1
00:00:05,914 --> 00:00:07,480
This Is Us Explained.
2
00:00:07,840 --> 00:00:09,560
Season 1, Episode 16.
3
00:00:10,100 --> 00:00:10,600
Memphis.
4
00:00:11,880 --> 00:00:15,200
Randall Pearson, the Black adoptee raised by white parents,
5
00:00:15,660 --> 00:00:17,360
is five days out of the hospital.
6
00:00:17,980 --> 00:00:19,920
His biological father William Hill,
7
00:00:20,460 --> 00:00:22,660
terminal cancer patient and Memphis poet,
8
00:00:23,220 --> 00:00:25,240
has one last thing to show him.
9
00:00:26,140 --> 00:00:28,260
No other storyline shares this episode:
10
00:00:28,660 --> 00:00:31,020
just the two of them, a borrowed road map,
11
00:00:31,020 --> 00:00:35,100
and thirty years of separation finally running out.
12
00:00:35,760 --> 00:00:38,700
William's whole life plays out in parallel flashbacks,
13
00:00:39,040 --> 00:00:45,000
from his mother Dorothy's lullaby to a chance meeting in Pittsburgh that explains everything that followed.
14
00:00:46,040 --> 00:00:47,780
Randall is five days out of the hospital,
15
00:00:47,780 --> 00:00:50,300
and Beth thinks this road trip is a bad idea,
16
00:00:50,300 --> 00:00:52,720
William is stage IV.
17
00:00:52,720 --> 00:00:55,260
But the doctor approves after Randall makes his case:
18
00:00:55,960 --> 00:00:59,000
William doesn't have long and wants to show his son where he came from.
19
00:00:59,600 --> 00:01:00,900
And Beth, not convinced,
20
00:01:01,280 --> 00:01:03,420
packs half a produce department with instructions.
21
00:01:04,220 --> 00:01:08,040
What stands out is William saying goodbye to Tess and Annie while they're still in bed,
22
00:01:08,500 --> 00:01:10,420
wanting them to remember looking up at him.
23
00:01:10,980 --> 00:01:13,300
That is not someone expecting to come back.
24
00:01:13,960 --> 00:01:16,040
On the drive, William asks about Jack.
25
00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:19,820
Randall describes him, the laugh that seemed to surprise him,
26
00:01:20,080 --> 00:01:22,020
the ashes near a tree at his favorite park,
27
00:01:22,700 --> 00:01:24,440
and William asks for a detour.
28
00:01:25,180 --> 00:01:26,940
Randall objects; they go anyway.
29
00:01:27,185 --> 00:01:29,860
Right, what William does at that tree matters.
30
00:01:30,480 --> 00:01:32,600
He speaks to Jack out loud, directly:
31
00:01:33,300 --> 00:01:35,760
thanks him for raising Randall to be the man he is.
32
00:01:36,300 --> 00:01:38,640
Not asserting himself as the biological father,
33
00:01:39,100 --> 00:01:41,120
a man settling a forty-year debt.
34
00:01:41,960 --> 00:01:44,220
Memphis comes alive the way a hometown does.
35
00:01:44,220 --> 00:01:49,600
William narrates Soulsville, a water fountain kept as a segregation-era history lesson,
36
00:01:50,100 --> 00:01:51,400
then his childhood home,
37
00:01:51,860 --> 00:01:52,920
where the owners let them in.
38
00:01:53,540 --> 00:01:56,080
William digs up toys and three quarters he'd buried.
39
00:01:56,620 --> 00:01:57,980
The treasure isn't the toys.
40
00:01:58,540 --> 00:01:59,660
It's that they stayed.
41
00:02:00,500 --> 00:02:02,700
William's cousin Ricky still runs the same club,
42
00:02:02,700 --> 00:02:04,280
and is still furious;
43
00:02:05,080 --> 00:02:08,440
they were building something when William left for Pittsburgh and never came back.
44
00:02:09,060 --> 00:02:11,280
William tells him he ruined everything, he's dying,
45
00:02:11,720 --> 00:02:12,960
he needed to say so.
