This is Us Is Going Back to Its "Storybook Love" Roots And I'm Totally Here For It (S4, EP5 Recap)10/23/2019 Our love is a storybook story and I'm wiping the tears away as Mandy Moore sings to her bratty children while they dance around her new house. It's her wedding gift to Kevin and Sophie, who got married in New York on a whim after seeing a theater playing their favorite movie, The Princess Bride. All Rebecca has to remember their wedding by is four polaroids (ahhh so 1998), but she chooses to take the high road and make the night as perfect as it can be for her children. THIS IS THE PART WHERE I TELL YOU TO STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED LAST NIGHT'S EPISODE OF THIS IS US, "STORYBOOK LOVE" DIRECTED BY JACK PEARSON HIMSELF, MILO VENTIMIGLIA. SO, SPOILER ALRT. We start our episode in 1980. Rebecca and Jack have just moved into the home they'll raise their children in and she's a few months along with the triplets. They're unpacking and she's cooking lasanga, but burns it in the oven. Jack comforts his wife and they make the most of the night until things go haywire when a bird gets loose in the house (they had opened the windows to let the smoke and burned smell out). Jack is, according to 1998 Rebecca, terrified of birds and does everything in his power to protect his pregnant wife from the creature. He lets out squeals. He breaks the burned lasanga dish. They clean up and order a pizza instead. The scenes of young Jack and Rebecca together make me so incredibly happy. I miss them. I feel like we haven't seen them in happy in such a long time, and Jack's screen time has been dwindling since his character's tragic death in Season 2. I just love seeing them love each other, even if we know that their future is not perfect, nor is the ending necessarily happy. In 1998, Kate and Bec have just moved into their new home post-fire and post-Jack. After receiving that odd voicemail from Kevin, Mama Pearson decides to host a little dinner party to celebrate the couple's nuptials. Meanwhile, Kate is making money AND making out at the record store she now works at. Oh yeah, teen Kate has a boyfriend now, and his name is Marc. Little Beth and Randall are there for dinner too, and they're precious. Beth observes as Randall's leg shakes nervously (something that comes up again later) and as he reaches for his notepad every time he finds something that needs fixing around the house. He's Jack Pearson's son, after all. Beth is generous and brings hot sauce as a housewarming gift for Bec and Kate, which brings back memories for the Pearson's because apparently Jack used to put hot sauce on everything (we see in flashbacks for this specific episode that prove this to be true). Beth says that her father (who also passed away recently, remember?) also used to put hot sauce on everything, and would carry a bottle around with him everywhere he went. It's cute. Beth wins this show in all the timelines. Marc shows up out of the blue with handpicked flowers, telling Kate he got her address off of her application. Side note: Didn't she just move in to this new house? Wouldn't he have her old address? Does this matter? Of course this probably matters. Kate introduces Marc to her family as her friend from work, but he takes it a step further and tells them that he is indeed her boyfriend. They look happy. And you know who else is joining the Pearsons for dinner? Miguel. Kate makes a joke about him bringing a sleeping bag, because he's always around. It's a funny moment knowing that Rebecca ends up marrying him later on, but it's sweet to see that Miguel still wants to be involved in all of their lives even post-Jack. Jack was his man and he promised to take care of his family. Dinner doesn't go so great, though. Rebecca ruins the cornished hens and the Big Three end up fighting in the kitchen about their significant others. Kate is hurt that Kevin got married without telling her, "his person". Kevin and Randall tell Kate that they don't like Marc, and that they get "weird vibes" from him. It should be noted here that Marc is 23, while Kate is 18. 5 years isn't a lot, but at that age it kind of is. Beth gets good reviews from Kevin and Kate though, with Kate hilariously saying "She even has a beauty mark. Didn't know that was a thing until now." Rebecca bitches out her whiny children, telling them to get it together because she is trying her fucking best by herself! They oblige, she tells the story about Jack and the bird, they order pizza, and she plays the piano while the kids dance and take polaroids and seem normal and happy for the first time in a very, very long time. In the present day, Kevin is enjoying being next door neighbors with his Uncle Nicky, and asks for stories about Jack from his childhood. The best that Nicky has to offer was that he "liked ice cream" and honestly I mean, who doesn't? Kevin tells a story about Jack slicing ice cream cake for him and his siblings, and the flashbacks are so wholesome I could cry. Kevin and Nicky plan on going to a hockey game that night because the stadium is honoring veterans, and Kevin promised he'd help Cassidy get her husband back. "You have very weird relationships with people," says Nicky. He's not wrong. The hockey game doesn't go great, because Cassidy's husband (I don't even know his name omg) is kind of a jackass and leaves before the ceremony even begins. Nicky also has a freakout because he's surrounded by people consuming alcohol, which is incredibly triggering, so he leaves. Kevin drives Cassidy and her son Matty home, and calls out Jackass Husband for being a jackass. He explains that he's loved Cassidy since she was 15, but that the military destroyed her and he didn't want to celebrate that. He also tells Kevin to stay away from his wife. Okay so like...why ya serving her divorce papers then, man? Kevin tells Cassidy that her husband still likes her, but I don't know if he does. It seems more like he's holding onto someone who no longer exists. In Randall-world, Tess has a panic attack and is upset because she doesn't want to have the same issues that her father does. Beth delivers the monologue of all monologues telling both Randall and Tess to stop shit talking each other and themselves because 3 of her favorite people in the world have anxiety (hi, William!). Tess apologizes, Beth finds her and Randall both therapists. Randall thinks that's great for Tess, but his 39-year-old ass legit refuses to see somebody. WHERE IS THE GROWTH, SIR? Also as someone with horrible anxiety, this part of the episode was hard for me. It pains me that Randall doesn't want to see his daughter go through this while simultaneously refusing to get help. It's incredibly frustrating from an outside perspective, because it seems like he would want to better himself for his family. But that's just my two cents. Kevin returns to Nicky who bought him an ice cream cake, and finally tells a cute story about Jack and him and their dad. It's another flashback that actually does make me cry and wow you guys, I love uncle Nicky. ALSO! Toby wants to win Husband of the Year so he has the old Pearson piano delivered to him and Kate's home. Rebecca is there and she's so excited for adult Kate. Kate goes looking through the piano bench and finds the polaroids taken in 1998. She stares longingly (maybe? or horrified?) at the picture taken of her and Marc, and Rebecca looks at it too, stunned. She says she so badly wanted to believe in that moment that all of her kids were happy. Wait a minute...what the fuck happened with Marc? So that's the end! I'm really terrified for what's to come because Teenage Kate is awesome and I have a feeling her life is gonna get real bad! Also, Kevin and Sophie are THE most annoying couple ever, Miguel is a huge dork, and Rebecca deserves so much more credit than she gets. What did y'all think? You got Marc theories? Let me hear them. XO, Em
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |