This Is Us Season 1 Episode 13 Recap: “Three Sentences”
We try to shove life into categories at every chance we get. The tighter we can squeeze it into a regulated space, the more it seems like we — not god, or chance, or entropy — are the ones who get to control it. We experience childhood, and middle school, and college. We are young professionals, and newlyweds and then maybe the cycle starts again. This week’s episode of the family drama This Is Us opens with the most basic of these time constraints: the birthday.
In the opening shot, obviously made to look like it was filmed on an old family camcorder, we see our close-knit family playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey. They are exuberant, jovial, rosy. With three children and a father all born on the same day in a calendar year, there is truly a lot of celebrate.
Much of this episode, “Three Sentences” deals with the next birthday the kids have: their tenth. The kids call a “meeting” with Rebecca (Mandy Moore) and Jack (Milo Ventimiglia). They feel old enough now, and want to each have their own birthday parties instead of the single combined party. They want to individualize. Kate wants a Madonna birthday party, and Kevin wants a Princess Bride themed party, and Randall doesn’t care at all about his birthday party. Over the course of the episode, we watch as the parties unfold according to the different personalities of the kids. Kevin’s party becomes the attraction while Kate and Randall’s parties are very small whether they care (Kate) or not (Randall.)
But throughout the course of this episode, the true intrigue lies in the periods of life that This Is Us has remained shrouded in mystery for the entirety of its first season. Midway through season one, it feels like we know a lot about this core group of five people whose lives orbit each other so closely it’s impossible to divide their stories completely from one another. We know the show’s present day because it is progressing forward in front of our eyes. Kevin (Justin Heartley) is a successful actor trying to get some credibility doing a play. Kate (Chrissy Metz) is also successful and still fighting a lot of the same demons she faced as a child. And Randall (Sterling K. Brown) is successful in work and love, with a beautiful wife and two daughters.
Because of the way the show is structured, we also know a good amount about the children’s most formative years (from birth to 10) and the two flawed but truly loving parents who raised them. For a while, that has been enough to keep the…
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