Chapo Trap House - Bonus: This is Sus 5 – This Is Us, Part 2

Episode Date: May 7, 2020

Felix continues his reviews the of the hit 2016 NBC dramedy "This Is Us".

Hey everybody, it's Felix here with another week of This Is Us. This week we have no guests lined up because I decided I was going to return to the namesake and necessitator of the series This Is Us, the show that I started the series for because I wanted to figure out what the fuck it was. And our journey continues this week as I detail episode 3. I just want to note, week after this, Lucy will be back for episode 2 of Council of Dads and then we're thinking Jack Wagner for a million little pieces again with Ricky Rawls. So that's who we have on the immediate horizon.

But let's watch this here in front of us. Alright, so this is episode 3 of This Is Us. So the way this episode starts is truly insane. It begins with the grandfather, Randall's grandfather, er, father, sorry, the grandfather of Randall's kids, the crack guy, the homeless guy. It begins with him on a bus in the 1970s and he's writing poetry in a notebook. He meets a pretty girl and it just sends him down a dark path, a path of drugs and we know he's on drugs because he starts walking on the bus very poorly.

The biggest thing about when you get into heroin and crack and all that stuff is you sort of limp and you're not as good at writing the bus as you used to be as represented by this character. This awful montage which is accompanied by, I don't know, the crisper baby version of Jack Johnson that they made in China, it ends with him leaving Randall at the fire station, the firing pin in this awful plot. In the present, Rebecca and Miguel Aceveda from The Shield show up to Randall's house. Mandy Moore, Rebecca is wearing like, this is the shittiest advanced aging technology

I've ever seen. Like she's younger than the grandchildren in real life but she's, we're supposed to believe she's just this crone. Randall asks to speak with her privately though because if you remember last time him and his father, they've been reconciling. Going over to Toby and Kate, Toby and Kate, they had a drunken night out at the Hollywood pedophiles party. Toby wakes up, Kate is shocked that he's there because they got too drunk and she

punches him and this is like a, I guess it's supposed to be like screw all physical comedy. They can't, they can't have, you know, Toby can't do his usual epic banter because Kevin shows up and he starts talking about how he needs to move to New York and then in a psychotic moment. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to point out during this scene they're eating like a really shitty breakfast, like the kind of breakfast you would eat if you had a weight problem and you were trying to fix it, which is what Kate's character is doing. And Toby keeps making a point of how shitty the food she cooks is because he just wants

her to accept her for her. The wall, Kevin talks in a very self-absorbed way about his Broadway career. Toby in a truly insane moment says, I'm trying to have sex, Kevin, like, you know, he just leaves and leaves like, go pork my, go teach my sister self-love, go, when I see women who don't love themselves, you know what, they need a good dicking. Going back to Randall's, Mandy Moore and Randall talk about Randall's biological father. We are immediately treated to a wonderful scene in the past with Miley Annopoulos and Mandy Moore with Rebecca and Jack leaving the hospital.

Rebecca sees Randall's dad, the guy who left the baby, looking at her, looking at, looking at the son, and she acts like she didn't see it. That is a fake person right there. So after they get home from the hospital, or no, sorry, I mean, like, well after they got, they get home from the hospital, like, while they're raising their kids, they're figuring out their situation. Where Rebecca's exhausted, Rebecca feels like the kids, like, don't like her, she talks about how, no matter what, Randall, who they've, they gave him another K name, Kevin, Kate,

and Kyle, and I don't think they realized that was KKK. I kept waiting for this to come up and it never fucking came up. It's like, they're trying to drive you insane, they're trying to drive me insane with this, but she's like, Kyle, who will later be known as Randall, I just, I can't check the feeling that he isn't ours, and the kids don't like me, and they like you, you're the fun dad. Milo Ventigliama is, the way he behaves in these scenes is, I don't want to say disgusting, it's inhuman. Like, there's a part about him having a drink, like supposedly being an alcoholic, and he

just gets, he's done, he just fucking gets done drinking. There's, you know, any problem his wife has, he just completely fixes it. He's the most patient, nicest, like, soy man in the world. He, any problem, he's just one 30 second conversation, and he's good. And I was trying to figure out who the fuck this character was supposed to be, and I realized that's who the producers of the show, like, think they are. They think they're like the affable cut up in their lives who, nonetheless, will rise to the occasion and, you know, save the family in any way big or small.

