Anyone who has seen my puffy, bloodshot eyes over the last few days might think I’ve experienced a major trauma. I have.
This Is Us, the excellent and exhaustingly emotional American family drama, ended for ever with more epic speeches and all the feelings anyone could ever have.
Dropping on Prime Video and Disney+ on Thursday (an excruciating two-day wait after the US), the finale had the task of bidding farewell to the Pearson family – a family I know better than my own after six seasons in six years.
Over time, the show has built a fan base around the multi-generational plots, endless twists and drawn-out mysteries.
We didn’t know how Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) died for simply ages. We wondered, ‘Who is Kate (Chrissy Metz) marrying this time?’ Were #CoupleGoals Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and Queen Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) going to make it? Would Kevin (Justin Hartley) ever settle down or was he destined to be the Manny forever?
All the while, the show, as it flashed back and forth through time, pondered big life questions, drawing thought-provoking conclusions and making us all feel good about life and love and death and the universe while crying uncontrollably.
I know many people who gave up on this series long ago, hoping to watch something that didn’t require hammering your tear ducts quite so regularly. But the trauma was worth it.
A conclusion to this weighty show was a big responsibility, but writer Dan Fogelman decided against big twists or final reveals and instead gave us a simple portrait of a family appreciating the little moments in life. It was perfect.
As mom-of-the-century Rebecca finally died (oh my heart!), the futures of all the many, many Pearsons had already been tied up in a neat little bow.
Randall was on the Presidential path, Kate successfully opening music schools for the blind and Kevin planning homes for war vets.
I would have loved to hear the Big Three’s eulogies – what a shame to be deprived of those final monologues – but that was the only niggle.
Flashing back, the Pearsons enjoyed a lazy day playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey which, in the present day, was played by the kids after Rebecca’s funeral.
In Rebecca’s last moments, a devastatingly dreamy afterlife sequence showed her squeezing Jack’s hand.
And in the final scene, fathers Jack and Randall watched their families play together in different eras, the circle of life continuing.
Sentimental? Hell yeah. It couldn’t be any other way.
