This Is Us season 3 episode 4 review: Nicky’s story & the power of October 18
This episode was painful, largely in how we knew where things were going. Nicky was not holding up well in the country and the war — he was preparing to die there, in fact. It was a war that he never wanted to be a part of, and it was a war that he tried to do everything that he could to avoid. At one point, he even thought about fleeing up to Canada in order to escape the draft. This episode told what was a pretty painful, emotional story, one that started with the chilling shot of Nicky overseas. Jack had to track him down and find him after becoming a part of the war itself — a move he seemingly made mostly to feel close to him.
To think, all of this started with Nicky being born on October 18. Because of that particular day, he was drafted to be a part of this war. It was a birthdate that Nicky and Jack’s mom wanted, one that would allow for them to have their own identity. Nicky was a rather innocent kid — nerdy in some ways, and an outcast. He looked up to Jack, who tried to encourage him by telling him that he could be Superman. After all, Clark Kent wore glasses.
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We saw all of the steps that were taken to get Nicky to this point in the episode, and the experiences that made him the man that he was. We’re all the more curious to know now how Nicky would react to Jack’s children in the event he was alive. He probably would have loved them, and he would have been another person to add to their support system. If he was around, maybe he could’ve helped some of them escape their demons. He knew about those demons through what he saw out of Jack’s father.
This episode, alas, only amplified the horrors of war and what it does to people. In the case of this family, it put them in a position where despair was the only option.
CarterMatt Verdict
Dan Fogelman wrote this episode with Tim O’Brien of The Things They Carried, and it showed as you could see him tell the experiences of some of what he went though in battle. This felt as authentic a story of war as you will see on TV, but also still one of family. Through meeting Jack’s father earlier on in his life to seeing even his father, you do have to imagine that there are even more stories that could be told in this timeline if the writers wanted to stay there a while.
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What did you think about This Is Us season 3 episode 4 overall? Be sure to share right now in the attached comments. (Photo: NBC.)