This Is Us Explained: What’s Up With the Ending?

The Pearson family: Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore). Rebecca is pregnant with triplets. During the birth of the third child, it was not possible to save, so Rebecca gave birth to two children – a boy, Kevin (Justin Hartley) and a girl, Kate (Chrissy Metz). When Jack stood next to the ward and looked at his children through the glass, a policeman approached him, who said that he had brought here that black child who was lying next to his children. His father left the baby at the fire station.

As a result, Jack and Rebecca decide to adopt this child. He was named Randall (Sterling Kay Brown) and is raised by the Pearson family along with Kevin and Kate.

The series alternates between Jack’s history with Rebecca and how they raise their three children, also focusing on the stories of growing up Kevin, Kate and Randall.

Kevin, a handsome athlete, became a film actor. He starred in the highly successful TV series Mani, which tells how a young father raises a baby. Kevin doesn’t like this show and wants to leave it.

Kate is a very plump and at the same time very pretty young woman. She goes to weight loss meetings and meets Toby Demon (Chris Sullivan), a charming fat man. And they start dating each other.

Randall, unlike Kevin and Kate, is married: his wife’s name is Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) and he and Randall have two girls – Tess and Annie. Randall knows that his parent is most likely alive. He hires a detective and eventually finds his father, William Hill (Ron Cepas Jones).

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I have not heard anything about this series, it was somehow advised to me in the comments. It turned out that this is a famous series, he has a lot of nominations and won prizes at the Emmy, Golden Globe and other prestigious awards. The series has had three full seasons, and a fourth is apparently being filmed.

The fact that we are shown the life of one family at different times is not immediately obvious. At first it is seen as the life of sibling Kevin and Kate, the life of Randall and the story of how he met his biological father, and the life of married couple Jack and Rebecca.

And only in the scene in the maternity hospital you pay attention to the fact that in the corridor, where newborns lie behind the glass, people smoke, and this is a sign of a completely different time. After that, you realize that the adults Kevin, Kate and Randall are the same three Pearson children.

The series, on the one hand, is quite simple: life stories, typical family problems, the influence of parents, relationship problems, adoption and adaptation issues, the actor’s attempts to escape from the boring series, the struggle of an overweight woman, and love – people for each other the love of parents for their children and the love of children for their parents.

The series is very sentimental, but it is sentimental in a good way. The creators of the series very skillfully balance on the edge separating sentimentality from vulgarity and the desire to simply squeeze out a tear from the audience. In addition, the life of these people is not at all drawn exclusively in a rosy light: they all have their own problems, they can suffer from something, and they all have some kind of family secrets.

I remember Milo Ventimiglia from the relatively recent (2006) Rocky Balboa, where he played Rocky’s son. (It’s funny that Sylvester Stallone appears in the third episode of the second season in this series – he plays himself: Kevin is removed in the film with his participation.) In “Rocky Balboa” he was very young, but here he plays a thirty-forty-year-old man, father families.

Played great, loved it. Jack had a very nasty father, and Jack tries his best not to be like him in anything. He loves Rebecca and the children very much, and in the family Jack is like a moderator – he tries to extinguish all conflicts.

Rebecca was played by Mandy Moore. Also a good role, a characteristic character. Rebecca is very emotional and impulsive, constant housework and childcare leave her no personal life, and she once dreamed of becoming a singer. When the children grow up, she will briefly try to return to singing, but, alas, nothing good will come of it.

Interestingly, Mandy Moore is the youngest adult cast actress. And here she also had to play a fifty-year-old woman. Series creator David Fogelman met Mandy Moore while working on the animated film Rapunzel: Tangled, where Mandy voiced Rapunzel, and Fogelman was the author of the script.

Justin Hartley, who played the handsome actor Kevin, I had not seen before. At first, it seemed that this character was the least interesting of all – a kind of stupid handsome jock. However, in the series he revealed himself as an interesting and rather extraordinary personality, and we also learn about several real tragedies that he had to endure and which did not break him. A very good role, Kevin turned out to be more interesting than I expected.

My favorite character on the show is chubby Kate, played by the amazing Chrissy Metz. Chrissie weighs perhaps two hundred kilograms. And this is two hundred kilograms of sheer incredible charm. The actress herself suffered from excess weight since childhood. Because of this, her stepfather mocked her and even beat her, her classmates teased her. Once Chrissy was cast on American Horror Story, and she thought that now she would start some kind of film career, but then for two years she did not receive any offers, and she already had so much money that when Dan Fogelman called her to invite her to an audition, she thought it was some kind of collector calling.

Chrissie’s Kate is amazing. Sensitive, very vulnerable, she, however, knows how to fend for herself. She has a very tender and trusting relationship with her brother, whose affairs she handles. Well, the story of her acquaintance and development of relations with Toby (actor Chris Sullivan is also amazingly charming) is incredibly touching. An absolutely wonderful role, one of the best in the series, where almost everyone was very good.

Of the minor characters, Ron Cepas Jones, who portrayed the biological father of Randall William, has a very powerful role. A man with an unfortunate fate, whose life went awry, who could not raise his own son, because he was then a drug addict. However, he is a good person. All his life he was tormented by the fact that he was forced to give up his son, he followed his fate. William did not blame anyone for anything, he understood that he himself was to blame for everything – it just happened. And he carries his grief with great dignity. And the son, who hated his father all his life because he abandoned him, after meeting William began to get closer to him, and William had a noticeable influence on the whole family of his son.

Well, I really want to mention Gerald McRaney, who played Dr. Nathan Katowski, who delivered Rebecca. He has only a few small episodes in the series, but they are very memorable and very touching.

Now for the seasons. I was just delighted with the first season – I watched three episodes a day and could not tear myself away from this series. In the last, eighteenth, episode, one family secret was supposed to be revealed, and this seemed to be directly promised, but nothing was revealed – apparently, in this way they put the lure for the second season. (Small spoiler – the mystery was revealed only in the fourteenth episode of the second season.)

The second season is somewhat worse, not so catchy: I watched more out of a sense of duty to share my impressions in a review. He is not bad, but in comparison with the first sags a lot. Some lines look very strained, the emotional intensity there is not at all the same as in the first season.

I’ve read a lot of negative reviews about the third season. In the company of screenwriters, some Laura Kenan and Ebony Freeman appeared there, who had not written any scripts before, and, according to those who watched, they caught up with some kind of complete bullshit in the spirit of Mexican TV shows.

Well, after reading these reviews, I decided not to watch the third season so as not to be disappointed. In fact, I didn’t even want to watch the second season initially, so as not to spoil the impression of the first season. But then I looked anyway. I do not regret it, but it was completely unnecessary to watch it.

But the first season to watch, in my opinion, is mandatory, the series is just great!

PS In famous places, the series can be found in the original with subtitles. There are also many versions of translations with voice acting from well-known studios. I selectively listened to the options from LostFilm – in my opinion, both the translation and the voice acting are done at a very high level, they won’t spoil the impression.

 

This Is Us serie meaning

Director: Dan Fogelman Cast: Gerald McRaney, Mandy Moore, Milo Ventimiglia, Chris Sullivan, Sterling Kay Brown, Chrissy Metz, Justin Hartley, Susan Kelechi Watson, Eris Baker, Faity Herman, Jon Huertas, Hannah Zeile, Ron Cepas Jones

 

Series, USA, 2016, 45 min. 3 seasons with 18 episodes

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