They like to think that they entertain everybody with their, their jeeps about the orange president, and you know, how, how stressful, like now they would be making a joke about how stressful quarantine is, which really, it just, they're annoying everyone, and their kids just talk to them because they all want to go to the Tisch School for the performing arts to do, like, some type of political miming, and they're probably, the people the producers of the show are, alright, I'm not going to get sued here, but they, maybe they go to Thailand a lot. They're bad people.

But they do think that they're Jack, and that's why Jack is a character that has absolutely zero fucking friction. Like, me and Lucy talked about the concept of trauma and struggle without friction, which is what all these shows portray, but Jack is the smoothest fucking character ever. Like his son just fucking dies, and he's like, alright, we're going to look life square in the face and check his hand, just inhuman, inhuman. So it's a double, it's a double-edgedy, it's what the producers think they are, and it's what they think normal Americans should behave like.

So in the present, Rebecca is scolding William for his failures in life, and she basically says to him, you know, hey, look, you walked out on him when he was born, you've given him this lifetime of pain, you better hope that you're worth it for reopening this, for coming back in. And there's an absolutely bizarre scene where Randall's kids want Miguel and Mandy Moore, Rebecca to stay, but Miguel says, no, we have dinner in the city, we have to go. And Randall does this insane fucking thing, he says, thanks for dropping by unexpectedly, and then he literally makes a VCR noise with his mouth and goes, thanks for driving by.

This is the way that the idiots who wrote the show imply that there's this enmity between Randall and Miguel by making Randall into this Jim Carrey, like, imbecile man-child, or maybe, maybe because, like, their only exposure to black Americans was the police academy movie, like, they just think that all black people do that, and just normal conversations, they just imitate machines and sounds, they've heard, that's a possibility, it's a possibility, again, not accusing them of anything, just not actionable, a parody. So William, the father, he tries to just get out of this situation, because Rebecca made him feel bad, he tries to fuck off and leave.

And Randall finds him walking away, they really made him like a 1930s hobo in this scene, like, they may as well have just given him a spindle stick, but Randall gives him this soy speech about how they need to go to the doctor to cure his NBC cancer, and William just storms off regardless. He's like, that President Bartlett speech doesn't work on me. So Kate is working on Kevin's move to New York, just doing everything, calling apartment brokers, figuring out which girls in Bushwick that have King Richard the Lionheart's exact haircut, Kevin will fuck, figuring out why he's going to get thrown out of Magic Ring,

you know, New York shit, she's doing all of it. But then, Toby shows up in a limo that he rented, because he's booked her to sing at a nursing home, because he heard her sing in the shower and thought it was incredible. It would be funny if he didn't hear her sing in the shower, like after they met, he's just a peeping Tom, but neither here nor there. So back in the past, Jack goes to the hospital to talk to that soy gold prospector daughter that we met in the first episode about how Rebecca is having trouble bonding with their kids.

The doctor praises Jack for sort of sublimating his grief into positivity, noting that he's a completely smooth character, that no tragedy catches on his brain, that he's just a fucking perfect person with absolutely zero interesting qualities. He says that Rebecca is going to have to take the death of their third son during Sheldbert their own way. Then the doctor tells Jack to take a fucking nap in his office, which is, yeah, if this was a better show, that would be your tell that the doctor is a sex maniac, that he has some weird fetish for watching people fall asleep.

But this is not that show, this is just, so you're supposed to just think he's a nice guy for this, and not that he, he goes to Japan to record women on the train sleeping for the 1970s camp quarter, because in his words, they sleep differently over there. He saw it during the war. Rebecca, meanwhile, goes on just the first bus she sees and asks if they've seen William. Like, the first bus. She's like, yeah, I mean, I just had a feeling this would be the bus that the drug guy, the biological father of an adopted kid, he probably went on this bus.