46
00:02:13,560 --> 00:02:16,020
Ricky accepts and hands him a guitar.
47
00:02:16,840 --> 00:02:18,420
And Randall, watching from the crowd,
48
00:02:18,920 --> 00:02:21,140
realizes these people are his extended family.
49
00:02:21,880 --> 00:02:24,820
He calls Beth, a little drunk, completely lit up,
50
00:02:25,140 --> 00:02:27,420
and holds the phone up so she can hear William playing.
51
00:02:28,080 --> 00:02:29,840
The happiest moment of the season.
52
00:02:30,800 --> 00:02:32,980
The flashbacks trace William's whole life.
53
00:02:33,620 --> 00:02:35,700
His father dies in combat when he's an infant;
54
00:02:36,300 --> 00:02:37,540
Dorothy raises him alone.
55
00:02:38,220 --> 00:02:40,780
When she has to leave for Pittsburgh to care for her dying mother,
56
00:02:41,300 --> 00:02:44,820
he stays and writes an original song about watching her train leave.
57
00:02:45,680 --> 00:02:47,880
Dorothy is the source of everything, the gift,
58
00:02:48,100 --> 00:02:51,140
the tenderness, the love that eventually reaches Randall.
59
00:02:51,940 --> 00:02:54,080
What does a mother like that leave inside a person?
60
00:02:54,760 --> 00:02:56,720
This whole episode is the answer.
61
00:02:57,360 --> 00:03:00,240
Ricky hears thirty seconds and immediately knows what they have.
62
00:03:00,940 --> 00:03:01,880
Then his mother calls.
63
00:03:02,660 --> 00:03:04,340
She's sicker than she's let on.
64
00:03:04,720 --> 00:03:05,720
William goes to Pittsburgh,
65
00:03:05,820 --> 00:03:08,220
where Dorothy sends him out to explore while she rests,
66
00:03:08,880 --> 00:03:10,160
she knows he loves buses.
67
00:03:10,770 --> 00:03:13,200
In a bar that night, he meets a woman named Laurel.
68
00:03:13,640 --> 00:03:15,260
The flashback ends right there,
69
00:03:15,260 --> 00:03:16,500
before what comes next.
70
00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:18,700
But what comes next is everything,
71
00:03:19,600 --> 00:03:21,900
Laurel DuBois is Randall's biological mother,
72
00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:23,240
dead of an overdose,
73
00:03:23,780 --> 00:03:25,460
newborn left at a fire station.
74
00:03:26,160 --> 00:03:28,400
We've never seen where they met until now.
75
00:03:28,920 --> 00:03:31,820
After Dorothy dies, William and Laurel fall into drugs;
76
00:03:32,260 --> 00:03:33,960
that end we've known all season.
77
00:03:34,720 --> 00:03:35,700
Morning after the club,
78
00:03:36,100 --> 00:03:40,000
Randall wakes to find William barely conscious and gets him to the hospital.
79
00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:42,600
The doctor, asked to be direct, is direct:
80
00:03:43,160 --> 00:03:45,040
William is not leaving this hospital.
81
00:03:45,700 --> 00:03:47,380
Hours, maybe a day.
82
00:03:48,100 --> 00:03:50,260
Right, Randall tries to push back,
83
00:03:50,640 --> 00:03:52,880
mentions an experimental drug pending approval.
84
00:03:53,720 --> 00:03:56,600
The Memphis doctor has already spoken to the New York doctor.
85
00:03:57,160 --> 00:03:58,780
There is nowhere left to push.
86
00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:02,440
In the room, William pulls a book of poems from his bag,
87
00:04:02,920 --> 00:04:05,700
written for Randall; he already said his goodbyes.
88
00:04:05,700 --> 00:04:09,080
Then his life plainly: bad breaks, bad choices,
89
00:04:09,740 --> 00:04:16,520
almosts and could-haves. The two best things were the person at the very beginning and the person at the very end.
