If you were nervous about the trailer with the car accident in last week’s promotion of This Is Us, you can breathe a sigh of relief, as Kevin (Justin Hartley) was not the man in the car accident. However, he could be in some trouble after tonight’s episode.
Last time on This Is Us, we got to see the story of Randall’s (Sterling K. Brown) birth mother. The teaser for the next episode showed a car accident that insinuated it’d be Kevin, on the way to see Madison (Caitlin Thompson) have their babies.
This week, we get the context of that scene, going through the relationship between Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and his dad and young Kevin (Parker Bates) and Jack.
The episode starts with Kevin rehearsing for his scenes with Robert De Niro, thrilled for the opportunity. However, right before he gets there, Madison calls him to say she’s in labor. Kevin is so nervous that it’s six weeks early that he decides to go back to Los Angeles from Vancouver to be with her.
His agent and director are both really angry with him, but he doesn’t care. He keeps calling Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and Miguel (Jon Huertas), who are trying to help him get a flight.
Flashback to young Jack’s (Joaquin Obradors) first baseball game as a pitcher, where his dad (Peter Onorati) gets drunk and forces him to drive home for the first time. Throughout the rest of the episode, we see the drive home and how Jack gets them there in one piece. His dad was proud of him, but Jack was nervous.
In another flashback, we see young Kevin going with Jack to meet Penn State football players in preparation for his own college scholarship. Kevin gets really nervous and starts to throw up in the bathroom, which makes Jack worry. Kevin ends up addressing the conversation between Jack and Rebecca when Jack says that Kevin is soft because Rebecca coddles him.
This leads to Kevin telling Jack that he doesn’t think he would care about him if he didn’t play football and that he knows Jack thinks football is his only shot at being special. He also tells Jack that his coach calls him stupid every day, to which Jack responds by taking him out to dinner and giving him the ultimate Jack pep talk.
He talks about how his dad went to his little league games and how he made them a “living hell” by getting drunk every time. Jack would pray before every game that they’d have a good game so they’d have a good car ride home. Jack and Kevin have a nice bonding moment when he opens up this way.
“My whole life, I promised myself I’d be nothing like him, but here I am putting all this pressure on you making you so nervous you’re sick,” Jack said. “I ended up just like him.”
“No, dad,” Kevin said. “You’re way better than him.”
“Thank you, my son,” Jack said. “You’re gonna be way better than me.”
Jack then confronts the coach in the bathroom of the restaurant, telling him that no one calls his kid stupid and that he’ll be watching him at the games.
As we get back to adult Kevin, he’s racing back to the Seattle airport, where Miguel booked him on a flight. He’s in deep, having cursed out his director and ignored his agent, but he should be getting back to L.A. in five hours. However, he stops his car when he sees a car accident on the side of the road.
Kevin pulls a man out of the car and decides to take him to the hospital. It’s at this point the audience exhales because we realize it wasn’t Kevin who was in the accident. However, we see Kevin’s wallet and ID dropped outside of the car, which could pose a problem for his airport venture.
On the way to the hospital, Kevin calls Madison, who doesn’t answer, to tell her that he’s on his way, and he’s trying as fast as he can. Kevin and the man talk about the birth of his children, and the man tells him not to worry about missing the birth because the kids don’t even remember it to begin with.
Kevin starts to tell the man about Jack, about how much of an idol he was for the Big Three and how Jack believed Kevin could be the kind of person who could do it all and be the best dad. After he drops the man off at the hospital, he races off to make it to the airport.
When he arrives at the airport, he realizes he left his ID at the car. He tries to reason with the woman at TSA pre-check, begging her to understand. He tells her that he needs to start off his babies’ lives by being there for them.
Madison tells the nurse helping her that she’s only really close to two people in the world, and one of them is having a baby of her own —Kate (Chrissy Metz) — and the other is hopefully on a plane. As she’s feeling sad and overwhelmed alone, Randall and Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) call her and tell her that they’re there for her if she needs anything. Randall even tells her she’s family and that they’re there for her no matter what she needs. The timing is perfect, and Madison cries because she’s so thankful.
This week’s episode leaves a lot unanswered, and next week’s episode looks like Randall and Beth might be the ones who are there (virtually) for Madison while she gives birth. As always, This Is Us is gripping at our heartstrings and keeping us on the edges of our seats.
This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.