The bus driver says, oh, you mean Shakespeare, I wanted to, looking at how to make a 3D printer and 3D print a gun after this. Back in the present, Kate is singing at the retirement home, and this is interspersed with Rebecca looking for William in the past, and Randall taking William to the doctor in the present. Kate's rendition of time after time plays over all these scenes, which is, they come together to make one of the shittiest fucking scenes of all time. The demonic energy of these scenes causes Kobe to get very horny and hornily make out

with Kate. However, Kevin, who is being pursued by an insane ax, I mean, like there's just like the running joke of, oh, he's, he fucks a lot, he's got a crazy ax, but given that he's an actor, he probably did some insane Mitu shit there. That's not in the show, but it's just what I've imagined. Kevin is calling Kate during their make out sesh, and Kate picks it up. And Toby is getting frustrated that Kate will drop everything at a drop of a hat for Kevin, and he's just rock hard in this nursing home.

Something that the writers produce at the show probably only feel when they're lurking the hallways with pillows, because that's actually the only way they can get hard. Back at the doctors, you find out that William, aka Shakespeare's cancer is terminal because of the NBC extended universe cancer character. In the past, though, Kate and William encounter one another. Like she just went on her mouth busses and was like, where does this guy live? And I guess that worked. Kate and William talk to each other, William tells her that about, about Randall Kyle's

mother, and how he showed her poetry and they fell in love. He said, he says that he's not well, alluding to his drug addiction, but Rebecca says that she's glad that William told her his story, but that he can't come back for Randall. William tells her to give him his own name because, you know, they gave the KKK names, Jack named Randall Kyle at this point. William gives Rebecca a book by his favorite poet, Dudley Randall, just horrible dog shit scene. It would have been cool if they just named this character Dudley, but nevertheless, Kevin

and Kate, they talk about their respective days back in the future. Kate brings up what Toby did for her, bringing her to the nursing home, setting up her, like setting up a singing appointment for her, and she portrays it as though it's just like psycho behavior, which it is, which it is. But Toby, Kevin is incredibly impressed by what Toby's done, and Kate alludes to the fact that they were probably about to pork, they're probably about to go nuts before Kevin called her, and Kevin, at that point, fires Kate because he realizes he's holding her back in life.

This is something you could have extended out over a season, maybe the entire series, the friction, the tension here, the, you know, one character doesn't realize he's holding another character back, or maybe he's consciously doing it out of fear, out of fear of her exceeding him or something, just anything, anything, anything, any actual human flaw, anything. There's nothing in the show, there's no friction, there's no flame or heat in this fucking universe. Just everyone always realizes that they're doing a bad thing, and they stop doing the bad thing. And it takes 20 fucking minutes.

By the way, this is another fucking show where all the ads are for medicine for old people and the army. It's just beating you over the fucking head. Medicine for the only people that can afford it, and a job for the children of the poor middle-class saps who watch this fucking garbage. Ugh, Kate comes to Toby's house with a condom. I thought she was supposed to like him. Kevin calls Kate from the airport and says he hopes she's having sex, but he left that

on a message. It was a test to see if she would answer, to see if she will be her own woman. And she didn't. She passed it. Great. Yeah. She's been completely attached to this guy for her entire fucking life, and to the point that it's greatly diminished her own life.

And then the second he's like, all right, stop doing that. She does. Yeah, fine. Fucking whatever, dude. All right. In the past, Rebecca comes back home, Jack asks where she was. He's sitting on the floor, which they do all the time in this goddamn show. Is that like, I don't know if that shorthand to show that they're tired or that they're

poor or something. I don't fucking know. But Rebecca and Jack are always on the fucking floor. Every scene is them on the fucking floor sitting with their fucking idiot backs to a wall. I don't fucking understand it at all. It sucks so fucking much every second of this show. Um, anyway, they find they admit to each other that they can't stop thinking about the third child they had, the one that ran out of place, the one that died.

