In The Room
Episode 8 of This Is Us Season 5 begins in the past as the Big Three decide against going to the cabin for the weekend. Jack isn’t happy to begin with, until Rebecca convinces him they could have a romantic weekend together alone. Well, that weekend takes a turn for the worst when they notice the roof leaking and all the kids’ artwork seemingly ruined. With the paintings soaked, Jack is standoffish with Rebecca until he finally opens up and admits how he’s feeling. With teenage years rapidly approaching, Jack is concerned that the Big Three won’t have time to spend with them any more. In fact, this painting, this picture of five blotches of paint, is a memorable token of their childhood and a reminder to always be close as a family. In the present, Rebecca continuously looks at the painting, eventually admitting to Miguel that she feels like she’s letting Jack down by not being there for the kids. Randall and Beth continue to video call with Madison, while Toby sits in the car park anxiously waiting for Kate, who’s inside with Ellie. Only, a man shows up claiming this is his parking spot. He’s parked in the same space every night while his wife is on a ventilator inside the hospital. With one life seemingly nearing its end and another one beginning, Toby and this man talk about their changing fortunes. Meanwhile, Madison continues to talk with Randall on the phone. He manages to distract her with a story… just as Kevin suddenly appears in the hospital room. Kevin is touched by Randall’s gesture, as it seems like he managed to bypass security and get his flight after all. Both Mothers give birth to a new generation of Pearson’s… although Ellie wants to hold her child first in private. Thankfully she doesn’t change her mind, as Ellie finally passes the child to Kate, who excitedly rings Toby to let him know. The middle name he’s chosen is Rose. Meanwhile, Kevin names his children Nicholas and Frannie. After, he rings Randall to thank him and apologizes for the hurtful things he said in the past. Randall however, tells him he needs to focus on the babies right now as that’s the most important thing. Touchingly, Kate rings Rebecca to show off their child. Next up is Kevin, who does the exact same thing as shots of the Pearson’s doing their finger painting is interspersed around these moments in a really touching montage to close out this week’s episode.
The Episode Review
We didn’t mention it in the recap but interestingly, this episode not only welcomes a new Big Three to the world, it also pays tribute to Nasir Ahmed, who led a team of researchers to develop the Discrete Cosine Transform. In layman terms, this happens to be hardware that’s helped formulate image and video sharing technology. This, of course, is more important now than it’s ever been. In the meantime, This Is Us delivers a really heartwarming episode, reminding us why we all fell in love with this show in the first place as we welcome the birth of a new Big Three. The entire episode hinders on these two births, although exactly how Kevin managed to fly back in time is still unknown. It may be a little picky but given Kevin has absolutely no ID and his wallet wasn’t there either, how would security have even thought about clearing him, let alone allowing him to buy a ticket without any money available? Then again, he may have a banking app on his phone to pay so there is that. Beyond this plot contrivance, This Is Us delivers another wholly enjoyable episode that sets up a promising second half of this season to come.
