Anyone who's been having a rough week full of stress and emotional turmoil knows that there are few better remedies than sitting down in front of NBC's This Is Us and having an ego-free sobfest with the Pearson family. And many might be interested to know that if you ever happen to catch an episode with a cast member such as Mandy Moore, you might share a round of waterworks. Of the many episodes in This Is Us Season 1 worthy of extracting Moore's tears, there's one that did the job better than any other
I would say the episode that just aired with William dying. I just sobbed and hyperventilated.
Is anybody out there truly shocked by this admission? That episode was a punch right to the heart's gut the whole way through. (Good time to mention that there will be spoilers for that episode, "Memphis," below.) Fans were definitely broken up by the lovely episode that chronicled Randall and William's final days together revisiting the life that the older man had left behind once his mother got sick. There were moments with good cries where you just wanted everyone to stay happy, and then there were also the moments when viewers' ugly cries would presumably produce enough salt to season everyone's meals for the day.
And while the episode is obviously going to be hard on actors Sterling K. Brown and Ron Cephus Jones, who respectively play Randall and William, but I'd wager that Mandy Moore and her character Rebecca were hit by that plot point in a similarly hard way, and for different reasons. She is the one main character in the present who has known William the longest, and even though he was originally at fault for giving Randall up, it was later Rebecca who made the decision to keep the two apart, which Randall agreed to. And, of course, it was a decision she later came to regret, as she saw how much the father and son loved each other and how much of that love was lost over the years due to...Geez, is somebody cutting onions in here or what?
Suffice to say, Mandy Moore probably has all kinds of feelings about things, making this a particularly brutal episode. But when talking with THR alongside her stylist Erica Cloud, Moore revealed her favorite TV theme song, and it's for a show that would never cause anyone to hyperventilate with sadness.
Hmm. Maybe Gilligan's Island.
There aren't any 3-hour tours coming up on This Is Us, but there is a 1-hour season finale airing tonight, March 14, on NBC. And when you're done watching (and not finding out about Jack's death), check out what we know about Season 2 and then head to our midseason premiere schedule to see what's coming to your TVs in the near future.
