Seriously? OMG! WTF?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iz3iu06uQOs
Tonight at 9p on NBC, This Is Us delivers another intense and powerful episode. Toby (Chris Sullivan) and Kate (Chrissy Metz) have finally decided to get know each other better before they tie the knot in the summer and he asks her how her father died. Will she tell him (and ultimately us) what happened? Randall’s (Sterling K Brown) father (Ron Cephas Jones) is getting sicker and it is too much for him to handle. It is also Kevin’s (Justin Hartley) opening night for his play and he is nervous about it. He will seek out help and get good advice from someone he never expects that will give him the confidence he needs to take the stage. But is it enough? Then there is Jack (Milo Ventimilgia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore), and their marriage is in trouble. Is this a sign of when everything came crashing down for them? You will just have to tune in to find out.

We know what is going on on the show, but what are five things you don’t about the drama that reminds us that we can all love television again.

1 – We love Mandy Moore and Milo Ventimilgia as the matriarch and patriarch of the Pearson Family, but one of them was not what the creator was looking for for the part. Dan Fogelman revealed this tidbit at NBC’s TCA Winter Press Tour Day, “I had Mandy very much in mind as both a type and an actor, but I had a very different conception of Jack…coming in. I thought he was more of, like, not a nebbish, is the right word. Milo came in to meet with us, and…he had a huge beard and really long hair, and he had a motorcycle helmet. And he was so alpha that it was intimidating. It was not quite what I had in my brain as a type.” Then he added. “Right away I kind of knew, and I was, like, ‘No, that’s it.’ And then we were, like, ‘That’s the dad of this family, the hinge. That’s the before and after,’ and then everything else kind of started there, actually. But yeah, it was, like I had a type in mind who wouldn’t be as comfortable having his ass on television and like me.”

2 – Fogelman and Moore knew each other before This Is Us because he co-wrote her movie Tangled, but who else knew each other beforehand? Brown and his TV wife also have a connection. He explained to us how he and Susan Kelechi Watson have known each other for decades, “Susan and I both went to grad school for acting at NYU. And I was a third year when she was a first year, so we overlapped in school together. So we’ve known each other for a while and have a similar sort of approach to the work.”

3 – Brown also knew his TV biological father beforehand from a reading in NYC, and it is someone that Ron Cephas Jones knows that shapes his character. He shared his heartbreaking inspiration for how William Hill goes through his cancer battle, “My best friend has stage 4 cancer, and he lives here in L.A. So I speak with him every other day. So a lot of those facial expressions and emotions come directly from my friend.”

4 – Talking about faces, how long does it take for Mandy Moore to age 30 years? She said, “We’ve gotten the time down quite a bit. It’s now, like, three and a half hours as opposed to five, initially.” Does she mind sitting in the chair for that long? Not at all because she is loving this job and will do anything for it!

5 – We are loving the show and we know it a two season pickup. Does Dan Fogelman have an end date for the drama? He told us, “I know where the show goes. I have a number of seasons in my brain, and we’ll see as we get there. In success, people are always going to want more. In failure, people are going to want many less. I know where the series goes for multiple, multiple seasons. Beyond that, in terms of an overriding number, I don’t really have them in my head.”

If This Is Us keeps giving us episodes like the ones that that they have been giving us all season long, it is good to know that they have many more seasons ahead of them to come because we don’t want it going anywhere anytime soon.

A video posted by Mandy Moore (@mandymooremm) on Jan 18, 2017 at 2:51pm PST

NBC announced today that this season’s break out hit This Is Us and NBC’s most watched show was picked up for not one but two more seasons. That means we will get 36 episodes, 18 each season. The drama has already earned Golden Globes and SAG Award nominations and I am sure the Emmys will recognize it too. How can they not because it is the most heartwarming show on television and each week the cast delivers award winning performances. Something they get to do because Dan Fogleman writes with heart on his sleeve or in his pen I should say. He has taken over as the EP with the biggest heart. He just knows how to write to get people to emote whether it is happiness or sadness.
On that note, finally something about This Is Us that is bringing a smile to our face and not tears to our eyes.

