ellelldee

I have so many peeves with this show, yet... I keep watching it. I can't really figure out why. I like a good hospital show. I was a big ER fan, and frankly, it was a better show than this, but this one is very watchable. Addictively so. Although it starts to wear a little thin by season, I don't know, 10 or so. I lost count.

Maybe it's the soap opera aspects of it. I mean, goodness, they do put these characters through hell and high water, and yet they doctor on. I'm not sure I would want people this traumatized treating me. The medical verisimilitude is good, as far as I can tell. I'm not a doctor. Sometimes a little too good. I really don't need that screen full of bloody viscera while I'm eating my lunch. But the actual behavior of the medical personnel, well, I really hope it's not realistic. Actually, I know it's not. I've had three major surgeries, and never have I found the doctor asleep by my bedside in his dedication to my recovery. And I certainly hope there's not as much illicit sex going on at any one time in normal hospitals. These people seem to have no self-control at all.

Peeves: Ellen Pompeo is a lovely woman, but "dark and twisty"? No. She doesn't really have the depth or darkness needed for her character.

I realize this is TV and all, but the doctors are WAY too good looking. Laughably so. At one point they introduce the new cardio specialist who also happens to be newly arrived from the war zone of Iraq and she looks like a Dior runway model. I literally snorted. But they're all like that. And the women are all crusted in makeup at all times. Don't surgeons have to remove that for surgery, especially mascara? Wouldn't bits of it flake off and possibly fall into the patient? The only normal looking one is Bailey, who is also the moral center of the show. The rest all look like models.

I find the music annoying and intrusive.

But I really am addicted to the show. I see its flaws and yet... I keep watching.

I was hearing good things about this show when I was overseas and did not have access to it. I recently was able to watch, oh who are we kidding, addictively binge, the entire series, and it was as good as everyone said. The idealization of family life was grounded enough in real life situations and difficulties to make it engaging and not too idealized to require too much suspension of disbelief. Instead it seemed sort of aspirational.

This is the saga of the Pearson family, the core of which consists of the two parents and the triplets, with a sweet and unusual twist about the siblings. Spouses, offspring, and other family members enter and exit, but they are the core of the show.

Two things kind of leaped out at me.

The first was how logistically complicated it was but how smoothly it was handled. All the scenes of the three siblings at different ages had to be filmed right then, meaning that the whole complex storyline, with its back and forth along several timelines, needed to be plotted out far in advance. Because those kid actors were going to change too much to be able to go back and re-shoot anything a couple years later. And these were intricate but coherent storylines, with connections in the past, the present, and the future, with emotional resonance and set-ups and payoffs. Impressive.

The other was that it immediately reminded me of Thirtysomething, which I really liked back in the day. The visual style, the plunkety-plunk guitar soundtrack. There was even one scene that revolved entirely around the exact same Joni Mitchell song that ended the pilot of Thirtysomething (The Circle Game). It shared the same sensibility, although I think Thirtysomething was slightly more realistic, whereas This Is Us is a little more idealized, but still very similar. It was therefore interesting to discover that one of the producers/directors is Ken Olin, one of the stars of Thirtysomething, the show that really launched his career.

With so many different actors playing the same characters at different points in time, it could occasionally be a little confusing, but considering how much of that went on, they did an admirable job of keeping the audience informed, and of trusting the audience to get it. I really liked that it assumed the audience was smart enough to follow, and the show had so much heart that we, the viewers, really invested in it.