Dan Fogelman did something weird. He made us care about a crockpot.
Honestly, if you look back at the cultural footprint of the TV show This Is Us, it wasn’t just about the "Big Three" or the non-linear timelines that kept everyone guessing. It was the way the show hijacked our Tuesday nights and forced us to deal with our own family baggage through the lens of a middle-class family from Pittsburgh. Most shows lose steam by season four. This one just kept digging deeper into the marrow of what it means to grow old and lose the people who anchor you.
The Twist That Changed Television
The pilot episode is a masterclass in misdirection. We’re introduced to Jack, Rebecca, Kevin, Kate, and Randall on their 36th birthdays. You think you’re watching a contemporary ensemble drama. Then, the camera pans back to reveal a pack of cigarettes from the 1970s and a news report about the Challenger disaster on a bulky TV set. Suddenly, the floor drops out.
That reveal—that Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore were the parents of the other characters in a different timeline—set a precedent. It wasn't just a gimmick. It was the show's way of saying that time is fluid. Our parents’ pasts are happening simultaneously with our present. It’s a heavy concept for network TV. Usually, NBC is the land of procedurals and sitcoms, but This Is Us broke the mold by being aggressively emotional and technically complex.
People always talk about the "Jack Pearson" of it all. Jack was the gold standard of TV dads, which made his eventual death—caused by a house fire sparked by a faulty slow cooker—even more traumatic. It’s rare for a show to tell you exactly how a character dies early on and still make the actual event feel like a physical blow. We knew it was coming. We saw the urn on the mantle. Yet, when the hospital scene finally played out, the world stopped.
Why Randall Pearson Became the Show's Heart
While the show started as an ensemble, Sterling K. Brown’s portrayal of Randall Pearson shifted the gravity of the series. Randall wasn't just the "successful" brother. He was a man navigating the intersection of transracial adoption, anxiety disorders, and the desperate need for perfection.
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The relationship between Randall and his biological father, William (played with heartbreaking grace by Ron Cephas Jones), is arguably the best-written arc in the entire six-season run. It explored forgiveness in a way that didn't feel cheap. You’ve got this guy who was abandoned at a fire station, who finds his father just as he’s dying, and instead of a revenge plot, we get a road trip to Memphis.
The Memphis episode is a perfect example of why this show worked. It slowed down. It breathed. It didn’t rely on the "mystery" of the week. It was just two men—one who had everything and one who had nothing—finding common ground in their final days together.
The Kate and Kevin Struggle
Kate and Kevin often felt like the "messier" parts of the Big Three, but that was the point. Kevin’s battle with addiction and his feeling of being the "forgotten" child despite his fame as The Manny felt real. Justin Hartley played Kevin with a specific kind of shallow-to-deep growth that took years to pay off.
Then there’s Kate. Chrissy Metz brought a level of vulnerability to the screen regarding body image and self-worth that hadn't been seen in a lead role on a major network. Her journey wasn't just about weight; it was about the shadow of her mother, Rebecca. Rebecca was the "perfect" singer, the "perfect" beauty, and Kate spent forty years trying to find a version of herself that didn't feel like a disappointment.
The Long Goodbye: Rebecca and Alzheimer’s
In the final seasons, the TV show This Is Us pivoted from the mystery of Jack’s death to the slow, agonizing reality of Rebecca’s cognitive decline. This is where Mandy Moore earned her status as the show's MVP. She had to play Rebecca at age 25, 45, and 80—sometimes in the same day of filming.
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The way the show handled Alzheimer’s was brutal but necessary. It showed the "sundowning," the confusion, and the way the family had to reorganize itself around a vanishing matriarch. By the time we get to "The Train" (the penultimate episode), the show had moved beyond typical drama into something more like a communal grieving process for the audience.
The metaphor of the train—Rebecca moving through the cars of her life and meeting the people she lost along the way—was a polarizing choice for some critics. Some found it too sentimental. But for the millions who had watched for six years, it was the closure we needed. It allowed Rebecca to finally reunite with Jack, ending the loop that began in that Pittsburgh hospital in 1980.
Breaking Down the Technical Sophistication
You can't talk about this show without mentioning the editing. Keeping track of four or five different timelines is a nightmare for most writers. Most shows would use color filters—sepia for the 70s, blue for the present. This Is Us didn't do that. It trusted the audience to keep up.
They used "match cuts" brilliantly. You’d see a young Kevin falling on the playground, and the camera would cut to an adult Kevin falling into a spiral of pills. It reinforced the idea that we are always carrying our younger selves inside us.
- The 1970s/80s: Focused on the "Foundational" years of Jack and Rebecca.
- The 1990s: The "Trauma" years, leading up to and immediately following Jack's death.
- The Present: The "Evolution" years of the Big Three.
- The Future: The "Legacy" years, showing the grandchildren and the eventual end of the story.
What Most People Get Wrong About the Ending
There’s a common complaint that the finale was "too quiet." After years of big twists and shocking deaths, the final episode was basically just a family hanging out on a Saturday in the 90s, intercut with Rebecca’s funeral in the future.
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But that was the entire message. The show wasn't about the big explosions or the dramatic reveals. It was about the "collecting of the small things." The way a father teaches his son to shave. The way a mother hums a song to her baby. The finale, "Us," proved that the most important parts of a life aren't the tragedies, but the boring Saturdays where nothing and everything happens at once.
Legacy and Rewatchability
Why does This Is Us still trend on streaming platforms years after the finale? Because it's "emotional catharsis" in a box. In an era of cynical anti-heroes and dark sci-fi, This Is Us was unapologetically earnest. It didn't care if it was "cringe" to be sentimental.
It also tackled real-world issues without being a "very special episode." They handled Randall’s identity as a Black man in a white family with incredible nuance, particularly in the later seasons when he confronts his sister about her blind spots regarding race. They didn't provide easy answers. They just showed the friction.
Real-World Impacts
The show actually had a tangible effect on the real world. Sales of Crock-Pots dipped after the fire episode, forcing the brand to launch a massive PR campaign to prove their safety. More importantly, it sparked nationwide conversations about grief and the importance of organ donation and Alzheimer's research.
How to Experience the Show Today
If you’re diving back in or watching for the first time, don't binge it too fast. This isn't a show meant for a weekend marathon. It’s too heavy for that. You need time to process each "gut punch" before moving to the next.
- Watch for the Background Details: The writers planted clues about future plot points seasons in advance. Look at the photos on the walls and the jewelry characters wear.
- Listen to the Score: Siddhartha Khosla’s acoustic guitar-driven soundtrack is the unsung hero of the series. The "Main Theme" is basically a Pavlovian trigger for tears at this point.
- Prepare for the Tonal Shift: Season 1 feels like a mystery. Season 4 feels like a character study. Season 6 feels like a eulogy.
This Is Us remains a benchmark for network storytelling because it proved that you don't need dragons or detectives to capture an audience. You just need a family that looks as broken and as hopeful as the one sitting on the other side of the screen. It reminded us that while people die and stories end, the "overlap" of our lives continues through the people we leave behind. That’s not just good TV; it’s a perspective shift on how we view our own timelines.