What I’m Watching: This Is Us

This Is Us: Season 3, Episode 8 “Six Thanksgivings” (B-)

I saw many friends posting about how great this episode was, and once again I feel like maybe I’m just missing something (not that I have no soul, as some would suggest). What was decent about this hour is that it managed to cover almost all of its characters, leaving Kevin and Zoe for another episode, which is just fine with me. We also got to see William and Jesse again, not for seemingly specific purpose other than to well up tears in the eyes of viewers. It’s good to see Toby back up and being social, though his first foray into preparing Thanksgiving for the family went pretty poorly on a number of levels. Fortunately, he got the ultimate compliment from Kate, comparing his decision to order a bunch of food in to a Jack-level solution. Kate got the chance to be a supportive aunt, in the process learning something about Tess that her family doesn’t know yet, though I can’t imagine they would be anything but fully supportive. Beth is doing great things for the campaign but clashing spectacularly with Randall’s campaign manager, and that’s not going to be easy for anyone to deal with going forward. The most affecting part of this episode featured one of the more background characters - Miguel - and spotlighted his non-Pearson family dynamic, with his horrible son who blamed everything about his parents’ split on his father and took it out on Rebecca. She didn’t have much to do, but I was happy to see Yara Martinez from “Jane the Virgin” as Miguel’s much less cold daughter.