This is Us RECAP: Is This the End of Randall and Beth?

Seriously craving nachos over here, even though it’s not yet lunchtime. Well, it’s lunchtime somewhere, isn’t it?

We are down to the wire here with our Pearsons, and by wire I mean the season finale is next week! Not again! I guess we will survive, as we have lived through the last two years of waiting six cold, cruel months for our next hit of Us stories. But my question is, will Randall and Beth’s marriage survive, and will we know that going in to the “dry season”?

RECAP:

1. Okay, just a small critique of the way the show is aging Rebecca. When the show opens, it is seven years past Jack’s death, and Rebecca is mini golfing with Randall and his girlfriend, Beth. Seven years ago, she was gorgeous and fashionable, and now she is severely aged and totally “schlumpadinka” (Oprah’s handy word for frumpiness.) I understand she is sad and bereft without her love, and life has been hard, but is it in her to be SO frumpy? Obviously, this misses the point of the episode, which is to tell Randall and Beth’s love story, warts and all.

2. We get behind the ominously closed door from the end of the last episode, Randall and Beth’s bedroom door. Both of them are quivering with anger and neither one is backing down, though Randall does try and apologize for his hurtful phone message. “The man I married would never speak to me like that,” Beth rages. And she’s right. What has happened to sweet Randall?

3. I love Niles Fitch’s tender, winsome performance as teen Randall, and he really shone in this episode. He is intrigued by Beth from first sight, and finally drums up the guts to ask her out, with Kevin helping on the other phone line, of course. With Kevin prompting in one ear and Beth listening on the other, Randall manages to ask her to dinner, and she says yes! Oh, the look of wonderment on his face…

4. Teen Randall, dressed very spruce in a suit, takes Beth to a fancy restaurant, where their age and her clothing–ultra casual–are woefully out of place. Apparently they are not the right color, either, for the snooty waiter, who insists Randall pay up front. It broke my heart when Randall just whipped out his checkbook and began to write out a check. So young, and so naive to the unjust ways of the world. But Beth is not having it. She insists they leave. After that, the date blows up, but Randall still ends the night with a smile on his face. Beth may not get it yet, but he has met the One.

5. Seven years past their first meeting, Randall is proposing on what seems like a daily basis, and Beth is refusing him just as often. (Ha! “Hell no” was her answer on the jumbotron at the Pirates game!) She loves this man, but has qualms about being “swallowed up” in him and his family. A legitimate concern, but yet…Rebecca is a widow and Randall is so attentive to her, not a bad thing. Plus, as Rebecca assures her, being swallowed up won’t happen. “You don’t have to worry about losing yourself in him,” Beth’s future MIL says. “He won’t let that happen.”

6. Beth grabs her man and takes him down to a casual place for nachos and ginger beer, her favorite meal. When she signals that she is ready to be proposed to, Randall is prepared with a ring box, a bent knee, and some beautiful promises from his heart.

7. At their wedding (or more accurately, right before their wedding), Beth, looking GORGEOUS, scrambles to put together some vows. Randall, meanwhile, has written a multi-page dissertation on marriage as an entity. Yeah, he overthinks things. But they figure it out, together. Back to back (so he won;t see her before she glides down the aisle), Randall and Beth shoot from the hip and their vows are perfect, and perfectly them.

8. Fast forward to baby Tess, and the new parents are tested by exhaustion and the stress that comes with every new baby, no matter how welcome or loved. After they have a ridiculous tiff born of sheer fatigue (we have all been there), Beth perpetuates the nachos metaphor: Randall, she says, is “the whole chip with a lotta cheese.” He has to wonder, does he leave her with only the crumbs?

9. Ah, there’s my peaceful William. So good to see Ron Cephas Jones back on the canvas. Still, his presence in the house, along with Kevin’s, is a lot for poor Beth. She needs a break, and doesn’t know how to ask for it. She makes up a conference in Hershey (to where we are headed in two days, coincidentally. Chocolate town, here I come!), but really she plans to escape to a nearby hotel, where she can eat Swedish fish, Nachos, and binge on some “In Living Color.” But, uh oh, she gets caught in the act by her baffled husband, who spots her at a grocery store when she is supposed to be in Hershey.

10. I read recently that Dr. Gottman, the famous marriage therapist, says couples will probably never resolve their main fights. That’s because we didn’t marry ourselves! But we can definitely improve the way we disagree, gain empathy, and learn to understand one another better. Beth and Randall’s main fight seems to be that she DOES get swallowed up in him and his needs, never putting herself first, until now. “Our lives don’t work unless I am the one doing the bending.” she says.

11. Randall pushes back, and calls her narrative “revisionist history,” which made me think that we all revise our histories. Beth has always had his support in fulfilling her dreams, he insists. But when would she have time to have her dream, she shoots back. “Between which of your anxiety attacks?” OUCH. Yikes. Yup, THAT was a bridge too far. Randall is out, for now, anyway.

12. Then the writers artfully flash back to the tender beginnings, when we witness young Randall and Beth smiling as they think about their first date. That verdant, green shoot of love is a sharp counterpoint to their turmoil of today, and we wonder, will they be able to find their way back to each other? Because right now things are sad, troubling and grim.

One more episode left, friends! There’s a whole lot to resolve before then, isn’t there?

Well, what are your thoughts on this episode?

Best line, best performance? (My guy Niles Fitch gets my vote for this week!)

Will Randall and Beth make it?

What’s the deal with Kevin and Zoe next week?

Looks like the baby has a crisis, and young Rebecca has a car accident. Could this be the beginning of her headaches and the fact that she is shown to be in a home in the future? Of course, she is old in the future, but part of me wonders if there is a connection. There has always been something vaguely mysterious about Rebecca’s health.

Tell me something good! Or at least something interesting and helpful to understanding this complicated yet important episode.