Understanding: This Is Us "The Ride"

 

The pressure of being a parent begins with the first car ride home. That's what this week's episode of This Is Us showed us with a few surprises. 

"The Ride" is basically what the episode is about: the car ride home after the birth of the family's children. From Randall and Beth's fun and life experience, second car riding brings Annie home. A very tired Kevin and excited Madison bring their twins home, which also deals with paparazzi and Jack's dream visit about fatherhood. 

Not to mention the overly excited Kate and the car ride home with Ellie and Toby, who had their plans changed due to Ellie's feelings of maybe leaving things alone for a while. While Toby understands, Kate does and takes the time to learn the meaning of what Ellie is going through; also, Kate knows that Toby was laid off. 

However, the one or, in this case, the two stories in this episode happen to be when Jack and Rebecca's car ride home after their kids are born. Each character deals with a different perspective from losing a child, questioning whether they'll be a better mother or father from their own. The scene of Jack and Rebecca talking in the car while the kids were asleep was my favorite part of the episode. It was overwhelmingly powerful, mostly coming from Mandy Moore's performance. 

Let's not forget the final moment in the episode, as we see the medical intern leave the labor and delivery introduction and get picked up by someone. Ultimately, they drive up to Kevin's cabin to see Randall and the two women happen to be Deja, who's pregnant, and Annie. The scene ends as a car drives up. Randall and Deja talk about how time goes so fast. 

"The Ride" was another brilliant episode with many good moments. While everyone in the cast gave a fantastic performance, Mandy Moore gave another solid performance, and maybe she'll finally get an Emmy nomination and win for the season. 

The Kevin and Jack dream talk was so good. Kevin tries to learn from Jack about fatherhood, but she gets him to go for it and asks Madison to marry him, to which she says yes. Randall and Annie talked about how the family tree was beautiful. 

While I enjoyed the Ellie, Kate, and Toby story, I did think that the scene in the car when Kate pushed their meeting plan was a bit annoying, but the outcome of Kate's understanding made it better. 

Overall, I give this episode an 8.5/10.

What did you think of this episode? Leave a comment below!

You can catch This Is Us when it returns on March 9th at 9/8c on NBC.