Last night's episode of This Is Us still has me crying! Here's a recap!
"Songbird Road, Part One" was an episode that had everything from humorist moments down to grabbing the tissues by the end. It was the best new episode of the new year by far and one that I hope that will get recognized for it's writing, directing and even acting from the cast but the one that gave a great performance was Michael Angarano as Nicky Pearson.
Beginning with Kevin and Randall talking with Kate about that Jack's brother isn't dead and heading on a road trip to find him. It's all fun at first but soon it gets pretty serious when they finally get to where Nicky is living, at a trailer home.
Thinking that no one is home, Nicky shows up and is introduced to his niece and nephews. He invites them in his trailer and soon he tells the story of what had happened during that bombing. He tells when he woke up from his high haze, he wakes up with a kid looking at him and started to intimidate the kid with a chocolate bar, but the kid grabs his glasses and the two started laughing and took him fishing.
Using grenades, Nicky drops one in the water and collects the dead fishes for food, but when they moved to another spot, Nick grabs another grenade but couldn't open it. Then the boy tries to help and the grenade is dropped on the boat. Nick screams to the kid to jump but moves to the edge of the boat and Nick jumps and the grenade goes off killing the kid. Jack rushes out and not only saves him but had it with him and sent him away. After that Nicky wanted Kevin, Randall, and Kate to go and leave him be after telling that story.
Meanwhile, in the flashback, we see Jack getting letters from Nicky of Clark Kent. But Jack keeps ignoring them by placing them inside his desk, but when he gets a letter at home he decides to finally see him. On his way there, he gets flashbacks when they were kids making promises of their future.
As Jack gets there, he tells Nicky that he doesn't want any more letters from him at all. Nicky invites him in his trailer and tries to talk to him about the war after showing him photos he's collected But Jack doesn't want to talk about that event as he has put that past him and moved on with his wife and family. And soon leaves Nicky for the last time, but there was a moment at the end where he was thinking about going back for him but instead headed back home and tell Rebecca that he saw a fellow soldier that needed help.
Nicky tells Kevin, Randall, and Kate that their father has two sides, the pre-war and the post-war. But after Kevin, Randall, and Kate left Nicky and stopped at a snack shop, Kevin realized that he needed to do something that he needed to fix his father's mistake and decides to pick up Nicky and take him home. As they get there, they go in and see him with a gun on the table and tells them that he didn't get a chance to explain to him while Kevin puts his hands on his shoulder to comfort him.
This was one of the most powerful episodes of this season since the fall finale. It was strong in the writing, strong character developments, performances from the cast and the directing were amazing. As I said it earlier, Michael Angarano deserves recognition from the performance of the week to Emmy for Guest Actor in a Drama series. I can understand why Jack did what he did but for him to almost go back for his brother and not that would be very cold. It literally gave us another side of Jack that we didn't see.
Overall, I give this episode a 9.5/10.
You can catch This Is Us when they return Tuesday, Feb. 5th at 9/8c on NBC.