This Is Us season 2 premiere review: The big three celebrate their birthdays
It’s been a long wait for new episodes but the This Is Us season 2 premiere is finally upon us. The show didn’t leave us with much of a cliffhanger, outside of the fact that Becca and Jack had separated for a short while after a fight in the past, but with that speech that Jack gave before he walked out of the door, we really felt like their love story wasn’t going to end because of that fight.
A Big Three birthday
It’s the big three’s birthdays, but before we get into how they celebrated, we are going to give you a quick catch up on what they have been up to since last season. Kevin has taken the job with Ron Howard and they are treating him as part of the family (even got him a birthday cake with his face on it!). Also he’s still together with Sophie doing the long distance thing and we couldn’t be happier about that. We were afraid he might’ve messed it up already since Kevin has a way of doing that sometimes.
Randall is still wanting to adopt and he and Beth have an appointment to get the ball rolling, but Beth is not 100% on board with this. Randall is putting his foot down as this is something he really wants, but this seems to be the first real roadblock between our favorite TV couple. After talking to his mom, Randall learned that it was his dad that pushed hard to take Randall home as a baby and even though she had just lost her baby and wasn’t ready to think about adopting, she let Jack take the lead and has never regretted it. Randall decides not to follow in his father’s footsteps and instead of pushing Beth into adoption, he decides to communicate with her instead. When we heard Beth tell Randall that she is ready to adopt, but that she wants to adopt an older child that no one else will give a chance to – we burts into tears. We thought that we were going to hold it together tonight, but nope. You got us NCB – well done.
Kate is pursuing her dream of singing (following in mom’s footsteps) and her relationship with Toby is still going strong (but they are having a few bumps in the road like any other couple). She heads out to her first singing audition, but when she sees all the other singers there, her insecurities start to surface and she walks out before letting anyone hear just how amazing she can sing. After bailing on her audition, she tells Kevin, but not Toby and when he finally finds out we can see that Toby is still feeling like Kate is not opening up to him the way he wants. Communication is the foundation of any relationship, so we worry that if Kate doesn’t open up to him that she’s going to lose him. Watching Kevin and Toby fighting over what they think is best for Kate was tough to watch until we saw it light a fire under her to go back to that audition and show those other singers how it’s done. If you were expecting her to go in and kill the audition then think again. She did a pretty good job, but compared to the woman who is the back up singer, she’s out of practice and needs help to hone in on her talent – something she’s ready to get started on.
Jack and Rebecca’s fight
We caught up with them pretty much from where we left off. They sat down with the Big Three and told them the truth about what’s going on between them and what they didn’t realize was that Randall had actually overheard their fight. They told them about Ben, about how bad their fight was, and that they are taking a few days apart, but that they are not getting a divorce. Kate took the news worse then any of them, but they all were fairly upset as any children would be watching their family fall apart. So are they really not getting a divorce? Jack is a little more confident then Rebecca seems to be that this will blow over, and after watching Jack reach out for her hand and Rebecca pulling it away, we are a little worried about them. When Rebecca goes to Jack to bring him home, he admits to her that he has a serious drinking problem and is embarrassed that he can’t get a handle on it. He promises that he is going to do what he can to fix the problem on his own before he comes back home to her, but she tells him that they are going to fix it together and we see once again just how much they love each other. Unfortunately, there is some dark foreshadowing here where Rebecca tells Jack that three months from that night they are going to be in a much better place then they are now, but we see the future and it ends with Jack gone and their family home burnt to the ground.
CarterMatt over all thoughts
We expected this premiere to be emotional, but with a lot of the focus in this episode being about adoption (something that we are pretty focused on in our lives right now), it was incredibly relatable to see the push and pull between Randall and Beth and how hard this process can be on couples, despite how much they may want to adopt. No one ever tells you that part about the adoption process, but This Is Us has never held anything back about real life issues. They pull back the curtain and show us the good, bad and the ugly and that’s why this show is so relevant. Also, we’ve been so miserable that William is gone, so it was really nice to hear him narrating this episode.
What did you think of the This Is Us season 2 premiere? Was it worth the wait? Leave us a comment in the box below with your thoughts on the premiere. If you are looking for more scoop on what’s coming up next time on This is Us then head on over to the link here where you can check out a preview. Also, if you want to keep up to date with all of our CarterMatt This Is Us coverage, then be sure to join our Facebook group at the link here. (Photo: NBC)