When we heard about This is Us, ‘heartwarming’ wasn’t a term we heard being thrown about too much.
Rather, it was being billed as “sad”; “depressing” and “tear-jerking”.
Yet here we are. Two episodes in, and The Binge’s Laura Brodnik already has billed it as “a show that will restore our faith in humanity… it’s just delightful.”
Laura Brodnik and Tiffany Dunk explain why everything you’ve heard about This Is Us is wrong on The Binge.
This Is Us follows the intertwining lives of Kate, Kevin and Randall.
Kate and Kevin were originally part of a triplet pregnancy, however their biological triplet was stillborn.
Their parents, Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore), intent on leaving the hospital with three babies, adopt Randall (Sterling K. Brown, in the present day timeline) – a then newborn who was rushed to the hospital after being abandoned on the steps of a fire station.
“When Jack and Rebecca find out they’ve lost a child, they see him there… and they think: ‘that was the child we were meant to have’, and they take him home”, said Laura Brodnik.
The show’s uniqueness stems from a beautifully-handled dual timeline.
The tribulations of Jack and Rebecca going through birth complications is swirled delicately throughout the modern day lives of their children: the day-to-day lives of siblings Kate and Kevin, and Randall’s quest to track down his biological father.
"I think the dual timelines are fantastic", says Tiffany Dunk. "We see Rebecca and Jake as they're about to bring their triplets into the world, as well as the triplets in the current day... I think showing it in different time periods is a really unique and interesting way of keeping the story alive and engaging you. It's informing you bit-by-bit who these people are..."
"There's a lot of time jumping when you learn more and more about the family and how they have come to be and how their relationships have formed and fractured over the decades".
It's nothing short of "a warm chocolatey TV hug"... one we never expected it to be.
Because, following the US release in September last year, the vibe sent over by the US was a wholeheartedly sad one.
"I think it's been given a bit of a bad wrap in terms of when it first aired, all people would say was 'I watched it and I sobbed'... if you've heard about it being sad and soppy, don't worry, it's happy as well", says Laura Brodnik. "It has a lot of fun, really heartwarming moments."
Tiffany Dunk agrees, "There's a lot of humour in there too. In the second episode, they go to a Hollywood party and it's one of my favourite scenes EVER."
We're not quite sure what the USA were on about with their sadness-driven agenda. The Hollywood Reporter wrote of the show "You'll laugh cry, and be confused by the twists."
What they left out is that your heart might melt along the way.
There's a lot of new TV to talk about. Catch-up on everything you might have missed, and help predict the next Bachelor, on this week's episode of The Binge...
If you want to watch This Is Us, new episodes air every Wednesday night at 8:30, on Channel Ten.
You can catch-up on any episodes you might have missed on Tenplay, here.
Top Comments
It's certainly caught my attention, however, I'm not so impressed with the large woman's character. As a big girl myself, I've never had to have anyone write signs on food saying "don't eat this", "bad", etc. We're not animals who can't control ourselves around food - which is what I think the writers were going for with her character.
I got the impression that she'd written those notes to herself. Obviously, I missed something there.
She did write them to herself, it said 'love kate' at the bottom.
Ahh, maybe she did - I didn't get that impression myself, but you could be right. Either way, it still bothered me a lot!
She wrote them to herself as a reminder not to eat the things when she was craving them (or the emotional comfort from them). I think a lot of people would have been able to see their experiences mirrored in writing reminders to yourself. If you've never experienced the guilt of having eaten something you shouldn't have, or too much of it, then congratulations. I, however, can sadly relate.
loving it so far. so well written.