Us, Weekly

I suspect that most of my readers did not watch the NBC family drama This Is Us. The Venn diagram of the audiences for my blog and that show might be pretty close to two separate circles. However, I watched the entire six-season run (week to week, as it was new), which just concluded satisfyingly on its own terms. It felt to me worth a few quick words of praise, on the off chance that more of you might like the show than I expect.

The worst -- and yet perhaps most accurate -- way I could describe This Is Us is that it was like Lost with none of the science fiction parts. This Is Us was a twisting, elaborate narrative told in multiple time frames. Flashbacks gradually illuminated the audience on every facet of the lives of the Pearson family. But instead of mysteries like "what is the smoke monster?" or "what's inside the hatch?", the questions were mysteries like "how did that couple end up divorcing?" or "how did the father die?"

Whether those kinds of questions appeal to you depends entirely on whether you can get caught up in the daily trials of these characters. But if you can be, then the answers are more rewarding across the board than anything Lost ever offered. (And mind you, I'm generally a defender of Lost overall.) This Is Us was something of a highbrow soap opera, with twists grounded very much in the good and bad decisions of its characters.

How did it stay engaging without the big swings of long-lost identical twins, pregnancy scandals, or forced love rhombuses? Through very good writing and even better acting. The show had a way of turning the mundane into the profound, and featured a cast that won not nearly as many Emmys as it should have during its run. I could drone on for paragraphs praising each performer, but I'll focus on two in particular: Sterling K. Brown did receive awards for his raw and emotional work on the show; and Mandy Moore (much to my shock, given her original background as a singer) was stunning at playing the same character in multiple times, with increasingly challenging story lines the longer the show ran.

No, not every episode in six years was perfect. Each season had its highs and lows (and like so many shows, Covid presented a huge production challenge that they weren't totally successful in meeting). But the series was genuinely, deeply moving with remarkable regularity. A show that you watch even though few people you know do is perhaps by definition a guilty pleasure... though I don't feel at all guilty in saying that it was a pleasure. I'd give the whole of This Is Us an A-.

I'll miss the show now that it's gone, but I'm glad it chose when to go out, and did so on a creative high.