A Magic Postcard Is Found, An Election Is Won, and Toys Are Lost - S:3 Ep. 10 "The Last Seven Weeks"
Here are this week’s Really Moments:
The title is very specific. After Episode 9’s very confusing “The Beginning Is the End Is the Beginning,” title, the writers decided to take it down a notch and go 100% literal for this episode. So, “The Last Seven Weeks” is about… the last seven weeks since we saw the Pearsons. Maybe the writers were saying that metaphors are hard, so don’t expect too much. Ya get whatcha get. And in this case, ya get a boring, slow episode.
Kate is a terrible businessperson. Also, she can’t Google! Kate sells Toby’s full set of 1977 Star Wars action figures for $10. Even if you know nothing, that’s pretty dumb. And really, $10? Why not just donate the toys at that point? A quick Google search would have reaped her thousands, so unless there’s a deeper passive-aggressive agenda here, she has no excuse.
Randall wins the election and we still do not know how. Randall wins his City Council race in Philadelphia, where he does not even live. I guess everyone in Philly hates everyone else there, so they default to electing an out-of-towner. Then again, this is also the city with a weird orange mascot named Gritty, so it’s a town where literally anyone can succeed.
Finding Uncle Nicky falls into Kevin’s lap. Also, Uncle Nicky is not so great at going underground. No need for extensive detective work and weeks of chasing down leads - the address of Uncle Nicky’s trailer in Bradford, PA is right there on a postcard in Jack’s Vietnam paraphernalia. Poof. Personally, if I found my long lost, crazy uncle lived in a trailer out in Pennsylvania, I might pass on tracking him down, but that’s me.
Therapists must have gotten rich off of this family. Every person on This Is Us must have had lots of therapy, because no one yells, ever. Kate sells Toby’s irreplaceable Star Wars action figures and Toby does not yell. Beth and Randall disagree on him running for office, but have a deep meaningful discussion instead of a knock-down brawl. Zoe won’t unpack her bags after moving in with Kevin because of her fear of commitment, so Kevin gets a little pissy, but deals with it calmly. Some lucky therapists are living in the South of France off the money they made from this family or everyone is heavily medicated. Maybe both.
Really? (Rating from 1-5: 1 means nothing too far-fetched happened; 5 means that someone else has died at the hands of a faulty crockpot):
I give this episode a 4, even though it was kind of boring. Randall won an election he had no business winning; Kevin found a magic postcard with Uncle Nicky’s exact location, and Kate had no idea that 50-year old, original action figures from the most merchandised movie of all time might be valuable. So even though the episode is slow, it holds some pretty far-fetched elements. Not enough for a 5 rating, but fear not, it appears that the Pearsons will track down Uncle Nicky at his Pennsylvania trailer in the coming weeks. That promises to be far-fetched.