If you like powerful, character driven stories. This is definitely the one for you. The story focuses on a family as they live their life in the best ways they know how. They are all pretty rich, so there's none of that pesky poverty stuff (except in the flashback scenes of their parents who did have some of those struggles), but they all have their own issues.
Randall is adopted and has just found his bio-dad at the age of 36, only to learn that he's dying. Kevin is a pretty famous TV star who wants to be a serious actor but finds out that quitting your comedy show while you're still under contract has some pretty serious ramifications. And Kate is morbidly obese and has been struggling with her weight her whole life. The show vacillates between the past (the three growing up and what their life was like as kids, babies, and teens) and the present (what their life is like now, the show starts at their 36th birthday).
The past scenes mainly focus on how the parents are dealing with important issues, but they also allow us some insight into the children's struggles as well. The parents are Jack and Rebecca. A couple who both had pretty messed up families growing up and didn't really want kids at first, but eventually got to the place where they did. The show starts off on Jack's birthday as a very pregnant Rebecca greets him, it then shows his three adult children in their lives now. Becca goes into labor and they rush her to the hospital where they find out that the doctor who knows about her high-risk pregnancy is in surgery for an appendectomy and they have to meet the doctor who will deliver their babies (Dr. K) between contractions. He tells them he's no newcomer and that he's been caught up to speed on her pregnancy. Then he tries to talk to them about the risks, but Jack won't have it. He tells Dr. K that nothing is going to go wrong because it's his birthday. Of course, something does go wrong, very wrong. One of their babies dies. Dr. K tells Jack as he's processing this information that he went into the OB-GYN business because he and his wife lost their firstborn during delivery. His speech about turning the sourest of life's lemons into something resembling lemonade becomes Jack's mantra and he does end up taking three babies home from the hospital that day. Randall (who was left on the doorstep of the fire station by his own father who was a junkie) was brought to the hospital by the fireman who found him and Jack took that as a sign.
Jack (played to perfection by Milo Ventimiglia) is a great man, a good husband and an even better father. As the story progresses I fall more and more in love with his character. This is not the first time Milo has played an empathetic character that I fell for immediately. In Heroes he played Peter Petrelli, a character so empathetic that he literally absorbed other people's gifts. This also made it a good twist when it turned out his character was indirectly responsible for the Armageddon that everyone was trying to avoid for the entire first season. Becca is played by Mandy Moore. She's a bit of a bitch sometimes, especially in the decisions she made concerning Randall, but she's a complex character and I like that about her. Randall is sweet and caring and hella smart, but he's too kind sometimes. I think he tries too hard because he always felt somewhat unwanted. His relationship with Kevin is especially strained and always has been. The show hasn't really dug too deeply into his relationship with Kate. A lot of Randall's problems in childhood stem from his race. As an adult, a lot of his struggles relate directly to his bio-dad and the fact that he's already dying before Randall really has a chance to get to know him as a person. Kevin is a famous actor who wants to be taken more seriously since he's really only famous for playing a goofball on a comedy show. His problems revolve around his acting career and his relationship with his sister Kate and brother Randall. Kate's problems mostly revolve around her weight, something that she's been struggling with since childhood and her relationship to her mother and brothers. Kate is the child who was always closest to Jack, so it's no surprise that she would take his loss the hardest.
The show has a lot of cameos in it, some of them playing themselves since Kevin is supposed to be a big deal in Hollywood. Ron Howard and Sylvester Stallone, for instance, play themselves when Kevin gets his first big movie break. One of the biggest struggles all of them face is moving on after Jack's death. The show doesn't reveal right away that he died, but you know pretty quickly that something must have happened to him since he's not shown at all in the present scenes. I have watched the first two seasons. Season one was really powerful, Season two did reveal the truth about Jack's demise, so it was powerful in that way, but I think Season one has been the strongest and most emotional for me so far. I really enjoy getting to know Jack's character more through the flashbacks, for the most part the guy's a freaking saint.
Some characters I loved besides Jack: Dr. K (the OB-GYN who delivered Kate and Kevin) Beth (Randall's opinionated but super loving wife), William, (Randall's sensitive, artistic bio-dad) Toby (Kate's funny romantic partner), Annie (Randall's youngest, she is the cutest), and Sloane (my favorite amongst Kevin's women, although she was a relatively short lived character).
Some of my favorite moments in the show so far. The original opening night of Kevin's play. When Jack borrows money for the house. Beth and William eating brownies. Randall and William's road trip. Deja's school project. Dr. K's lemon speech. Randall's hallucination at the cabin. Jesse's introduction at William's NA meeting.
I look forward to watching the rest of the six seasons available and hope they are all as good as the first two. I also hope that if you haven't seen it yet, you'll check it out. It is available currently on Hulu. Thanks for reading, catch you next time.
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