90
00:04:16,880 --> 00:04:18,480
That speech doesn't ask for pity.
91
00:04:19,320 --> 00:04:21,480
How do you hold a life described that way?
92
00:04:22,620 --> 00:04:24,200
You find the shape of it that holds,
93
00:04:24,820 --> 00:04:27,140
Dorothy at one end, Randall at the other.
94
00:04:27,620 --> 00:04:28,860
William says he's scared.
95
00:04:29,560 --> 00:04:31,100
Randall cups his head in both hands.
96
00:04:31,360 --> 00:04:32,580
That technique is Jack's,
97
00:04:32,580 --> 00:04:34,460
Randall described it on the drive:
98
00:04:34,800 --> 00:04:36,300
hands on either side of his head,
99
00:04:36,640 --> 00:04:38,700
breathing together until the anxiety passed.
100
00:04:39,260 --> 00:04:41,000
He uses it now on his other father.
101
00:04:41,480 --> 00:04:42,820
Three fathers in that room.
102
00:04:43,400 --> 00:04:45,260
William dies with Randall there.
103
00:04:45,920 --> 00:04:46,600
On the drive home,
104
00:04:46,600 --> 00:04:48,220
Randall passes the Peabody Hotel,
105
00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:50,640
the ducks William mentioned early in the trip,
106
00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:54,080
the ones his uncle used to sneak him in to see when the hotel was segregated.
107
00:04:54,940 --> 00:04:55,920
They never got there.
108
00:04:56,340 --> 00:04:58,140
The ducks were his last thing to give.
109
00:04:59,834 --> 00:05:02,100
William Hill is dead.
110
00:05:03,200 --> 00:05:06,980
Randall drives home with poems and a borrowed calm.
111
00:05:06,980 --> 00:05:12,360
Jack's death, Rebecca's secret, Kevin's walkout:
112
00:05:13,100 --> 00:05:14,880
one episode left.
00:00:05,914 --> 00:00:07,480
This Is Us Explained.
2
00:00:07,840 --> 00:00:09,560
Season 1, Episode 16.
3
00:00:10,100 --> 00:00:10,600
Memphis.
4
00:00:11,880 --> 00:00:15,200
Randall Pearson, the Black adoptee raised by white parents,
5
00:00:15,660 --> 00:00:17,360
is five days out of the hospital.
6
00:00:17,980 --> 00:00:19,920
His biological father William Hill,
7
00:00:20,460 --> 00:00:22,660
terminal cancer patient and Memphis poet,
8
00:00:23,220 --> 00:00:25,240
has one last thing to show him.
9
00:00:26,140 --> 00:00:28,260
No other storyline shares this episode:
10
00:00:28,660 --> 00:00:31,020
just the two of them, a borrowed road map,
11
00:00:31,020 --> 00:00:35,100
and thirty years of separation finally running out.
12
00:00:35,760 --> 00:00:38,700
William's whole life plays out in parallel flashbacks,
13
00:00:39,040 --> 00:00:45,000
from his mother Dorothy's lullaby to a chance meeting in Pittsburgh that explains everything that followed.
14
00:00:46,040 --> 00:00:47,780
Randall is five days out of the hospital,
15
00:00:47,780 --> 00:00:50,300
and Beth thinks this road trip is a bad idea,
16
00:00:50,300 --> 00:00:52,720
William is stage IV.
17
00:00:52,720 --> 00:00:55,260
But the doctor approves after Randall makes his case:
18
00:00:55,960 --> 00:00:59,000
William doesn't have long and wants to show his son where he came from.
19
00:00:59,600 --> 00:01:00,900
And Beth, not convinced,
20
00:01:01,280 --> 00:01:03,420
packs half a produce department with instructions.
21
00:01:04,220 --> 00:01:08,040
What stands out is William saying goodbye to Tess and Annie while they're still in bed,
22
00:01:08,500 --> 00:01:10,420
wanting them to remember looking up at him.
23
00:01:10,980 --> 00:01:13,300
That is not someone expecting to come back.
