At the end of last week’s This is Us, Rebecca found out Jack was drinking again, but this time around he wasn’t going to go through it alone. Inside the flashback storyline, we got another flashback to the night Jack came home late from work, drunk, and she demanded he stop drinking. We also saw that before that, he was drinking at work, and then went to the store and picked out the moon necklace for her. He explained to the jeweler he didn’t want a diamond — because that was for a normal girl. And she wasn’t normal.
We got to re-see that morning scene where he gave her the necklace and told her he could do better — and we got to see how he got better. Work was horrible but he threw out his the alcohol at his desk, and even tried AA. While he couldn’t do it, he went to the gym instead and took up boxing instead; he dealt with it alone. However, this time around, he knew he couldn’t do it without his family’s help. Instead, he was honest with the kids. He sat down with Kate and told her he had a drinking problem, and that his dad had one as well. In true Pearson family form, Kate held her dad’s face in her hands and told him it would be ok. And this time, Rebecca brought him to AA.
While we once again got a look at Kate and Jack’s extremely close bond, but we also found out more about Kate and Rebecca’s tense relationship. When she was a kid, she entered a talent show to sing but dropped out beforehand because she heard how incredible her mother’s voice was. In present day, Kate landed her first real gig and her mother came to support her, which was the last thing she wanted.
They had a falling out, for which seemed like the first time, and Kate told her she was angry at her for “existing,” telling her she always looked down on her, felt sorry for her, and ultimately just wanted her to be the woman she never got to be. It was rough. The best part of their disconnect was Toby. Following their fight, Rebecca tried to ask Toby for his opinion, and in true Toby fashion, he told her he was and always would be, 100 percent “Team Kate.”
The rest of the present day family was at Kevin’s taping on The Manny; he was asked to return for a special and after his last freak out on set, the director basically made a fool out of him. However, he sucked it up and went out with class. During the taping, Randall and Beth also had a fight — he was hesitant to sign the foster papers because he wasn’t sure they’d be able to handle a kid with drugs or alcohol in their past, but were reassured that they could do anything together.
HollywoodLifers, what did you think of this week’s episode?