Just when I thought things were ready to blow up on This Is Us, they… well, didn’t. Shows what a good pep talk from Dad will do, right? But let me back up just a minute. In The Nov. 22 Thanksgiving episode, Randall found out that his mother, Rebecca, had actually known his birth father, William, for his entire life, even though all Randall ever wanted was to know who his birth parents were and potentially meet them. William and Rebecca agreed almost 40 years ago to keep Randall and the rest of the Pearsons out of this secret, but the cat fell out of the bag on Thanksgiving. And though he spent most of the Nov. 29 episode stewing, in the end, Randall found forgiveness for his mother on This Is Us .
Randall is obviously mad — he feels that Rebecca has robbed him and his children of knowing his biological father. William missed graduations, weddings, and births, and Randall sees this all as Rebecca’s fault. Enter his siblings, Kevin and Kate, who throw him in the car and take him up to the family cabin. Special (and unexpected) guests appear in the form of Olivia, Kevin’s crush and co-worker, and other people from the play they’re working on, and in his anger and frustration, Randall gulps half a smoothie someone put in the fridge. But that smoothie was blended with hallucinogenic mushrooms, and Randall was tripping. Hard. So hard that he has whole conversations about his childhood with Jack, his dead father. Flashbacks showed that Rebecca really grappled with introducing Randall to William, but in the end, she was afraid that Randall would choose William and leave them.
Eventually, Randall is able to see that even though his mother broke his trust, everything she did came from her love for him — she didn’t want to lose her son. Randall and Rebecca hugged it out, with Randall telling his mother that for her to keep a secret like that from everyone in their family for 36 years had to be incredibly lonely and isolating. Is Randall completely over this? Probably not. But he has found some sort of understanding and forgiveness for his mother, and that puts This Is Us on a more hopeful path.
Images: Ron Batzdorff/NBC (2)
