If you saw the previews for tonight's episode of This Is Us, you knew it was going to be a doozy. Not just because it's a tearjerker (though it is—it always is), but because it focuses on what has become the show’s most insufferable character—Kevin Pearson (Justin Hartley). I write this out of as much love as I do contempt, because the writers have made it a point to present Kevin as the villain in his own story, the guy who is as devastatingly handsome as he is, we learned this evening, quite devastating. In a rare episode that trades the show's signature panoramic narrative of each of the Pearson kids for Kevin’s centralized story, This Is Us uproots all the demons Kevin's worked tirelessly to keep at bay since childhood—and forces us to take another look at a character who never wants to expose who he truly is, because this is what we would see. It’s not pretty, but it is necessary.
The episode begins at the moment that came to define Kevin’s life, when he took his first steps forward as a baby—besting siblings Kate and Randall—into the arms of his beaming parents. For most, this wouldn’t be a place to start, but for Kevin, a character who basks in every moment he can outshine others, it's everything. In fact, it becomes a running theme for him. He has to be the #1 son. He has to be the #1 football player. He has to be the #1 boyfriend. He has to be the #1 actor—no matter the cost. But as we’ve learned throughout the series, and most prominently in this episode, these failures have haunted him his entire life.
Because Kevin never came to terms with what he was actually good at (and honestly, the jury is still out on that), he’s been preoccupied with clinging desperately to his heyday. We saw it when he fought to get back with his high school sweetheart Sophie (whom he cheated on during their marriage), won her back, then broke her heart yet again in last week’s episode. We see how this has become a pattern for him in other areas of his life as he struggles to keep it together.
It makes sense to weave flashbacks of Kevin in high school with adult Kevin returning to school to receive a special honor. These are very different periods in Kevin's life, but they're centralized in one location: high school. Teenage Kevin, as we finally see detailed in heart-wrenching form this episode, is on the cusp of becoming a football star until he shatters his knee. As we know, this is something from which he never recovers, both physically and mentally. We see his dreams crumble in an instant, his dad giving him one of his classic pep talks at his hospital bedside as if he's already on his deathbed. Because we see everything from Kevin's point of view, the situation seems so massive, so irreversible. That is how much this moment consumes him, even to this day.
But before we get to that, we get a taste of Kevin at the top of his game—with the inflated ego to match. A University of Pittsburgh rep visits him at the their home and he acts uninterested (because in his mind, Notre Dame is the end all, be all). When Jack confronts him about his attitude, Kevin responds callously, in the most hurtful way he knows he can—by bringing up Jack's weakness, his alcoholism. Again, this is nothing new from Kevin. As we know, he may not be the best at expressing himself, but man, does he know how to make someone else feel bad. Perhaps it makes him feel less inferior.
We're brought back to the present, where Kevin looks terrible, like a composite of all of that's happened compacted by his own self-loathing. He hasn't shaved. He's single again. He's clenching a near-empty pill bottle. And he doesn't seem to have a friend in sight. He's wallowing. He's about to receive the highest honor from those he revered the most at his high school, where he was "the man," and he's not even in his right mind to receive it. You'd think he'd back out of it, but no, Kevin Pearson doesn't step away from a chance to be celebrated. So he attends, perspiring and unshaven. Perhaps he felt it was a way to feel like the big man on campus again—at the very least, the guy everyone thinks he is.
To this point, he's doted on from the moment he walks through the front door. Some sort of unconditional admiration must've helped everyone see past his obviously unkempt looks and distant behavior. They all treat him like a god, from the current class of young blonde girls—including one he almost mistakes for Sophie in his daze—to fellow former classmates and those who crushed on him. A-lister Kevin Pearson returns home to accept an award that to him is much like the countless football trophies he garnered throughout his high school years.
But this time, everything is different. Gone are the days when he could receive this glory as a young man who expected it. Gone is his bloated pride. Gone is the blonde cheerleader on his arm. And gone, really, is his health. Physically, mentally, and emotionally, he's now a shell of a man. He knows it. He's known it for a while. He can't even accept the kind words about him from his former coach, who comes out of retirement to present his award. Instead, he sees the image of his father, giving him one of those famous pep talks Kevin never truly believed because he never saw it in himself. When we see him fall apart in front of the whole student body while standing at the podium, deflecting the accolades to one of his peers seated onstage next to him, it's the first time he's finally ready to step out of the limelight and talk about the man he is not. But this is neither the time nor the place for this act of selflessness. The audience merely cheers him on, and his self-destruction goes unnoticed.
Kevin ends up on the high school football field, indulging in self-loathing and reliving every low in his life. It doesn't really come as a surprise when he hooks up with the first woman who flirts with him at the reunion (and kudos to the writers for not making him go home with one of the fawning minors who watched too many episodes of The Manny). He beds Charlotte, his fellow honoree and a now a distinguished plastic surgeon. It's a dispassionate union absent of any love on his end (Charlotte, on the other hand, is swooning). In fact, his demons creep up once more as he untangles himself from her embrace in a desperate search for a hit. After an unsuccessful rummage through her medicine cabinet, his eyes land on her prescription pads. He fills one out and rushes out of her home and straight to the pharmacy without even saying goodbye.
As Kevin's standing impatiently in line, he realizes he left his father's prized possession, a necklace Jack gave him that fateful evening he destroyed his knee, at Charlotte's. According to Jack, the necklace got him out of a bad situation in Vietnam. Kevin rushes back to Charlotte's, and unsurprisingly, she doesn't accept his frantic pleas to let him back in to find it. Kevin's burned yet another bridge, but this time, he's lost forever the one thing that connects him to his father. Kevin crumbles, right there on Charlotte's lawn, sobbing and crying for help. He lets out his anguish—he's sorry for all the things he's done—but no one is listening on this dark street, filled with strangers and one jilted woman.
Kevin is clearly desperate, but he's finally ready to talk with someone he knows he should have faced years ago: Randall. As the episode ends, Kevin walks to his doorstep, ready to do something that is extremely difficult for him—have a real heart-to-heart with the brother from which he's always distanced himself. But Randall, well-intentioned as always, goes first. He thinks he knows why Kevin's upset, and his words are so simple yet so shattering: Kate lost the baby. And just like that, Kevin's story gets pushed aside again.
