The way I see it, if something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening. Truth be told, I always felt it a bit lazy to just think of the world as sad, because so much of it is. Because everything ends. Everything dies. But if you step back, if you step back and look at the whole picture, if you’re brave enough to allow yourself the gift of a really wide perspective, if you do that, you’ll see that the end is not sad, Rebecca. It’s just the start of the next incredibly beautiful thing.
William – This is Us (NBC)
I was bawling at the fourth quarter of this penultimate episode.
This Is Us has always been my ‘crying’ show. It’s what I watch when I just want to ensure that I would have a cathartic cry by the time it ends. Ninety percent of the episodes across all six seasons made me tear up, ranging from simple, single tear affectations, to all out ugly crying. We’re talking stuffy nose, puffy eyes, and swollen face. It got so I had to breathe through my mouth sometimes. Sorry for the visual. But it had to be said.
This show had me hooked straight from season one, episode one, where they introduced what type of storytelling they would do (non-linear, flashback-and-future-forwards based), and what kinds of tropes they would employ (bait and switch twists; not-what-it-seems tropes). They started with an exceptional pilot, and didn’t stop delivering. There were a few missteps, a few boring episodes in between. But they mostly stayed consistently great.
Initially I only started watching because of Mandy Moore. She was cast as the Mom, and I was curious because even though she was of age, I still thought of her as the young pop star who came out with light hearted bops. She was of my generation! How could they cast her as a mother?!
And then I stayed for Milo Ventimiglia, and their love story. The Pearson clan became my new TV family, an honor previously enjoyed by Parenthood, before it too ended their tear-jerking, heartwarming six season run.
Anyway, let’s go back to that quote.
The way I see it, if something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening.
That is exactly the kind of “This Is Us” line that I expect from this show. That’s a quality, sure-fire tearjerker right there.
The thing is though, I was just here in this place of melancholic introspection. Still here in fact. My own drama isn’t finished yet. And when I heard that line, I thought, “no.” The sorrow I am mired in now, in these “bad times” is not equal to the joy I felt during the so-called “good times”.
But then again mine aren’t the wistful, bittersweet tears of a dying matriarch, peacefully going towards the light to the restful death she deserves after her long and faithful service to her loving family. Mine are sour lemon tears; face puckering, heart twisting, stomach churning, gut wrenching tears that render me motionless sometimes with emotion.
I realize that makes me sound bitter about the years we were together, but I’m really not. I am literally trying to make a direct correlation, trying to find the right equation, between my present sadness and my former joy. And they don’t add up. I am more sad now then I was happy then. It is what it is.
It is what it is.
So yeah, the Pearson family did have a pretty wonderful life when it was happening on the show. But dammit William, let Rebecca have her tears if she wants to shed them. Bittersweet or sour, she deserves to have her cry if she wants to.
And so do I.
