THIS IS US

[Literallynoonecares]

Okay, so I know I am massively late to the party. But I just discovered this show and wow, what a show it is. I am currently bingeing my way through and am totally hooked!!! I am only on series 2 so far but almost at the end and have already downloaded all of series 3 ready!! I don't think I have loved a show like this for such a long time.

I am finding myself getting emotional most episodes. It gets me right in the feels and it has made me think of my parents, my own childhood, my own siblings, my kids and their childhoods and really reflect on my own life. I have never known a show do this to me before. So relatable in so many ways.

I just hope it stays as good and doesn't become a bit crap somewhere along the line. Please tell me it stays this awesome right to the end??

I highly recommend A million little things if you've enjoyed This is Us.

You got through that quickly OP! Enjoy the last two episodes, they're really special **

I just can't get into it

I suffer from insomnia. So have been able to get a good few episodes binged at a time 😆

Im going to watch the last two on my own while everyone else is sleeping. X

I have just finished it. I left the last two episodes to watch back to back and oh my god I cried buckets. The train episode was beautiful and powerful. And the last episode just tied things up really well.

I feel sad that its over, it has been one heck of a show and has had a real affect on me. I will miss it so much. I am just so glad that I decided to invest my time in watching it. Pure brilliance. ❤

Well I have just finished it. I left the last two episodes to watch back to back and oh my god I cried buckets. The train episode was beautiful and powerful. And the last episode just tied things up really well.

I feel sad that its over, it has been one heck of a show and has had a real affect on me.

There are so many great 'speeches' throughout the whole show that resonated with me. But the one that made me cry buckets was Jack teaching the boys to shave. Where he was telling that about how there are these times in your life, and how, at the time, you don't realise how special they are, because you are so busy living in that moment. It's only when you look back on them as you get older that you realise. And how when we are young, all we want to do it be older and look forward, and then when you get older, all you want to do is be longer and you spend lots of time looking back. Jeez! That got me in the feels.

But wow, what a show. I will miss it so much. I am just so glad that I decided to invest my time in watching it. Pure brilliance. ❤

Oh @Literallynoonecares I know exactly how you're feeling! What an incredible and beautiful show.

just realised i missed all of episode 2
so lucky me going back!

i mean season 2

Just finished this wonderfully intuitive series today… i can honestly say i will never forget it… it has left a mark on me that i cannot describe, the soundtrack was beautiful and loved the way the different aged characters clearly resembled them all the way through… just devasted i have now finished it… would defo recommend

I originally started watching this during lockdown and was hooked. Thanks to this thread I’m doing a rewatch (now on S3) and enjoying it all over again. Really appreciate the podcast recommendation, good to have additional insight alongside the rewatch

i have now caught up with series 3 and in the middle of season 6, disappointed about Kate and Toby

Me too. I think that was the one thing that I didn’t like about the final season. I love Kate and Toby and hoped they would find their way back to one another. I didn’t like Kates new guy and didn’t think they seemed to have much love and chemistry between them. Felt really disappointed by that too 😐

Totally agree about Kate and Toby.

perhaps they were trying to make it realistic, for parents of disabled/blind children, kate was very controlling, it wasnt a good couple of episodes.

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I never like Kate and Toby. I just always felt like he resented her, and her grief for her dad, a lot and it irritated me! I don't know... soemthing about him just felt off for me!

I think it's hard to accept the new husband though with Toby being in it from the beginning and feeling like part of the furniture!

I agree I never liked Toby at all. I also didn’t like the new husband as couldn’t get past him being a gay teacher in Waterloo Road back in the day 😂

Toby was my third favourite character behind Miguel and Beth. I felt for all three of them marrying into that family and going up against the Big Three and the ghost of perfect Jack.

One thing that bugged me was about Jack and his brother Nicky. Jack knew he was still alive but told everyone he died in Vietnam. Watching the episode when his mother died and he went alone to her funeral it occurred to me that he let her die thinking her son was dead?!

@Eastie77Returns but perfect Jack... He was practically a saint wasn't he?

Now I always found Miguel odd. He must have also had a very unequal relationship with Jack. I never quite believed that she would have married him.

Yeah marrying Miguel was a bit odd but I guess they were the two people who loved him most and so found mutual consolation in each other. Or something like that😂

I thought they all lived in very small worlds in that across 6 seasons none of the characters were ever shown with their own friends. You never saw Beth hanging out with girlfriends, Randall /Kevin did not have a single male friendship. Kate’s one friend Maddie eventually became co-opted within the family. Rebecca had no friends or even passing acquaintances.

That happens so often in books and TV @Eastie77Returns and it does weaken the plot.

The initial premise of the series - Randall finding his father before finding out all the things he/we subsequently find out - makes absolutely no sense. It is never explained how he/a PI could possibly have identified his father.

Yes, I’ve always thought that. He says he hires someone but there is absolutely nothing for anyone to go on.

But then the triplets came about because the hospital/social services allowed a distraught couple who’d just lost a baby to replace him with a random abandoned baby they happened to have, and leave the hospital with him immediately. Which is clearly ridiculous, even by the more relaxed standards of the time (smoking in the hospital etc).

I just chose to accept these things are possible in the This is us universe.

Glad it wasn't just me confused by that @JoyousEagle ! I binge watched the whole thing last year expecting Randall's ability to discover his dad to be explained at some point. It never was, and it spoiled the series a bit for me, tbh, since it was the pivot of the entire story. I guess if you watched when the programme aired originally, with a year or more between series, that detail right at the beginning of the show would be forgotten amongst all the other storylines. Perhaps that was what the writers were banking on, anyway!

Yes, the leaving hospital with another person's baby was very strange, but I put it down to the relaxed standards of those times, and (sadly) Randall being an abandoned black child and therefore zero safeguarding being applied to him. I assume some research went into that aspect of the storyline to support it being a realistic possibility.

The aspect of Randall’s life that made no sense to me was his mother. William thought she died with Randall was a baby but after his father’s death, Randall discovers the mum only died a couple of years previously.

Firstly I think the instinct of an adopted child looking for their parents would be to search for their mother first. It wasn’t explained why Randall started with his dad when he had no idea his mum was supposedly dead.

Secondly, the whole story around William believing the mum died when Randall was a baby was ridiculous. In flashback scenes (can’t remember which season), William came home one day and discovered she’d over dosed and medical workers trying to revive her but she died. He fled the scene as he was distraught and so he didn’t see that moments later she miraculously revived and came back to life.

This is so confusing to me. If she didn’t actually die, he couldn’t have seen her dead body or buried her which surely he would have wanted to do as she was depicted as love of his life? Why didn’t the hospital contact him to say she is alive? And why, when Randall found William, didn’t he find out her name and look up birth/death records. He was meticulous about details so this would have been one of the first things he would have done.