It’s us
Therer
Season 5
Episode 7
Editor’s rating
Photo: NBC
The last time we got together for our planned Pearson Family Sadness Hour, we were focused on the influence of a mother on her son, as Randall finally learned the story of his mother Laurel. Of course, he mostly wrote her off on the face of it, but it became clear this season that Laurel’s ghost is big in Randall’s life, first as a mystery he wants to solve and now as a person he can relate to. bird. Randall’s birth mother is part of him. There are ” It’s us passes on to the bonds between fathers and sons.
Listen, the idea that the Pearson children are deeply affected by their dead father is not something new. This show can get the title Dad expenses and we would all like “yeah, mmhmm, that’s accurate.” The power that Jack Pearson, the man, the myth, the legend, has over his children is well exploited territory. This is especially true for Kevin: Remember the season of one ‘Jack Pearson’s Son’ in which Kevin, who channels his father, his Back of an egg premiere for Cradle Randall as he has a breakdown? Kevin’s performance in that episode was actually just the beginning of his life under a What would Jack Pearson do? mandate. In ‘There’ we see how keeping Jack’s voice in his head changed Kevin, forced him to re-prioritize his life, and how it could only have long lasting consequences.
It makes sense that Kevin is thinking more about his relationship with Jack these days – he’s about to become a father. Yes, Madison is in labor six weeks before her due date and Kevin is about to take his big scene with him in Vancouver [checks notes] Robert De Niro. It’s Kevin’s dream come true … until he gets Madison’s call and hears how scared she sounds. It doesn’t take long before Kevin realizes that his dream may have become something else. Before leaving for Vancouver, Madison told him to find out how he wanted to be a part of their family. The speed with which Kevin decides to walk away and get to his fiancée and children seems to be that Kevin makes the decision that his family will always come before his career. He doubled down on the decision during his race to come to Los Angeles when he first blew off his agent, who called to see if Kevin actually walked out on De Niro, and then called even more than our favorite pretentious indie director Foster to ask Kevin to come back to the set, and Kevin tells him that no one cares about his dumb movie. Kevin stops.
Before we can guess what Kevin’s future will look like after possibly blowing up his entire career, we must first see if he manages the birth of his children in time. Kevin’s decision to walk off the set may be easy, but the rest of his journey is definitely not. It takes a while, but thanks to an assistant from Miguel, Kevin gets a ticket on a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles that takes off within two hours. He’s about an hour outside of Seattle. He can do it.
Then the perfect storm of bad shit happens: it’s late, he’s driving in a remote area where he has no cell service, and he comes upon a car that crashed down the road. The car is on fire. Kevin goes there and retrieves the man from the wreckage, uses his jacket for a tournament to stop the bleeding of the man’s leg and in the process loses his wallet in the woods. It will definitely be a problem if Kevin arrives at the airport.
Since Kevin cannot call an ambulance, he finds the man in the car and drives him to the nearest hospital. He cuts it for his flight, but he still does! has! time! On the way there, Kevin definitely does not want a corpse on his hands, so he tries to make sure the man stays awake. It’s very strange that when Kevin says they should keep talking, he usually just starts a whole thing about how he can not believe that he is going to miss the most important day in his children’s lives and that his father was the best father in instead, you know, the almost dying guy asks something about himself. So this man is bleeding out and needs to comfort Kevin by telling him that he has three teenagers and that the day of their birth is definitely not the most important day in their lives. The man!
By this time, the man realized that he was saved by actor Kevin Pearson and assured him that he should not worry because he is rich and famous and his children will make him, no matter what. But Kevin does not like it. Jack was not rich or famous; Kevin loved his father because he was always there for him. “My father was the person who was ever there,” he said. And it’s not just a rule of Kevin’s: throughout the episode we look at a story from the early ’90s that shows us exactly that.
The storyline of the nineties increases as Jack and Young Kevin head to a weekend quarterfinal for 7th and 8th graders. Kevin only heard his parents talk about how miserable he was playing football and Jack told Rebecca that he had made him soft by letting Kevin in when things got tough. Once the guys go to the hotel, Kevin is so worried that he disappoints his dad that he gets sick of it. When Jack finally gets his son to talk to him, he reveals two things: first, that Kevin thinks Jack thinks football is the only thing Kevin has that makes him special, and that’s the only reason Jack goes with him to the camp came. Second, that Kevin’s coach is extra hard on him and repeatedly calls him stupid. None of this is okay with Jack, and he takes Kevin out for dinner to figure out how to fix things.
The coaching aspect of it has a quick fix: when Jack meets Kevin’s coach in the restaurant bathroom, he makes it very clear that if he ever hears the coach call his son stupid, there will be a problem. Jack addresses the conversation by giving a paper towel to the coach to help him dry his hands. A very baller movement.
Kevin’s other problem – feelings of intense pressure and inadequacy – requires a softer touch. To hear how Kevin feels breaks Jack’s heart because he went through it. When he was in a small league, his dad turned something Jack loved into a nightmare by getting drunk on his games and regretting him when he played poorly (we see an example of one of these games and Jack’s complicated ride in the episode’s C-plot). Jack swore he would never do that to his own children, but now he feels like he’s just like Stanley. He tells Kevin all this during the meal, but even Little Kevin is mature enough to realize that Jack is nothing like his father, he is much, much better – and tells him just as much.
But aside from this conversation showing us how proud Jack was of Kevin’s father and how much Kevin looked like Jack (and besides Jack assuring Kevin that football is not all he has, advice may apply if Kevin really has to). moves from the play) it also drives one of the main themes about parents and children to the house. Jack tells Kevin that ‘parents may be so big in our heads that they’re a million things to all of us at the same time’ and that ‘even after they’s long gone we can sit there, we can not help it, they’re inside -in us. Jack may mean that he inherited some of his father’s less-than-star traits, but for Kevin it means much more than that: Yes, he comes from a long-time addict, but Kevin’s also inherited the best parts of Jack. . He’s a better person because he’s constantly hearing his father’s voice in his head. That’s why he helped that man along the way and that’s why he so wants to show up for his children.
And that’s definitely why he’s finally arriving at the airport and realizing he does not have his identity card, that he’s begging the TSA agent to find a way to get him on the plane. Because he was not there for the birth, ‘it will break me’, he tells her. Okay, it’s a lot to put on this woman to just do her job and take care of her own business. Will she be affected by the Pearson drama of all things? Time will tell!
• The episode ends with Randall and Beth calling Madison during their return from New Orleans to investigate her. When Randall hears how upset she is to be alone, she offers to stay with her by phone for as long as she needs. “You are family,” he tells her. It brings tears to my eyes when I just think about it. Did you imagine we would be here with Madison? Madison!
• The car accident (was he ever mentioned? Did I exclude it?) Is played by Joshua Malina (Scandal, The West Wing, so many things!), so we have to assume he will be back somehow, right? We deserve at least an update on his health status.
• The straw of Jack / Kevin soda thawed my cold, dead heart! Kevin loves his dad so much! Please let him start building the Big Three Houses first so we can all feel warm and vague from the inside!
• Whoa, whoa, whoa. Kate and Toby’s baby is about to be born! We quickly call between Kevin and Kate and learn that KaToby has gone to hospital because Ellie is going to be induced! It all happens so fast! Is there any way both of these birth stories can go well?