Okay, as a refresher, I did tune in to the first ten or so episodes of "This Is Us" during its first season. I was led there by some very lofty reviews and the promise of an innovative dramatic device. Well, the magical mechanism wasn't that new and, after a while, I found the show to be completely manipulative and not interesting. In reality, "This Is Us" is nothing but a soap opera.
Now that is not to degrade soap operas. I have been a fan of this tried-and-true format for years. I used to watch a few daytime "stories" with my grandmother. Hell, I used my lunch break these days to watch "Days of Our Lives." The acting in daytime is quite good and the performers are quite adept at their craft. I should know. A couple of them are friends of mine.
And, yes, I was a fan of "Dallas" and, of course, the pinnacle of nighttime soapdom, "Knots Landing." You could even argue that the vaunted "Downton Abbey" is nothing more than a soap opera.
So I do enjoy a good prime time soap. I quickly discovered that "This Is Us" is not. Indeed, even the so-called jumping-around-in-time gimmick isn't so new. "Knots Landing" did the same thing for two seasons back in the late 80s. Indeed, "This Is Us" was utterly predictable and I pretty much could tell you the "surprising" end-of-show twist right after the opening credits.
What has gotten "This Is Us" so much press is their diverse storyline with one of the characters being an adopted African-American. Oh, wow, how radical. Meanwhile, back in 1988, "Knots Landing" introduced a new Black family to the famed cul-de-sac. No mention was made of their race. They simply moved into the show's fabric seamlessly with little attention given to them "being different."
Like I said above, I had pretty much signed off "This Is Us" last year and removed it from my DVR queue. But, last Sunday night, NBC gave it the coveted time slot right after the Super Bowl and promoted an episode that promised viewers they would finally find out how the family father met his demise. It had apparently been set up in the previous episode that a slow cooker caught fire overnight while the family slept. That development must have been a real stomach grinder for the marketing folks at Crock Pot. But, nevertheless, the post-Super Bowl episode pledged to show everybody how the revered Jack character died. And I figured it was from a strangulated hernia he suffered from carrying around all those cliche-heavy scripts.
Since I had watched the game, I decided to sample "This Is Us" one more time. The good news is my opinion remains the same. I knew the guy was going to get out of the house fire and succumb to something else, which essentially was a heart attack prompted by smoke inhalation. Yawn. Meanwhile, the acting remains self-conscious and pretentious. Particularly bad is the one playing the obese daughter as an adult. Send her a dozen donuts and hope she expires quickly. Coming in a close second for stilted emoting is the guy playing the Black son as an adult. At one point in the episode, one of his kids' pet got out of a cage. His acting choice was this bug-eyed expression reminiscent of Our Gang's Stymie in a haunted house. How embarrassing for him!
Of course, NBC and the producers made a mawkish episode even worse by tying it into the Super Bowl. Never a good sign and this is worse than Fonzie jumping the shark. You see, because Dad went buns up on a Super Bowl Sunday back in the 80s, the rest of the family now uses Super Bowl Sunday to remember Dad's death. Um, doesn't anybody realize that this date changes every year?? A complete cheesy device that sunk the show to even more ludicrous depths.
But I'm sure lots of lemmings were grabbing their Kleenex, which seems to be the only reason why "This Is Us" exists at all. To make America sob.
Heck, I do that just by watching the news every night. Yep, I am now officially done with any future airings of "This Is Us." Virtually all "Knots Landing" episodes are on You Tube. Now that was a show who knew how to bring the soap genre to new heights.
Dinner last night: Leftover lasagna.
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