Last week on This Is Us, we saw Randall (Sterling K. Brown) speak up to his family about his feelings and to his therapist about needing a therapist who is Black to understand his experiences. Then, the writers dropped the bomb that Randall’s birth mother, who the audience has always thought/known had died at his birth, is alive.
This week, we see Randall find his new therapist, right when Tess (Eris Baker) gets into trouble at school by making a video protesting her teachers touching her hair and calling one of her classmates by the wrong pronouns. Though Randall is proud of Tess for speaking her voice, he grounds her for the disrespectful manner in which she did so.
Kevin and Madison have an open and honest conversation about her eating disorder and how the fact that Kevin didn’t even know about it shows that they don’t know each other as well enough as they should.
Kevin then takes the opportunity to open up to Madison about his struggle with his body, substance abuse and his struggles with his brother. The conversation is really deep, and the two seem to connect really well over their respective trauma.
Meanwhile, Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Toby (Chris Sullivan) meet with the woman who will potentially give them their adopted baby. They immediately hit it off, and though Toby has his reservations, Kate feels really confident about her.
Back to Randall’s story line, his therapist gives him a homework assignment to write down a story about his childhood that is telling about who he is as a person.
This takes the audience back in time to when the triplets are in eighth grade. Young Kate (Mackenzie Hancsicsak) is working with some friends on a school project. One of her friends is interested in Randall (Lonnie Chavis), but as Randall finds out, she’s only interested because he’s Black. Randall is really upset but continues to tell his mother and everyone else that he’s fine.
It wouldn’t be an episode of This Is Us without the introduction of a new character or plot twist. This week, the audience meets a man and a little girl who speak Vietnamese. They’re only briefly seen, but the man tells the little girl about how he is perfecting his cooking for someone.
“The woman that you’re trying to impress with your cooking, is she the one in all of the pictures around here?” The little girl said.
“Yes, she’s the woman in all of the pictures,” the man said.
The scene then pans to a picture of the man hugging a beautiful Black woman. Could the woman be Randall’s birth mother? We’ll have to just wait and find out.