And they solve all their problems again, just one short conversation, and they've solved all their fucking problems. In the present, Randall asks William about his life. Kevin lands in New York and Kate wakes up after nearly killing another innocent man with a condom while some fucking awful song from the sixties plays, you know, a song from the last time that Kevin Olin could achieve orgasm without a bohemian grove type ritual. Uh, Rebecca breast feeds Randall in the past. Not the present.

That would be another cool thing. Like what if in the present, like Mandy Moore, breastfed Sterling K. Brown, that was the plot wrackle, but no, God forbid, nothing interesting in this show. But yeah, no, then this episode, mercifully, mercifully ends. All right, in the middle of, uh, recording this one, my new Mike actually came. I got an XLR still going to have a little bit of that, uh, reverb equality because of the high ceilings in my office, but, uh, hopefully I'll be able to get a ladder and put a foam up there soon enough.

So I don't really fix that, but, uh, let's get into episode four of this is us. So it's the past. They're in the past and the entire family is in the kitchen. Kevin Randall are having some dumb shit fight and Randall is picking at a scape on the back of his neck. Rebecca has to tend to all this and Jack comes in wearing this, uh, Goddy Florida tourism t-shirt, which Rebecca says she hates. He says he's wearing it because they're going to the pool and then eggs the kids on to beg

Rebecca to go. Uh, Jack coaches Rebecca into letting herself go. Like just, you know, enjoy yourself at the pool with the family, but Rebecca's wary given how extremely annoying all their kids are. They anyway, they make it to the pool and they snag some beach chairs. So in the present, Randall's family is in their kitchen. The kids are getting their hair braided by their mom. Uh, they asked Randall about us or they asked William, the, uh, grandfather about a scar

on his hand and he alludes to it being caused by a bottle Randall's wife asked him if he should be telling this story, but he sure is there. It's not a bad one. The news in fact, helping out against an anti-busting protest. And so she asked him if he was working for the urban league and William says, yeah, a little bit, which is, it turns out he's not lying, but that is like the thing that every liar says. Yeah, I was doing a little bit of work for the urban league and the U S army was doing

a little bit of work in the Navy SEALs. I sort of worked for the Navy SEALs. Okay. Anyway, Kevin is FaceTiming with the daughters, uh, the kids demand he do his catchphrase from his former star making turn in the Manny, but Kevin just wants to tell these literal children about his theatrical career. Uh, it's cut short when Randall's gated community security is her to arguing with William outside their house.

Randall is embarrassed by the spectacle, addressed diffuse the tensions, but William is in sense that he's been racially profiled for loitering Randall sends the guard away and tells William they're going to buy him some less shitty clothes. So he doesn't, uh, get racially profiled. Kate and Toby are having another scene where they eat some shitty health food. And we know this because Toby is making a billion hilarious jokes about how shitty it is. Uh, he goes to pay the bill and Kate sees Toby hugs some hot lady.

Uh, Kate asks who it was and Toby informs her it was his ex-wife and Kate is shocked that Toby snags such high end poon. In the past, the KKK family slash Jack and Rebecca family, uh, is putting sunscreen on all their kids before letting them go have fun on their own. Rebecca asked Jack if Kate should be wearing a shirt given that she's sort of fat, but Jack assures her it's just baby fat and she's fine. Rebecca also complains about Kevin's shitty attitude, which Jack also says fine. In the present, uh, Kate is cyber stalking Toby's ex while venting her fears to Kevin.

