The Story Of Us

Delivering as many tears as twists, fall’s best new show has America glued to the couch (without a superhero cape in sight!). This Is Us, and this is the series we’ve been waiting for.

- Dan Snierson

This is... well, it appears to be 1993. Here in a high school parking lot, a goateed Jack Pearson (Milo Ventimiglia) is standing by a wood-paneled Jeep Grand Wagoneer and ripping into his sons— clad in opposing-team football uniforms—for brawling on the field during the game. “What the hell were you thinking out there?!” he shouts, as his wife, Rebecca (Mandy Moore), tries to calm him. “Your mother and I didn’t raise you like that! Both of you! Now, do your handshake and make up!” The teens look toward Mom but find no mercy. “Do it now,” she seconds.

They perfunctorily execute a series of hand slaps before the family silently piles into the car and Rebecca stares vacantly out the window as a world-weary Jack drives off.

While filming this scene for the new time-tripping, emotion-dripping family dramedy This Is Us, Ventimiglia never wavers in intensity (in one take, an F-bomb even slips out), but the mood remains light: “You kiss Mandy Moore with that mouth?” the boys rib him between takes. This episode, which unspools the fraught saga of Kevin and Randall’s rocky relationship as brothers over several decades, marks the first time that viewers will see the family in the early ’90s—so far we’ve visited 1979, 1988, and present day. Which means yet another set of young actors has been hired to play Jack and Rebecca’s kids, this time as teens. “Each age range is a different dynamic,” observes Moore. “Eight-year-oldsaregoingtobeeight-year-olds. Thirteen-year-olds are going to start puberty and all that craziness.” Adds Ventimiglia, “Babies are going to crap themselves, they’re not going to sleep when you tell them to, and they’re not going to cry on cue.”

Speaking of weeping, perhaps these two can tell us how many tissue boxes they would rate this episode?