Wednesday, March 20, 2019

This Is Us 3.16: “Don’t Take My Sunshine Away”

“I’ve never heard my kid cry; can you believe that?”
- Toby

The writers are really not letting us catch our breath on the Randall and Beth storyline. They’ve been struggling to make both of their jobs work and it is clear that it isn’t going to hold for long. They are like ships passing in the night and it’s clear that Randall is starting to resent Beth, especially when she initially agrees to go with him to a work dinner and then seems to back out. He gets super aggressive and mean when he thinks she’s not coming and then tries to cover it when she does show up. After the dinner—where they make nice for their hosts—Beth tells Randall he should stay at his office but comes home. He’s not going to do that. They need to address their issues. I suspect that’s going to be the focus on next week’s penultimate episode.

Speaking of dealing with couple-y issues, Kevin and Zoe are in couple’s counseling. Kevin professes he wants to do his sobriety right this time and he wants his relationship with Zoe to work, too. She’s just worried about the fact he lied to her for so long. But, he’s determined to prove to her that he wants her. At least, until she points out that she doesn’t want kids (coming off a comment he made in the session). She essentially gives him an ultimatum: choose kids or choose her because he can’t have both. He ends up going to an AA meeting near Sophie’s apartment and runs into her. Well, okay, he was loitering a bit but they end up going for coffee and she points out that he’s never really had to choose anything before. Even when they were younger, he got everything he wanted. I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s true. He didn’t “get” football after his injury and he lost Sophie twice. I have to admit when she was leaving the diner, I thought he still wanted to be with her. But, he goes home and commits to Zoe and their future together. He even appears to move on from Sophie by giving her and her fiancé Billy Joel tickets.

And then there’s Kate, Toby and baby Jack. At the start of the episode, we see Jack is two days old and Beth and Randall are saying their goodbyes (before all their drama ensues). We then jump to about a week out and Toby is not handling things well. He gets kind of freaked and annoyed when the nurses come to take blood and urine samples to make sure the baby is doing okay. He ends up having to leave and ends up in the waiting room where he bonds with another NICU dad (played by the actor who portrayed Toby on Scorpion which I think is hilarious and it felt like he was playing a version of that character. To be honest, he even looked a little like his character from Scorpion. At first, he and Toby commiserated over how their babies were doing. Toby bemoans the fact he hasn’t heard his son cry (thanks to the ventilator tube). I hadn’t thought about that but I would be pretty disturbed if I hadn’t heard my baby cry, too. How would you know when he needed something? But, the other dad points out that there are parents there whose baby isn’t going to make it home and as horrible and dark as it sounds, comparing their situations to those parents (hey at least Kate and Toby have a shot of brining Jack home) makes it all a little better. They also agree that the moms handle things better. When Toby finally goes back to the NICU, he gets Kate to admit that she is scared of everything that’s going on but unlike Toby, who can only see the tubes and wires, Kate sees the little boy underneath who has Toby’s eyes and her chin. In the end, Toby even manages to hold baby Jack. I hope that is what he needed to help him start bonding with his son.

As a backdrop for all of the drama going on in the present, we find Jack and Rebecca chaperoning the Big Three’s first school dance. Kevin is hoping for a first kiss with Sophie. Kate just wants to hang with her friends and while Kate’s friend invited Randall to the dance, he’s going all OCD about a science test. So, it’s going to be a mixed bag. We also learn that Jack never went to a school dance. Mostly because of his father and Rebecca wonders if he’s sad. She even tries to entice him to go sneak off with her to the library to make out. They don’t get far because they find Randall studying. His parents are disappointed he bailed on his commitment to his date (which makes me think as an adult he takes things too literally in this department) and send him back to the dance. We also see that Sophie is totally right in the present about Kevin getting what he wants. He and his friends are toilet paper-ing the principal’s office and he even convinces Sophie to partake, even though she really doesn’t want to. He even gets his first kiss out of it, too. And then we get a really sweet moment with Jack and Rebecca as their share a slow dance where Jack is certain that if they’d met as children, he would have fallen for her, little hairbows and all.

I have to admit, I’m really getting tired of Randall being such an inconsiderate tool. He doesn’t handle things not going his way very well and I know that’s always been a part of his personality but I didn’t realize just how much Beth propped him up in things. It makes me wonder if their relationship wasn’t really as strong as we thought it was originally. It also makes me see that it makes sense somewhere down the line they break up and get divorced so Beth can pursue her dream of dancing. It is getting seriously ugly in that branch of the Pearson clan and I am just ready for it to be over. But something tells me we are in for a bigger storm before it ends.

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