She's afraid Toby is just fulfilling a fat fetish with her because, uh, his ex-wife is of, uh, more conventional, the attractive physique, um, then makes a point that his ex is perfect and makes another point of saying that she's been to Argentina, which is, that's a Hollywood fucking idiot's idea of what would impress a middle class person. Like this is, this character is the sister of both a millionaire banker and millionaire actor and should be impressed by someone going to fucking Argentina, like, uh, whatever. Kate shows up late, or Kevin shows up late to his theater audition in New York and does a bunch of things to show that he's a good natured, but office Chad has been revealed

by this, or has been alluded to about this character a billion fucking times. All theater people hate him. He and the hot English actor, actress playing, uh, opposite him also hate each other. Randall and William argue about civil rights while shopping. Actually, Randall just lectures William about how he thinks that William thinks that he isn't black enough, which William hasn't alluded to at all, even in the slightest. And then he makes a speech about all of the microaggressions he experiences while William says absolutely nothing.

In the past, Jack and Rebecca lose sight of Randall and Kate has given a note from a group of girls. In the present, Kevin is venting to Kate on the phone about how bad his audition went, while Kate is now physically stalking Toby's ex outside the store she owns. After Kevin hangs up, uh, he physically runs into the hot Anglo, uh, actress from his audition. She asked him to get a drink, presumably off of the strength of how much he hates him. Uh, this being the only thing in the show that I have ever related to. Kate wanders into Toby's ex's store and panics when she asks if Kate is there for something.

And then after a series of escalations, a sense to a job interview. Rebecca finds Randall in the past, uh, with a group of other black children and their families. One of the mothers and Rebecca have a weird tense argument. This scene was definitely written by Daniel Patrick Moynihan about the, you know, the paternalness of the black community. It's just thrilling to watch this part. These scenes, this episode specifically, scenes about fraught 70s racial politics written

by guys who call their friends in the IDF when they hear baselines outside the walled compounds that live in, but anyway, uh, we're back in the present Randall's family, William included goes to see his daughters perform in a school play. The crowd laughs at his daughter being a black snow white, uh, which seems to irritate Randall but not William. Back in New York, Kevin and the English lady are on their bed date and she tries to persuade him to go back to LA because he's in over his head. She gets a text and it actually turns out Kevin got the part from the theater people.

Wow, someone's going to a great in Carter's Oscar party. Wonder if they'll fuck later. I had my frontal lobe taken out before watching this, by the way. In the past, Kevin Star was pathetically with the task of holding his breath underwater at the pool. Well, Kate, uh, reads the note the group of girls gave her, which is bullying her for being too fat. Like children wouldn't just say that.

I don't know. I don't know why they had to do it that way. I guess so. Jack and Rebecca could see it, but they could have also overheard it. Just every choice in the show is completely fucking baffling and actually designed to make you lose sanity points and, you know, scare your wife with a gun. That's what they want the viewers to do. They want to depopulate America.

But Kevin gets mad at his family for not paying attention to him. Jack apologizes to him and Rebecca asked the black mother from earlier to recommend a black barber. She goes, she goes as far as to ask if their kids can play together and they break the tension by laughing about how Jack thought Randall wouldn't need sunscreen. In the present, Kate is at her accidental job interview and reveals that she knows everything about Toby's acts to her, but she's amazed at how much she gleaned about her store and hires her.

Jack cheers up Kate by, in the past, uh, Jack cheers up Kate by spinning some yarn about his novelty Florida t-shirt, saying that it makes the wearer appear as they wish to be seen. They have some just fucking awful, insulting Lisa at your moment here. Then in the present, Kate reveals to Toby what happened at the store. They have a fight over it, but Toby reveals that his supposedly perfect ex almost ruined his life and treated him horribly and cheated on him. They have this disgusting, so humor reconciliation that references Matt Lauer.

I kind of wanted to post this clip and at Ken Olin, so he would either apologize or come to my house with a gun and kill me. Kevin calls Kate and she doesn't pick up. William and Randall have another awful conversation. Randall tells William that he would record whenever he met another black person growing up in this notebook and reveals that he hoped every black man he met would be his father. This is by the way, this is like what the producers of the show think every black person's life is like.

Uh, Randall goes on to say that he's a strong, successful black man, which is, he's, he's definitely successful, but he's not strong. He's one of the weakest characters on the entire show. He instantly melds down at the slightest provocation. He's a nervous wreck. He never fucking stands up for himself. The only reason he yells at William so much is because he doesn't fear William because he's dying.

