When I think about my TV life without "This is Us," one word comes to mind:
Nooooooooo.
On Tuesday, the NBC drama following the past, present and futures of Jack and Rebecca Pearson and their three children is ending after six seasons. But if you have been embedded with the Pearsons since they came into our lives on Sept. 20, 2016, you know that we are losing more than just another TV show.
We are losing friends. We are losing role models. We are losing de facto marriage counselors, philosophers and life coaches.
More than anything, we are losing family.
In our six seasons with the Pearsons, we have seen them deal with pretty much every item on the life-event checklist. There have been births and deaths, marriages and divorces, and multiple trips to various hospitals. There have been late nights with crying babies, morning-after reckonings with sullen teenagers, and better-late-than-never reunions with long-lost parents.
Also Vietnam, the Black Lives Matter protests and the COVID pandemic. All of it a reminder that the "Us" in the title does not refer only to the fictional Pearsons, but to the tissue-clutching viewers who have been watching them for all of these drama-stuffed years.
So now that "This is Us" is about to leave the TV planet, what are We the Couch People to do?
To begin with, we can be grateful that creator Dan Fogelman and his team have been preparing us for the end since the Season 3 finale, when a flash-forward revealed a future where Kevin has a teenaged son, cranky Uncle Nicky is a real part of the family, and Rebecca is on her deathbed.
Some stunning surprises have come our way since then, but when the final credits roll on Tuesday, there will be closure. It won't feel good, necessarily. But it will feel right.
Most importantly, let's be thankful for the gifts "This is Us" has bestowed upon its fans. Gifts that will stick with us long after the Pearsons are gone.
The gift of craft
One of the astounding things about "This is Us" is that every element has been pretty much perfect pretty much every time.
The big things, the small things and the mostly invisible things.
There are the indelible lead performances by Sterling K. Brown (Randall Pearson), Justin Hartley (Kevin Pearson), Chrissy Metz (Kate Pearson), Mandy Moore (Rebecca Pearson) and Milo Ventimiglia (Jack Pearson). There is the eerily great casting of the young actors who played the Pearson kids at various ages. There are the priceless supporting performances from Chris Sullivan (as Kate's first husband, Toby), Susan Kelechi Watson (Randall's wife, Beth), and Caitlin Thompson (as Kevin's almost-wife, Madison).
The acting is just one long Emmy reel. No grandstanding. No false notes. No question.
Of course, there would not be amazing acting without writing that has taken on tough mental-health issues, polarizing current events and complicated family dynamics with depth, delicacy and a delightfully wiggy sense of humor. And the acting and the writing wouldn't spark the way they do without the deft directing, which is beautifully supported by an infrastructure of excellence that includes music selection, costumes, casting, and the "Game of Thrones"-level coordination that this time-shuffling series requires.
It takes an Emmy-winning village to make this intimate show. How lucky are we that there is still room for us at the Pearsons' table?
The gift of story
Whether it is a multipart arc like the second season's "Number One," "Number Two" and "Number Three" episodes focusing on each sibling's origin story, or one-episode immersions into the lives of supporting characters like Randall and Beth's foster-daughter, Deja (Lyric Ross); the shell-shocked Uncle Nicky (Griffin Dunne); or Randall's biological father, William (Ron Cephas Jones), "This is Us" knows how to create stories that are little worlds unto themselves.
Even after all this time, I can still feel the sun on Rebecca's face when she and Jack took that spontaneous Season 3 drive to Los Angeles. I can feel Randall's internal stress fractures after his nightmare Season 4 home-invasion experience. I can smell the wood-smoke in the family cabin where so many emotions boiled over and so many wounds were eventually cauterized.
And I can feel the devotion that permeated the episodes arc anchored by Kate's wedding to the adorably British Phillip (Chris Geere). As they wove six seasons of history, hurt, humor and humanity into one jumbo-sized tribute to family, this story felt deep and effortless at the same time.
Sort of like love.
The gift of trust
Remember the pilot episode, when that twist of an ending revealed how two White babies and one Black baby became the triplets known as the Big Three? It should have felt like a trick, but it didn't. And that is the genius behind this TV gem.
For all of its time-shifting and cliffhangers and Thanksgiving episode heartstoppers, "This is Us" has always been about believably complex characters doing the best they can for themselves and the people they love.
Sometimes they blow it. Sometimes they emerge from the wreckage they made as the glorious people they were meant to be. Sometimes they say the right thing at the best possible moment, and you want to leap through your television and hug them until they yell at you to stop.
Regardless of what happened and in what order, we trusted the show to be true to its characters, and the show trusted us to believe in the members of the Pearson universe enough to follow them anywhere. It was the easiest leap of faith ever.
Here's to them. Here's to "Us."
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The final episode of "This is Us" airs May 24 at 9 p.m. ET on NBC.
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