Well, suffice to say EW's Henry Greenblatt was correct, I suppose, this show did contain one of the best plot twists in a pilot, but I can't say I'm thrilled with it, plus it feels cheap to me and yet, everything becomes clearer.
Spoiler Alert: Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore)'s plot line takes place thirty-six years ago, which makes sense. Rebecca goes into labor with triplets six weeks earlier. When they arrive at the hospital, I am shocked that they don't take her in right away for a cesarean section and why they are no cords attached to her monitoring her babies' heart rates. This isn't revealed until the very end when Jack looks at his two surviving babies (the third one died at birth) and is offered a smoke by a fireman who dropped off a baby found at his fire station. I couldn't believe that, knowing it is illegal to smoke in hospitals, but not apparently thirty-six years ago.
Okay, now to the other plot lines. First of all, that baby found abandoned at the fire station grows up into a perfectly good human being named Randall (the recent Emmy winner Sterling K. Brown) who is adopted by Jack and Rebecca as a replacement for the baby they lost. Yeah, I don't know if I agree with two grief-stricken people taking on a third child, but Jack made it abundantly clear that there were three cribs in their house and his untalented mother knitted three blankets so they were leaving the hospital with three babies, which is exactly what they do, nature be damned. So back to Randall. He is married to a lovely and mostly understanding woman, Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) and is a businessman but after all these years, he has found his biological father, William Hill (Ron Cephas Jones), a former drug addict who left him at that fire station, an event he doesn't even remember clearly. Randall doesn't even truly understand why he sought out his birth father, which is just crap, as far as I'm concerned. Still, he can't help but get to know William and even invites him to meet his family and his two soccer playing daughters. Then, William drops the bomb, he has terminal cancer (I'm assuming). So, they have a lot of work to do quickly.
Then there is Kevin (Justin Hartley) who looks good even with his shirt on. He is a decent actor, better than the crapping material he is given, but he is stuck in this dead-end acting job on a TV sitcom, The Manny, where he can even seriously make the joke about breastfeeding his ward himself. He throws a fit and quits his job just like that. But he doesn't know what is next.
His sister, Kate (Chrissy Metz) also faces an internal battle, one that requires her to lose weight as she is heavyset and sick of it. She even joins a weight-loss group where she meets the funny Toby (Chris Sullivan) who is thrilled to discover that Kevin is her brother. Hopefully, that romance will go well, as her life hasn't turned out the way she thought it would.
Now, though I wasn't thrilled with that stunning plot twist and wish they would have dealt with the devastating stillbirth with a little more grace and detail and had the discussion of adopting the abandoned baby without just showing it. Though it will probably be mentioned much more in the future.
That all being said, the characters are interesting and the acting is good, though the characters need to become more developed, but there are so many of them, so that will come through with time I'm sure. Still, I'm intrigued and need to see more. This is still a good show, I just felt it could have been better. Grade: B
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