Netflix Award-Winning Series Is The Tearjerker Champion Of All Time

Dan Fogelman wrote the screenplays for Tangled, Cars, and Crazy, Stupid Love, among other films and shows, and his work just keeps getting better. It’s no wonder This Is Us was such a huge hit for the 6 years it ran on NBC. From 2016 to 2022, audiences cued up the latest episode with a box of tissues in hand and prepared to talk to their friends about what happened as soon as the credits rolled.

With an approval rating in the 90s on Rotten Tomatoes for all six seasons, you know something great was taking place. 

This Is Us focuses on a family of five, a mother and father, Rebecca Pearson (Mandy Moore) and Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia), and their “triplets,” Kevin, Randall, and Kate, played by Justin Hartley, Sterling K. Brown, and Chrissy Metz, respectively.

The show bounces around through several timelines, so the triplets also have personas for their teen and young child periods of life. When we enter the scene, Jack has been dead for many years, his wife is now married to Jack’s best friend, Miguel, and his children have full lives. 

I would speculate that the show is called This Is Us for obvious reasons. We watch this incredibly close family bond over their losses, celebrate their wins, and be present for each other during tough times.

Of course, the three siblings also fight, bicker, and find their way back to each other. Randall has become successful in the finance sector and is married to Beth, with whom he has two daughters, Tess and Annie.

Kevin is an actor known for a long-running show in which he played the hot nanny to a baby. And Kate is Kevin’s assistant, essentially managing his career for him. 

This Is Us offers flashbacks in virtually every episode to let us know how the Pearson family got to where they are today. We learn early on that Rebecca was due to have triplets, but that one of the babies died during delivery.

On the same day, a Black man leaves his baby on the doorstep of a firehouse, and a firefighter brings the baby to the hospital. As Jack is mourning the loss of one of his children and looking through the window into the hospital nursery at his two newborns, he meets the firefighter and learns the story of the abandoned baby.

Rebecca and Jack decide to bring that baby home, which explains why one of the triplets, Randall, is Black. 

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The crux of This Is Us is a confrontation with reality that everyone struggles, no matter how great the family or the circumstances. The Pearsons are a legitimately loving family. Rebecca and Jack were deeply in love.

The kids grew up embraced by their parents and encouraged to be their best selves. Still, Randall suffers from severe anxiety and panic attacks, Kevin is constantly doubting his abilities as an actor, and Kate is morbidly obese and forever battling her weight.

Also, Kevin and Randall have an unspoken competition and hostility toward each other that isn’t explained for several seasons.

But you can’t help but cheer for each of the people in This Is Us. It’s not dramatic; it’s life. It could be any one of our lives, and so we find ourselves watching, yearning, hoping, cheering, and crying over and over again.

The last season got a little too political for my taste, but I would still recommend it without a doubt. Stream it with tissues.