This Is Awesome: NBC’s This Is Us Is A Must-See

This is Us Ron Batzdorff/NBC

This Is Us
NBC
Premieres: Sept. 20
Airs: Tuesdays at 10pm; Tuesdays at 9pm beginning Oct. 11
Who’s In It? Mandy Moore, Milo Ventimiglia, Sterling K. Brown, Justin Hartley, Chrissy Metz, Chris Sullivan

 If you aren’t a heart-clutching, happily teary mess by the end of the premiere episode (or, hell, even the trailer below), well, we just don’t know about you.

But we’re not going to tell you why just yet.

Here’s what you should know: Pop star turned actress Moore and Heroes’ Ventimiglia costar as Rebecca and Jack, a passionate, loving couple whose triplets arrive on Jack’s 36th birthday.

Brown — Emmy-nominated for his role in The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story — plays successful family man Randall, who, despite being raised in his adoptive parents’ loving and supportive home, never got past his birth dad abandoning him at a fire station.

The Young and the Restless star Hartley plays Kevin, a smart and studly actor who loses his marbles on the set of his hit sitcom The Man-ny when he realizes his sole job will always be to shed his shirt, tote the baby around and sound like a moron.

American Horror Story’s Metz plays Kate, a beautiful, funny woman convinced her obesity is preventing her from living the life of her dreams, though she feels powerless to do a thing about it.

They’re all having birthdays, too. And over the course of 43 glorious minutes, the quintet’s stories weave together in ways that may leave even the most jaded viewer touched — and thirtysomething/Parenthood-loving saps like us in a state of utter bliss.

“I think the world has grown more cynical,” series creator Dan Fogelman (Cars; Galavant; Crazy, Stupid, Love) told reporters at the Television Critics Association summer tour. “Our art has grown more cynical, I’ve been saying a lot. I watch the movie screeners at the end of every year — it’s a treat for my wife and I to sit and catch up at the movie theater — and it’s kind of become a slog for me sometimes. It’s all so dark and so cynical.

“I think there’s something about not just the [This Is Us] trailer, but these actors and the show that maybe it’s the right place, right time for a show that has a little bit of hope and optimism and can make you cry, make you feel — but also make you feel good. I didn’t get into the business to work on something that people turn off their TV and feel worse than they did an hour ago — nor to make movies that make people feel worse. The goal is to entertain and explore people and hopefully uplift them a little, without it ever being soft.”

3 Comments

  1. The African-American family was the happiest and least-broken of all the families. He has a successful job, a loving wife, and wonderful children. Yes, he’s searching for his birth father, but if he didn’t have that problem, his storyline wouldn’t exist at all.

    Stop looking for something that isn’t there.

  2. Without even seeing the serious, again the African-American family unit has been depicted as broken and problematic. We are consistently demonized by Holywood and the American corporate marketing media and looked upon as a dysfunctional unit, incapable of being appreciated or praised as being as functional as any Anglo family unit. When will this end.

    • Err, did you watch the same trailer? The African-American family were the happiest of the whole bunch. If there weren’t any problems, what story would there be?

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About Lori Acken 1195 Articles
Lori just hasn't been the same since "thirtysomething" and "Northern Exposure" went off the air.