Anyway, he's the only at William that he's doing the best he can to, you know, raise black daughters in a white neighborhood, and William has said absolutely nothing to indicate that he would need to say this to him at all. During the scene, this awful fucking acoustic song with the hook, literally the hook, I love my father and I love him well, plays throughout. Uh, at that moment, Kevin shows up at Randall, the father song just fucking blasts while Kevin is introduced to William, and the show mercifully ends with a horrible scene of the family, uh, being with each other in the past.

So this is a, this is us is definitely like it's a show for people with brain damage is what I've figured out at this point. Um, in, in good shows, there are parallels, uh, you have to sort of pick it up. Like you, you, and they go over the course of episodes or even seasons, like, you notice something in a season before a character struggling with something and then you'll notice an antagonist to that character is struggling with the same thing, something like that to show their, their similarity. It doesn't have to be an amazing show that does this, but just a competent show.

But literally like, I'll give you an example. So Kevin fucks up holding his breath in the past in the seventies, right? The show that he feels like he's an intention hog and he's always trying to get people to notice him. And then in the present, after his bad audition, you see him bobbing around in the pool. Like literally every scene is a parallel like this to remind you that the children, the child actors playing them in the past are the same characters as the fucking shitty adults you're seeing.

It's, I think like it's a show for like, if you got into a car accident, this is the media product equivalent of those like three piece puzzles that give to people so they're able to breathe and tie their shoes again. It's really just fucking insulting. I mean, that's why there's no, no character has any real flaw. Why everyone is just so fucking smooth. Like even a supposedly self-absorbed psychopath like Kevin would just notice that he's sabotaging his sister and would be like, no, yeah, I'm not going to do that anymore.

Like it is a truly awful show or I can't even really say it's really an awful show. It's really just an awful experience to watch and take in. It's humiliating for everyone involved, but especially the viewer. You feel insulted very much by Ken Olin, the villain, while watching this. You know, I already went into what I think the political utility of the show is, which is to beat people down and be like, Hey, look at all the awful things happening to these people. Get over it.

You fucking freak. But it really goes into high gear. These episodes, like, are you, you know, are you, are you experiencing, are you experiencing racism? Just yell at this old man. Are you like, are you like morbidly obese? I think like the actually like the Kate and Toby stuff may be the most sickening shit to me because it's just like, it's these Hollywood freaks, the most superficial place in the

fucking world. They don't know the people are right and make this show don't know anyone who does spend like seven fingers a year on their appearance in it. They're just like making two characters fat as shit and going like, Hey, look, two fatties got love each other. Here you go. You fucking freaks. That's what you fridges in the middle of the country like it.

I really don't want to watch this show anymore, man. Like it really makes me feel bad. I actually had to like break up watching episode four segments because it was, it just like, it felt like I had swallowed lead. I can't do it. Like council of dads felt bad, million little pieces felt bad. They all feel bad. But this one is so fucking terrible to watch.

It really, I really have trouble getting through it. I'm probably going to keep doing it for every solo episode, but holy fuck, man. It's really not good. And I think I've like, I've gotten the main thing. I can get out of it, my theory, my unified theory of network TV dramas. But I think like if people want, I'll still do it. If I don't line up a guest, I'll still do it. But holy fuck, this show is fucking brutal and it's never going to end either.

I'm going to have to recap it for the rest of my fucking life. But you know, that's about all I got for this week. Stay tuned for next week. We have Lucy coming back for council of dads, which I am just, I have never wanted to watch council of dads more than I do right now after watching two fucking episodes of business. So thank you, everybody. We'll see you again soon on business sucks. I love my father and I love him well, I hope to see him some day soon.

I love my father and I love him well, I hope to see him some day soon. Cause where I live I get stuck at night, kind of dark eats up the light. Cause where I live I get stuck at night, kind of dark eats up the light.