Photo: L. Weikel

This Is Us

OK, I have an admission to make. Karl and I are notoriously ‘late to the party’ on a lot of programs that people watch – sometimes for years at a time – before we finally take the plunge. I can rattle off several titles without even blinking an eye: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Sons of Anarchy, the Sopranos, Call the Midwife, Schitts Creek, just to name a few. And now we have yet another series to add to the list: This Is Us.

I know, I know. You’re probably thinking to yourselves, “Late to the party, Lisa? Good grief. The people hosting the party moved out three years ago!”

And that would be fair. Guilty as charged. We’re laggards – sometimes by decades!

Nevertheless…

If any of you share with us this tendency to eschew the wildly popular until it’s run its course, then I am here to tell you: This Is Us is worth your while. Unlike the Sopranos (which first aired in 1999 – 1999!), which was our last lengthy binge before this one, This Is Us only began in 2016.

Sometimes This Is Us bordered on creepy when the parallels to our own lives were hitting so hot and heavy that Karl and I could only look at each other with tears in our eyes. Of course, it’s a show – meaning, it’s fiction – and sometimes it felt like the piling on of experiences of the characters was stretching credulity. But hey, nothing’s perfect.

All in all, if you want to watch a show that has a lot of heart and characters you can empathize with, get annoyed by, grieve with, and feel touched by, this is one of those shows. You can get lost in their stories. And sometimes, especially in the midst of the extreme circumstances we’ve both witnessed and experienced first-hand over the past year, it’s cathartic to discover some story lines that take you somewhere else. Even if that somewhere else is your own past.

The Future

Actually, I’m psyched. In writing this little post this evening and searching for a clip or something to link to, I read that the episode we watched tonight is not, in fact, the end of the series. Woohoo! I thought it was – or at least plausibly could have been – given the pandemic and the vagaries of productions, etc.

My poking around actually revealed that another episode may be airing tomorrow night  – Tuesday, 3/16/2021 – so ‘tonight’ for most of you reading this.

As far as the future and our television consumption goes, we’re going to try to watch as many of the Oscar-nominated films as possible.

All of this chatter about television programs and movies reminds me, though: I have at least four books beside my bed that are in varying states of completion.

(T-256)