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..."