This Is Us: Histórias de Família

I just finished watching the series finale last night. This is a show about the human condition. Not every decision they made on this show jived with me. In my opinion there is too much Randall (not enough Kate and Kevin) and the Toby fiasco in season 6 made me so mad... but life is full of its ups and downs too.

The cast in this show is very good, definitely deserving of their nominations. The story itself is heartwarming. I cried more watching this show than most! From the births of children (some with disabilities), to an Alzheimer's decline and the deaths of parents, these struggles are all things people deal with.

This is a show about all of us. A gem.

This is a very inventive story line so I won't refer to it, except to say that both the first and second episodes have real surprises. Avoid reading any reviews with spoilers. It will dampen your joy as you figure things out.

The acting is excellent and the script is well written. This looks like a comedy but in fact it has some profoundly dramatic moments. I want to single out some of the actors who were terrific – Milo Ventimiglia (played Rocky Jr), Mandy Moore ("Tangled"), Ron Cephas Jones, Sterling K. Brown (Chris Darden in "OJ") and Susan Kelechi Watson ("Louie"). Gerald McRaney does a cameo in Episode 1 which may be some of his best work ever.

The disadvantage of a TV series like this is that it requires the audience to participate and fill in the gaps. Many people will not understand what's happening, so this is the type of series that is best viewed twice, or however long it takes you to get it.

I think that kleenex owes this guy a percentage of the sellings! This awesome, fantastic, heartbreaking, intelligent, touching, sincere, unforgettable show will be forever in our lives, at least in mine!!

Soooo special, the script, the actors,the characters had been elaborated with such delicate ways, each one of them means a whole world.

This show has made my life better for sure....thank you,thank you, thank you ALL OF YOU.

SPOILER ALERT

First I am a hard person to fool. The Village. Figured it out. Many others. The Sixth Sense and Fight club got me and that's why I love them. I love to be taken down a path and then realize everything wasn't as it seems.

When the fireman lit the cigarette I realized it was 1980. But I still didn't get that those three would be raised together until the nursery with the knit onesies. I'm good at this stuff and the acting and characters blew me away that I wasn't looking for it.

Best Pilot ever. IMHO.

Then I thought. Well they can't do that every episode because if you are looking for twists you find them. If I was told there was a twist at the end, I would have figured it out (everyone's birthday on the same day, etc). But the fact one was black and the other two were twins threw me. PLUS the fact one was "Ryan Gosling" body and the other was overweight threw me that they were twins. Both played on stereotypes which I Loved they made us look into ourselves a little.

So where does the show go from here? It has a great premise. Dual time lines. You can do a lot with that. Have stories play out with flashbacks to tell a larger story (ala Lost). The casting was nailed with exceptional talent. I was interested in every character. They even nailed it by casting Simon and Simon vet Gerald McRaney. He was the glue that MADE that story line click. He speech on the chair was Emmy worthy. I hope he is a regular cast member and explore his wife's death and the death of his one child.

I'm hooked for at least season one. No need for twists. The dual time lines and great characters is enough for me. They can bounce all around in the 80s when the "triplets" are 4 or 10 or 15. triple time lines or more. Milo and Mandy can be made to look older and cast kids to play the parts at different ages. So much room to explore. I predict a good 4-7 year run.

Let me just begin and geek out by saying how I started the first season and binged it till the 3rd and now I am writing this review at 4:57 am, in my country and only because I could not 'not' share my review about this.

"This Is Us," is built around four characters who share the same birthday & it is a heartwarming and emotional story about the struggles and life of unique set of triplets and their wonderful parents.

This show celebrates the ordinary rhythms of family life, the unflashy joys of loving and being frustrated by your parents, or wanting to shoot the breeze with your siblings. It's also beautifully acted, most notably by Mandy Moore, Sterling K. Brown & Milo Ventimiglia. It validates it's characters' flaws and does not bow to hysterical dramatics, which the viewer's feel is something that makes it even more authentic!

In the age of Netflix and their cringy shows, I chose to watch This Is Us because it offers so much in so little, It talks about birth, death, career crisis, self-doubts, heart-to-hearts, reconciliations and never fails to make viewers feel something.

Possibly one of the best things in this show, is the ability of an American family to reach the hearts of audiences across the globe in a way that it manages to speak across cultures, resonate with audiences simply because of their characters and well thought storyline, being an Indian and having grown up in a completely different culture I can still feel the warmth of this show and appreciate it.

The first 4 seasons have just seemed perfect to me, 5th is where things really started going downhill.

Possibly the only reason I didn't give this a 10 and would have liked to give a 8.5, is that the buildup is so great but at times we don't get the adequate time to deal with the sudden buildup bursting within seconds. What I mean is, sometimes their buildup is so devastating that we would need a minute to react (and feel that the characters have reacted adequately) and the next second the scene has completely changed.

This is what turned out to be wrong with the beginning of the latest season(Season 5), even though it shows the transition to the almost apocalyptic pandemic society we seem to live in now, it throws at us emotions, situations and current happenings for the audiences to digest within a few scenes.

An amazingly executed drama, whose pilot should be enough to get you hooked because of it's own unique voice.

Edit: I have reviewed the beginning of Season 5 as well in this edit (first 5-6 episodes).