Tonight’s episode of This Is Us explored how second chances have radically disrupted the Pearsons’ lives—for better or worse. Deja (Lyric Ross) finally reunites with her biological mother. Kate (Chrissy Metz) gets to have the wedding she always dreamed of. Kevin (Justin Hartley) tries to right his own wrongs. Randall (Sterling K. Brown) seizes the opportunity to give Deja something he never had at her age. William (Ron Cephas Brown) gets a new lease on life. And Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) are awarded the opportunity to keep their family together. All the while, the series continues its confrontation of Randall’s blackness in a white home and the concept of nature versus nurture for him and William.
One of the things This Is Us does so well is present a narrative about each of the characters, then return to it with fresh angles, time periods, and perspectives—giving the audience the opportunity to look at them in a new way. This episode exemplified that. We journey back to when the triplets were just over a year old. Rebecca and Jack are in family court vying to adopt Randall, whom Rebecca is cradling in her arms. Jack is toting the other two children, are they're struggling to hear the judge (Delroy Lindo) over the fussy babies.
They soon understand his concerns when he tells them in the privacy of his chambers that Randall does not deserve to be with them. He needs to be in a black home. His actual words are, "How will Randall see himself, understand who he is?" Rebecca quickly says they’ll teach him, which says more to her desire to continue being Randall’s mother than it is a full acknowledgement of how she—a white woman—will teach her son how to navigate the world as a black man. She’s protecting Randall, and assuming that her maternal love will be enough. It’s even more of a shock to Rebecca and Jack because they just had a visit from social services, who gave them a “glowing” review. They believed everything would work out officially in their favor.
Thus kicks off the episode, which returns to the present day for the Pearson triplets after a quick flashback to their 20s last week. But first, we see where William was when his biological son was in danger of being removed from the only home he knew. As it turns out, William was also in court, busted on drug charges. His face shows his fatigue. When he tells the judge that he feels he has no options, that someone from his neighborhood was never meant to thrive away from the streets, you believe that he believes this. And when he says, “Put me inside, because there is nothing out here for me anymore,” it just crushes you. While William is succumbing to his own reality as a young black man living on the streets in 1981, we see Randall being fiercely loved by white parents who want nothing more than to protect him from anything bad in the world. It’s hard not to see the dichotomy of whiteness and blackness in a world that too often defines one as right and one as wrong. It’s that complexity of self that we see reflected throughout Randall’s life and into adulthood.
Flash forward to present day and Randall has misgivings about taking Deja to jail to see her mother. He doesn’t like the idea of bringing Deja to a place like that, to a woman he feels has not done anything to deserve a visit from her daughter. Right away, he’s judging the situation, but he's also clearly in fear of losing Deja just when he's had a breakthrough with her. They make it to the prison, only to find out that Deja’s mom Shauna (Joy Brunson) doesn’t want to meet with her. It's Randall who has to break the news to Deja, and he's so frustrated he takes it out on the social worker, blaming her—and the system—for not “looking out for these kids.” He offends her and apologizes, deciding to tell Deja that there was a mix-up with the schedule instead.
Meanwhile, Kevin is having a deeply exasperating moment himself. His siblings are progressing in their lives—Kate’s pregnancy news has visibly impacted him—and Kevin, being the competitive person he is, is compelled to pull a dramatic move of his own: proposing to Sophie (Alexandra Breckenridge). But he just can't do it, even though he buys three engagement rings and surprises her at her job during a visit to New York. Mind you, this is a visit he nearly forgot until she called to remind him about his flight. But just the thought of having nothing to show in front of his siblings sends him into a tailspin. He starts dreaming about what his life would be like with Sophie—and it terrifies him, so much so that when he finally arrives at her doorstep, it’s the very opposite of the romantic gesture he had in mind. He tells her about the fear he felt at the very thought of their future together, and he just can’t do it anymore. “That’s me just trying to be my dad or Toby or every great man from every good movie. But it’s not me,” he admits finally. With his broken sense of self on full display, Sophie slams the door in his face. Through his painful confession, he fails to tell her about his addiction or how he’s been dealing with the death of his father; the actual root of why he can’t move forward with her, even after he chased her down to rekindle their relationship.
