**There are some very real spoilers here among the nonsense.**
This Is Us is the story of Mandy Moore and Sterling K. Brown being very sad that Jess from Gilmore Girls died—a martyr for fantastic mustaches everywhere—told in two separate timelines in order to more effectively destroy our emotions. Sterling K. Brown is Mandy Moore and Jess’s son, but they had triplets, so I’m assuming the other two people in the above photo (Chrissy Metz and Justin Hartley) are also their children.
Why am I not sure? I’ve never seen it. If you can say the same, you’ve likely learned some of the same things about it through inescapable cultural osmosis. In terms of things to learn about that way, it’s decidedly on the more harmless side of the scale, but my second-hand knowledge of it has convinced me that it has the potential to be the greatest television show to be peripherally aware of, ever. It has everything: a former Gilmore Girls actor; Sterling K. Brown of American Crime Story, Army Wives, and Person of Interest fame, among many other things; Mandy Moore of being Mandy Moore fame; 70s(?) mustaches; and tragic events, but most importantly, it has the freedom to mix up those inimitable core elements in any way its writers see fit.
If you wondered how they could recapture the magic of the pilot’s twist—that the various unfolding events involved the same people 30 (or so?) years apart—the writers apparently doubled down and added a third, future timeline recently, and now that pandora’s box has been opened and we know more time jumps are on the table, the possibilities are boundless:
1. Go even further into the future.
Ready to see what the future holds? #ThisIsUs pic.twitter.com/V8fnqtByjf
— Sterling K Brown (@SterlingKBrown) February 5, 2018
Did you think they can’t go any further, because they’d have to deal too much with futuristic technology and societal developments, like the end of Parks and Recreation or Weeds? So what? Do it. Lean into it. Run with it. Jump another 30 years forward. Put even more age makeup on Sterling K. Brown. (I’m about 80% sure they already did that once.) He’s so damn likable that everyone just goes with it. Give him another Emmy. His character is now 97, but life expectancy has reached 150 years. His story is only beginning. His children’s children are adults now. We’ve got four timelines playing out at once. Episodes are two hours long.
2. Make Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore play their own grown-up grandchildren or great grandchildren or whatever works with what viewers know about the characters so far—the point is they should stay on the show forever by playing their descendants.
Alternately, Milo Ventimiglia plays a grown-up grandchild while Mandy Moore, caked in even more age makeup, remarks to her kids that he looks just like their father. She does this with an accent her character never had but that really works to sell that she’s hella old anyway. Or she plays BOTH a grandma and adult grandkid and has scenes with herself like a Disney Channel original movie about twins made with one single child actor. (Lmk in the comments if you know what movie I’m thinking of, or I may never return from Google. Edit: and no, it’s not Parent Trap.)
Keep going. Do another 30 years. Do it two more times. The show is now on five nights a week just to fit in all the storylines. Skip forward by 60 years or more one time, just to keep the audience on its toes. Hint at a tragic event somewhere in that extended gap and save it for when everyone is least expecting it, and then sucker punch us all in the tear ducts.
Recycle every actor in the cast so they can all stay on the show forever. Put them in weird disguises to throw people off. Now Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimiglia are in a set of triplets with Sterling K. Brown, with Chrissy Metz and Justin Hartley—who have no idea they’re actually distant relatives because it’s so far in the future—as the parents. One time, one of them has a Benjamin Button situation just to hide another timeline reveal. Sometimes they’re all siblings, sometimes complete strangers, and sometimes second cousins, once removed, who don’t really have much to do with each other in-universe, but provide important parallels to make each others’ stories really resonate. Sometimes, they’re clones that were aged up rapidly to be adults alongside their own parents. Things get weird.
Keep going. Surprise! It’s actually also the Jetsons reboot. It’s a sci-fi show now—sometimes. It’s 1,000 years in the future, but also 1997 when the story calls for it. The audience is on the edge of their seats knowing that the nuclear apocalypse claims the character Milo Ventimiglia is now playing, but not knowing when. Go further. The future heat death of the universe is juxtaposed with a failed relationship in the year 3047 in an impossible-to-miss metaphor. The show wins every single Golden Globe in its 35th season. It’s the only thing on TV. Every other show has been pieced into the This Is Us extended universe timeline.
You don’t have to worry about missing so many shows because of peak TV anymore. Now it’s just one show you’re not watching but instead learning about through the internet!
3. Go back.
We’ve done the future, so now we have to go back.
HEY I just remembered that Milo Ventimiglia’s character is named Jack. I think. (image: ABC)
Milo Ventimiglia and Mandy Moore play their own characters’ parents in the 1940s or some similar time period. I don’t know; my entire concept of when in history this show’s timelines take place is based on Milo Ventimiglia’s mustache, but I feel like I’m at least close. They both win five Oscars, because the show now encompasses all onscreen fiction.
We find out the specific origin of every last physical object involved in the fire that killed Jack. The trees that were cut down to build their house were actually once narrowly spared from a forest fire by someone who wouldn’t have been there if they hadn’t forgotten to buy batteries, in an incredibly tragic and poignant reversal of events—at least I think, because I’m pretty sure Jack dies because a smoke detector doesn’t go off because someone forgets to buy batteries, resulting in everyone collectively screaming at the TV like someone made an obvious mistake in a horror movie.
4. Alternate timelines.
When all that’s been exhausted, butterfly effect everything (the concept, not the Ashton Kutcher movie). We fully explore a timeline where Jack never died, and how that would alter the hundreds of other timelines. The show can easily double its existing episode count. We get a timeline where Mandy Moore did remember to buy batteries, but they didn’t work anyway, and everyone feels a soothing catharsis. “It was never anyone’s fault,” we all sob. Tissues are continually out of stock.
Another twist takes us by surprise when we expect two sets of events to converge, only to discover that they are taking place in the same year this time, but in parallel timelines! We’re not even 100% sure what’s going on anymore, reality has lost all meaning, but we are all riveted by the unquestionably human drama of it all.
—
These are just a few ways This Is Us, the greatest television show ever invented, can keep itself going long into the future and continue to be a thing about which we all unexplainably know a surprising amount.
(image: Netflix)
(featured image: Maarten de Boer/NBC)
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Published: Feb 6, 2018 01:45 pm