24
00:01:13,960 --> 00:01:16,040
On the drive, William asks about Jack.
25
00:01:16,680 --> 00:01:19,820
Randall describes him, the laugh that seemed to surprise him,
26
00:01:20,080 --> 00:01:22,020
the ashes near a tree at his favorite park,
27
00:01:22,700 --> 00:01:24,440
and William asks for a detour.
28
00:01:25,180 --> 00:01:26,940
Randall objects; they go anyway.
29
00:01:27,185 --> 00:01:29,860
Right, what William does at that tree matters.
30
00:01:30,480 --> 00:01:32,600
He speaks to Jack out loud, directly:
31
00:01:33,300 --> 00:01:35,760
thanks him for raising Randall to be the man he is.
32
00:01:36,300 --> 00:01:38,640
Not asserting himself as the biological father,
33
00:01:39,100 --> 00:01:41,120
a man settling a forty-year debt.
34
00:01:41,960 --> 00:01:44,220
Memphis comes alive the way a hometown does.
35
00:01:44,220 --> 00:01:49,600
William narrates Soulsville, a water fountain kept as a segregation-era history lesson,
36
00:01:50,100 --> 00:01:51,400
then his childhood home,
37
00:01:51,860 --> 00:01:52,920
where the owners let them in.
38
00:01:53,540 --> 00:01:56,080
William digs up toys and three quarters he'd buried.
39
00:01:56,620 --> 00:01:57,980
The treasure isn't the toys.
40
00:01:58,540 --> 00:01:59,660
It's that they stayed.
41
00:02:00,500 --> 00:02:02,700
William's cousin Ricky still runs the same club,
42
00:02:02,700 --> 00:02:04,280
and is still furious;
43
00:02:05,080 --> 00:02:08,440
they were building something when William left for Pittsburgh and never came back.
44
00:02:09,060 --> 00:02:11,280
William tells him he ruined everything, he's dying,
45
00:02:11,720 --> 00:02:12,960
he needed to say so.
46
00:02:13,560 --> 00:02:16,020
Ricky accepts and hands him a guitar.
47
00:02:16,840 --> 00:02:18,420
And Randall, watching from the crowd,
48
00:02:18,920 --> 00:02:21,140
realizes these people are his extended family.
49
00:02:21,880 --> 00:02:24,820
He calls Beth, a little drunk, completely lit up,
50
00:02:25,140 --> 00:02:27,420
and holds the phone up so she can hear William playing.
51
00:02:28,080 --> 00:02:29,840
The happiest moment of the season.
52
00:02:30,800 --> 00:02:32,980
The flashbacks trace William's whole life.
53
00:02:33,620 --> 00:02:35,700
His father dies in combat when he's an infant;
54
00:02:36,300 --> 00:02:37,540
Dorothy raises him alone.
55
00:02:38,220 --> 00:02:40,780
When she has to leave for Pittsburgh to care for her dying mother,
56
00:02:41,300 --> 00:02:44,820
he stays and writes an original song about watching her train leave.
57
00:02:45,680 --> 00:02:47,880
Dorothy is the source of everything, the gift,
58
00:02:48,100 --> 00:02:51,140
the tenderness, the love that eventually reaches Randall.
59
00:02:51,940 --> 00:02:54,080
What does a mother like that leave inside a person?
60
00:02:54,760 --> 00:02:56,720
This whole episode is the answer.
61
00:02:57,360 --> 00:03:00,240
Ricky hears thirty seconds and immediately knows what they have.
62
00:03:00,940 --> 00:03:01,880
Then his mother calls.
63
00:03:02,660 --> 00:03:04,340
She's sicker than she's let on.
64
00:03:04,720 --> 00:03:05,720
William goes to Pittsburgh,
65
00:03:05,820 --> 00:03:08,220
where Dorothy sends him out to explore while she rests,
66
00:03:08,880 --> 00:03:10,160
she knows he loves buses.