UPDATE: Here is Dan Fogelman and the cast finding out the news!

This is Us getting the good news!!! #ThisIsUs pic.twitter.com/pOJpqvTbPH

— Dan Fogelman (@Dan_Fogelman) January 19, 2017

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZyy34JxEKY
Before Gerald McRaney guest starred on the first episode of This Is Us, he was on Gunsmoke’s final one. How dashing was the 27 year old in that 1975 episode?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcrWisMZyH4
Tonight’s episode of This Is Us on NBC at 9p is a standalone one. It is the prequel to the day that the triplets were born and Randall was dropped off at the fire station. Get the tissues ready because this is going to be an emotional but outstanding hour of television.
We see a very pregnant Rebecca (Mandy Moore) struggling with the final days of her very uncomfortable pregnancy. She is taking it out on Jack (Milo Ventigmilia) and it is his birthday. Something she forgot with the move into the new house and carrying three babies inside of her. Once she realizes it is his special day, she will do everything she can to make it as special as possible. As we know she goes into labor and delivers their babies. After they are born, we will see a scene that was cut from the pilot but makes it on to tonight’s shows.
Then there is the firefighter (Brian Oblak) who found Randall on the fire station’s doorstep. Tonight we learn his story and it isn’t a happy one. One that a baby might save.
Finally, there is Dr K (Gerald McCrainey) who is still getting over the loss of his wife. Even though it has been almost two years, he still hasn’t gotten rid of her stuff. Something his kids think he needs to do, but he is not ready. Will delivering triplets, help him start to move on?
McRaney gives a performance that is beyond Emmy worthy and I would be surprised if he didn’t bring home the gold statuette because of this episode.
After watching a press screening of this show and wiping away my tears and snot, I spoke to McRaney about the special episode and the role.
Like many actors, he created a backstory for Dr K and this was it. He happily said to the crowd of reporters, “I imagined something like this when I was doing the original pilot. It is just sort of gratifying to realize the writer and creator had the same stuff in mind as this backstory.” Then he explained, “It was obvious in the pilot how close Dr K was to his wife, so they embroidered that quite a bit it is a lovely, lovely backstory. I love how the whole theme of it is so wonderfully woven in it.”
Even though he knew his character’s backstory, how did he prepare for tonight’s theme? He revealed that he did it by, “Imagining losing my wife (Delta Burke), where that would put me and you are there. It is not a pleasant place to go.”
However, going to work on this show is a pleasant place to go for him. This was how he felt when he got the script, “I wondered who I had to pay off for writing such a great role. I mean this is phenomenal writing. It is a gift for an actor to play stuff like this.”
The praise didn’t stop there, “The thing I love about this show is that there are no bad people on it. It is all good people overcoming some bad things. These people I want to sit and have coffee with.” Not only is he talking about the people on the show, he is also talking about them when they are off camera. He told us, “That is the other thing about working on this show, it is populated by the same type of people that their characters are. Everybody who works on this show, they are just great people. They have phenomenal talent. There is not a prima donna in the whole lash of them. It is a very pleasant place to work.”
Talking about work, has he ever had a doctor like the one he portrays on the heartwarming drama? He talked about his inspiration for Dr K, a doctor he had “the whole time growing up, and he was this type of doctor. He didn’t just examine you and send you off to somebody else. He sat and he talked with you. When you went to him, you felt like everything was going to be OK.”
In fact, he is doing such a good job with the role that he told us this story about a recent fan encounter, “The other night, I was out to dinner and a couple stopped me on my way out and they told me how much they liked the show. The gentleman said, ‘I am a physician and you have brought so much humanity to that doctor.'” That is not the only response he has gotten. A friend from high school sent him an email saying, “This is the kind of doctor that everybody wants to have. This is the man you want to go to when you are sick, there is something really wrong with you. You want that guy as your doctor.” He hasn’t only heard it from her, but several other people have said the same thing to him.
As far as TV doctors, he rates tops in our books. How does this show rate in nearly 50-year career? He said it rates “right at the top.”

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