This Is Us season 6: A look at Dr. Mason, the character the show forgot
Now that we’re in the final stretch of This Is Us season 6, it is fair to say the show did that with Dr. Mason, a man we first met in the season 4 episode “Strangers, Part 2.” Played by Josh Hamilton, he was meant to be the doctor who helped welcome Madison and Kevin’s twins into the world. Showrunner Dan Fogelman noted that he was poised to have a big role in the series. Then, season 5 arrived, and the character was neither seen nor heard from again. He is the show’s version of the sitcom brother who mysterious disappears after the pilot. For an episode titled “Strangers,” the man (who we nicknamed Dr. Horse, due to the time he spent around them away from work) may be the biggest stranger of all.
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So what really happened with Dr. Mason? There’s been little chatter of it over time, but it’s clear that at some point between seasons 4 and 5, the plan changed dramatically. So much of it may be due to the global health crisis. Think of it like this: The season 4 finale aired in March 2020 and at that time, very few knew we would be dealing with the aftereffects of the virus for so long. The show filmed many weeks before even that. Fogelman decided to write in what was going on in the world into season 5, and this material took away what was planned previously with the doctor. Several stories had to pivot, and those that didn’t change radically had a few things included. (Take, for example, Randall testing and quarantining before he traveled to learn about his birth mother.)
It’s also worth noting that in general, This Is Us moved far away from doctors in its later seasons in general. Remember Dr. K? It got much harder to bring him around after Gerald McRaney became a series regular on NCIS: Los Angeles.
Think of it like this: In another timeline, maybe Dr. Horse is a huge part of the This Is Us lore. As it stands, though, he remains a question mark and at this point, something the show has no need to ever bring up again.
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Are there any other forgotten characters you with This Is Us addressed again?
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