67
00:03:10,770 --> 00:03:13,200
In a bar that night, he meets a woman named Laurel.
68
00:03:13,640 --> 00:03:15,260
The flashback ends right there,
69
00:03:15,260 --> 00:03:16,500
before what comes next.
70
00:03:17,080 --> 00:03:18,700
But what comes next is everything,
71
00:03:19,600 --> 00:03:21,900
Laurel DuBois is Randall's biological mother,
72
00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:23,240
dead of an overdose,
73
00:03:23,780 --> 00:03:25,460
newborn left at a fire station.
74
00:03:26,160 --> 00:03:28,400
We've never seen where they met until now.
75
00:03:28,920 --> 00:03:31,820
After Dorothy dies, William and Laurel fall into drugs;
76
00:03:32,260 --> 00:03:33,960
that end we've known all season.
77
00:03:34,720 --> 00:03:35,700
Morning after the club,
78
00:03:36,100 --> 00:03:40,000
Randall wakes to find William barely conscious and gets him to the hospital.
79
00:03:40,000 --> 00:03:42,600
The doctor, asked to be direct, is direct:
80
00:03:43,160 --> 00:03:45,040
William is not leaving this hospital.
81
00:03:45,700 --> 00:03:47,380
Hours, maybe a day.
82
00:03:48,100 --> 00:03:50,260
Right, Randall tries to push back,
83
00:03:50,640 --> 00:03:52,880
mentions an experimental drug pending approval.
84
00:03:53,720 --> 00:03:56,600
The Memphis doctor has already spoken to the New York doctor.
85
00:03:57,160 --> 00:03:58,780
There is nowhere left to push.
86
00:03:59,520 --> 00:04:02,440
In the room, William pulls a book of poems from his bag,
87
00:04:02,920 --> 00:04:05,700
written for Randall; he already said his goodbyes.
88
00:04:05,700 --> 00:04:09,080
Then his life plainly: bad breaks, bad choices,
89
00:04:09,740 --> 00:04:16,520
almosts and could-haves. The two best things were the person at the very beginning and the person at the very end.
90
00:04:16,880 --> 00:04:18,480
That speech doesn't ask for pity.
91
00:04:19,320 --> 00:04:21,480
How do you hold a life described that way?
92
00:04:22,620 --> 00:04:24,200
You find the shape of it that holds,
93
00:04:24,820 --> 00:04:27,140
Dorothy at one end, Randall at the other.
94
00:04:27,620 --> 00:04:28,860
William says he's scared.
95
00:04:29,560 --> 00:04:31,100
Randall cups his head in both hands.
96
00:04:31,360 --> 00:04:32,580
That technique is Jack's,
97
00:04:32,580 --> 00:04:34,460
Randall described it on the drive:
98
00:04:34,800 --> 00:04:36,300
hands on either side of his head,
99
00:04:36,640 --> 00:04:38,700
breathing together until the anxiety passed.
100
00:04:39,260 --> 00:04:41,000
He uses it now on his other father.
101
00:04:41,480 --> 00:04:42,820
Three fathers in that room.
102
00:04:43,400 --> 00:04:45,260
William dies with Randall there.
103
00:04:45,920 --> 00:04:46,600
On the drive home,
104
00:04:46,600 --> 00:04:48,220
Randall passes the Peabody Hotel,
105
00:04:48,880 --> 00:04:50,640
the ducks William mentioned early in the trip,
106
00:04:51,120 --> 00:04:54,080
the ones his uncle used to sneak him in to see when the hotel was segregated.
107
00:04:54,940 --> 00:04:55,920
They never got there.
108
00:04:56,340 --> 00:04:58,140
The ducks were his last thing to give.
109
00:04:59,834 --> 00:05:02,100
William Hill is dead.
110
00:05:03,200 --> 00:05:06,980
Randall drives home with poems and a borrowed calm.
111
00:05:06,980 --> 00:05:12,360
Jack's death, Rebecca's secret, Kevin's walkout:
112
00:05:13,100 --> 00:05:14,880
one episode left.
