I never was a big Milo Ventimiglia fan. Until last year I’d never seen Gilmore Girls, so I knew him as Peter Petrelli from Heroes, this emo kid with issues who cared. Then I got through Gilmore Girls and realized he really hadn’t changed in Heroes, he just got superpowers.
And now Netflix finally has This is Us, a show that’s generated a decent amount of buzz where Milo Ventimiglia is no longer an emo kid with issues who cares. He’s an adult. With issues. Who cares. Mainly about Mandy Moore and his three little kids.
This is Us has me hooked. Its pilot episode ranks very close to Game of Throne’s maiden outing in terms of unexpected twists that have you sitting up and wanting more. But if GoT is a river with rapids that churn and foam as it carves through rock on its way to the sea, This is Us is more like a babbling brook that flows, maneuvering its way past stones and meadows on its way to the big blue yonder.
After a series of what I now realize are awesome but emotionally harrowing TV shows, This is Us is like soul food. It’s comforting to watch a bunch of thirty-six year old adults just trying to figure out how to live their lives without an unnecessary amount of angst or an overly large vocabulary. It feels… kind. It feels sincere, without necessarily being preachy.
The premise of the show is that they’re normal people, with normal problems. And it is such a relief. No one is cooking meth in a Winnebago, or fighting for the right to sit on a chair made of a thousand melted swords, or battling the re-animated dead for a shot at a can of beans.
This is Us focuses on real, drama-free lives where people are – for the most part – kind, value family ties, and love each other. Their issues are relatable — being overweight, the relationship with food and being healthy, with parenthood, with career choices, with feelings of abandonment, with questioning ourselves and all the other little crises we all deal with. There are no overt moral themes about gender wars, or the new satellite family, gritty urban realities or racism. Not that these themes are absent, they’re just dealt with as in a very matter of fact way, without necessarily being incendiary.
It’s a pleasure to enjoy a show with characters that deal with life’s issues with a lot of common sense and heart, not to mention a little bit of humour. It’s a simplistic way of looking at things, but it beats the convoluted minefield of today, where every topic is a hot button issue and everyone seems to just want to yell at each other and have loads of angry conflict. If I enjoyed Downton Abbey for its focus on good manners and right conduct, I like that This is Us emphasizes common sense and the value of family. It can’t hurt that it’s mostly a show about struggling adults in their mid-thirties who no longer have other people to pay rent for them and yes, I realize I am totally projecting, so I’ll stop now.
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Author’s Twitter: @nikkajow
