Thursday 27 May 2021

This Is Us Season 5 (2020 Dan Fogelman)

This must have been written incredibly quickly, while it was being filmed, even. Everyone's distancing, quarantining etc. and the George Floyd story makes itself felt primarily through Randall and his family. Then when he confronts Kate about the fact that racism has in fact never been confronted in their family it's a brilliant way of combining the political with the personal. It's left to Beth to remind Randall that he came from misfortune and tragedy, and where that's taken him, cross cut against the story of young William and the baby. Randall and Kevin are really not connecting at all, after their last season finale fall-out.

And the doctor's melancholy version of 'Blue Skies' then laid over the ending... terrific stuff.

The old team are there of course - it's beautifully photographed and scored.

Love those episodes which begin completely randomly - lovely relationship between Vietnamese and his grand-daughter - how do they fit in? We think this ties in with the shock revelation that Randall's mother did not, after all, die.. at least, not when we thought she did. Meanwhile Kevin is relating to his new girlfriend Madison, played by Caitlin Thompson, who is married to Dan Fogelman and has a small part in Crazy, Stupid, Love

To support my opening contention, we now have to wait until the New Year to continue, because Episode 5 hasn't been completed!

Picking up in 2021, six is an entire flashback episode, telling the story of Randall's mother, played totally convincingly (as always) by Jennifer C Holmes and Angela Elayne Gibbs, narrated by Vien Hong (and featuring Kane Lieu as he, younger). It's a tearjerker. But where's the little girl, and who's is she?

It seemed a long haul, not concluding until the end of May. It all culminates at the wedding...That house above the cabin's finally been mentioned, and we think the next season will be the last. Ends on one of those scary flash forwards in which it looks like Kate is getting married again..

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