Back at Kate and Toby’s home, he's fretting over the thought of telling his mother that he has a baby on the way. A devout Catholic, she apparently had serious issues with them living together before marriage, and he’s afraid to tell her that they're having a child out of wedlock. (Note: we really need to meet this one, because she sounds like quite a character). Kate impulsively offers to elope, which allows her to avoid going through a big emotional wedding without her father, something she tells Toby while they wait to fill out marriage certificates. She briefly mentions the father-daughter dance, saying she wants to “just get it over with,” but Toby reads between the lines and decides to go with his own romantic gesture as only he could.
We return to young William, whose courtroom admission actually moved the judge so much, he meets with William at the jail to encourage him to make better decisions in his life. Specifically, he tells him to think of his face whenever his demons kick in, which is advice William abides by throughout the rest of his life. It becomes a turning point for him, but what is more profound is knowing how that opportunity leads him to become an influential black male presence in Randall’s life—one he never had growing up.
Randall returns home from the prison with a disappointed Deja, and Beth is outraged, declaring that they will never take Deja back there again. “As long as she’s under this roof,” she says, “she’s not going to have anything to do with that woman.” But Randall knows this is something Deja wants, and he knows how hard it is to have someone else making decisions for you all the time. Once again, he's using Deja to fix things he felt uncomfortable with growing up without his own biological parents.
He decides to visit Shauna on his own. She’s been bruised and battered, which she explains is why she didn’t want to see Deja. Immediately, Randall goes in on her, talking about her commitment as a mother and how she’s disappointed her daughter. She sees him coming from a place of privilege, especially when he talks about sending Deja to a new school—a “good” school, he says. She even asks whether his wife is white, to which he quickly responds with what may be the blackest thing he’s ever said (next to that time he told Kevin that “no black man has ever been jealous of not being in an auction”): “Don’t get it twisted, sis, I wake up next to a head scarf and coconut oil every day. I'm married to a black queen.” Just as she was offended that he judged her, he was offended that she called him out about what she assumed was a lack of blackness—things they've likely both been combatting for many years. Randall finds himself in the same situation his adoptive parents were 36 years ago: he wants to protect Deja as his own, while her biological mother wants to keep her grounded so she doesn't forget who she is and where she came from. This increasingly tense conversation ends with Shauna telling Randall she will get her daughter back as soon as she’s out of jail. Unsurprisingly, this is a challenge Randall is more than willing to take on, telling Shauna, "You'll have to go through me."
While that’s going down, Toby is having a heart-to-heart with Jack’s ashes, asking the most important male figure in Kate’s life for advice on how to present the idea of a traditional wedding to Kate in the absence of her father. When Kate comes home, Toby asks for her hand in marriage in a genuinely heartfelt manner, while “Time After Time” is plays in the background. He has the words “Will You Marry Me?” scrawled across several hoodies he’s wearing at once, and gets down on one knee, telling her she should have the wedding she’s always wanted and deserves. A tearful Kate says yes once again.
We go back to 1981 and Rebecca and Jack are once again in court, hoping for a new outcome. Rebecca had written their judge a letter, telling him, "Randall is my son, whether you approve or not, whether you sign a paper or not." Ultimately, the judge recuses himself from the case and a new judge quickly and enthusiastically approves their adoption.
The episode catapults back to when Randall first met William back in Season 1, as he arrives on his father’s doorstep to tell him who he is. We were just getting to know both characters at this point, and we see what was happening on the other side of that door, in William's home. As it turns out, he was just about to shoot up, but he saw his old judge’s face, and then there was Randall’s knock on the door. Just in time.
