Grab a fresh box of Kleenex and your meticulously kept flowchart of all the show’s intertwining timelines: “This Is Us” is back. Or … is it? Because other than some flashbacks to Jack and Rebecca, I’m not seeing anybody I recognize here. Am I watching the right show? Is this “A Million Little Things”? WHERE AM I!?
Let’s talk about the five biggest takeaways from last night’s season premiere of “This Is Us.”
1. I’m sorry, do I know you people?
To pull a “This Is Us” season premiere and talk about something almost entirely unrelated to the show, let’s talk about “Grey’s Anatomy.” Do you remember when, about 47 seasons ago, the ABC hospital drama tried to spin Addison’s character off into a whole new show, “Private Practice,” but first they spent half the year constantly cutting away from the actual stars of “Grey’s Anatomy” to hang out with Addison and a bunch of random doctors and storylines in Los Angeles that you didn’t really care about?
That’s what tonight’s season premiere felt like: a pitch for a new show inside an already established show. I half-expected the episode to end with a surprise preview for NBC’s new Tuesday night drama, “This Is Also Us.” Hey, the extended universe brand of TV already worked for NBC’s “Chicago Fire/P.D./Med/SVU/Pizza Delivery” franchise.
It’s not that spending time with this trio of new characters was bad – and you have to commend the storytelling chutzpah of spending most of your 68-minute premiere with strangers. But these people and storylines also weren’t what I signed up for when I tuned in – and after a while, it got a little tiresome waiting for the show to finally reveal how these new characters who I hadn’t quite invested in yet tied in with the Pearson clan.
Because we all knew they would eventually – the season three premiere pulled a somewhat similar trick with Franco Harris, and after three years of this show, we’re starting to get a handle on the games it plays, if maybe not the final outcomes. Plus, between Rebecca’s first-scene speech and the blind singer’s song, the show wasn’t exactly subtle about the episode’s “the universe works in mysterious interconnected ways/you never know who a stranger may turn out to be” theme.
So anyway, the new characters: There’s Cassidy Sharp, a veteran of the Iraq War, haunted by her work – thanks to a drone strike, she knows how much a dead innocent civilian costs to the government – to the point that she’s a distant, drunken wreck upon her return home, eventually kicked out of her house after accidentally hitting her son in an inebriated PTSD haze.
While she’s at a low, the aforementioned mysterious blind musician is at an all-time high. Introduced naked side-butt first, he heads to a diner after his dog breaks his homemade breakfast platter and tries attempt two on the first meal of the day – while also attempting to flirt with his sweet waitress. His mopey musician act works, as the two end up dating, married (with the help of his exceptionally fluffy white dog) and eventually with a kid on the way as he takes a festival stage to the cheers of thousands.
And then there’s Malik, a teen hanging out with his friends at the basketball court, unable to pry his eyes away from some girl he’s in love with on his phone. No, not a girlfriend – his baby girl, as he’s a young single father raising his child with the help of some family while working at his father’s auto shop. That gig doesn’t pay a lot to support two people, however, so he’s trying to nudge his way into some shady street business with a local gang leader.
There’s no bad characters or company here, but there’s also no Randall, Kate or Kevin. At least until …