree to her departure. She asks why her and not her fellow employees and she’s told she’s less valuable to the company than her other co-workers.

While Rebecca is picking out a bottle of wine she spots Jack and his mother down the aisle and goes up to him. She says Jack never came back, but he says he did and saw her on her doorstep kissing Alan, so he left. She says she dated Alan for three years. She says she’s moving to New York with him. Then she asks if Jack has a dream. He says no one has ever asked him that before. He says right now he wants to make sure his mom is okay. Then he’d like a decent job, a wife and a family and a house that doesn’t feel like the one he grew up in. Then he says goodbye to her.

Beth comes home and pours herself a drink. She flashes back to a conversation with William. He says there will come a time she’ll need to be the star and Randall will need to support her. To not just sit there and turn her wedding band on her finger and wonder why she even married Randall.

Toby says he heard Randall is on anti-anxiety meds. He tells Randall he takes meds for depression and without it life gets scary. It looks like he may be on the verge of telling Randall he’s not taking his meds, but he gets interrupted. Kate wakes up and Randall says he’s sorry. She says that’s the most Jack move, ever. Kate happy they retrieved 8 eggs. She’s hopeful she a Toby will have the baby she wants so bad.

Rebecca asks Alan’s mom if she’d go to New York is she was her. She tells her about Jack. She says they want totally different things out of life, but that she has a feeling about him. She ends up figuring out the house where Jack took his mother and shows up on the doorstep. She says that Alan is from a previous life. She watches as Jack rolls up his sleeves and starts doing dishes. She goes to help him. Then she asks if he’d like to take a drive…to California and he says he’d love to. And that’s how Jack and Rebecca began.

Randall tells Kate he has to go when he received a call from Gigi. Her daughter Skye is in the hospital with a broken arm. Randall says he’s going to do something about this. It’s funny she called him considering it was in just last week’s episode she was sneering that Randall wasn’t one of them. Now she’s all for him doing something. He goes home to Beth. Beth tries to tell Randall about being fired, but Randall starts talking about Jack. Then he decides he’s going to run against that councilman. At that point Beth starts turning her wedding ring and she follows Williams advice and doesn’t just sit there. She tells him she got fired.

Kevin emails one of Jack’s old Vietnam buddies. The man on the other end of the email reacts when he gets Kevin’s email. And thus begins the story of what happened to Jack in Vietnam.

On a side note, I have to say seeing Adult Kate in the same scene with Child Kate and Teen Kate they all look like they could be the same person. They did a terrific job in casting all three roles.