This Is Us Season 5, Episode 12
“Both Things Can Be True”
Posted by Shannon
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On the surface, the connective tissue between past and present this week is wedding planning. It’s Jack getting ready to propose to Rebecca, while decades later Kevin and Madison’s proposal ends up on the cover of US Weekly. But really, “Both Things Can Be True” is playing more with expectation. The expectations we have for each other: a blessing from your soon to be father in law, a rehearsal dinner toast from the hosts, the defensiveness of a brother by blood or bond. The expectations we have for ourselves: that we’ll roll seamlessly with changing relationships, that we’ll adjust and adapt easier than our own parents did. That we’ll keep the jobs that define us. That we’ll talk openly in a crowd. What happens when those expectations aren’t met, or more often when they CAN’T be met – that’s where shit gets complicated. That’s where we have to be kind to ourselves and to our loved ones. That’s where all the lessons really sit this week.
Jack and Miguel


The baseline for all of this starts in the past, with Jack working himself up to propose to Rebecca by re-creating their first date at the carnival. I admit, this whole thing confused the hell out of me at first. Why Jack would send Miguel out to get carnival food (hot chocolate and candy apples, among other things) while he painted a sign and decked Rebecca’s apartment out in the general trappings of their first nightmare date was completely beyond me. That whole situation was a disaster and a cringe-fest (it doesn’t help that I do not remember the episode itself fondly) and I was mystified by Miguel grumbling that this whole thing was “exactly the kind of romantic gesture that makes other guys hate you.” Is it? If I was Rebecca, the last thing I’d want would be to revisit that whole damn experience, much less have it tied to a proposal.
To his credit, though, Jack isn’t clueless about how that whole thing went down. When Miguel offers-to-slash-insists-on practicing the proposal with Jack, it all starts to make a whole lot more sense. Jack planned to acknowledge that nightmare date – to own it, to own the misses and the mess, and to use it as a turning point for his own life and the life he’s building with Rebecca. It works, perfectly, props and all – right up until the moment he shoves that lovely, simple engagement ring too far up Miguel’s pinkie. As the two of them wrestle with a stick of butter and bicker the way only best friends can, the doorbell rings and Rebecca’s father, who’d been ghosting Jack’s calls to ask for his blessing, comes onto the scene.
We’ve seen Rebecca’s mother in later years, and we know more or less that Bec doesn’t have the same close relationship with her parents after the wedding that she did in her earlier days. But we haven’t seen much of her father post-wedding. We don’t know, really, what that relationship ends up looking like. And sometimes they do change – sometimes, challenging in-laws become loving, supportive, staunch defenders of the partner they once fought against. I doubt that’s the case here, ultimately, but I do wonder if what happens next was a turning point for Mr. Malone. He shows up with no intention of giving Jack his blessing. He does, as Jack muttered, still think he’s some “drunken kid who can’t hit a golf ball to save his life.” Hell, the man only showed up to begin with because his own wife insisted he do the halfway decent thing and not leave Jack hanging.
Miguel does some serious best friend shit here. He cannot let Mr. Malone’s comments stand, even if (especially if) Jack wasn’t willing to put up a fight on his own behalf. (And how could he? Jack would never dream of making this even harder on Rebecca than it already, inevitably, will be.) But Miguel can say these things to Rebecca’s father. He can say them without fear of retribution or emotional trauma. He has nothing to lose, and so he goes all in. It may even have worked – at least, it cracks the veneer. Mr. Malone doesn’t explicitly change his position. And as I said before, I doubt it really changes anything between them. But in at least a gesture of good will, he stays to help free the engagement ring. It’s as close as he’ll come to apologizing or granting Jack his blessing. And it’s not nothing.
Mama C, Beth, and Tess

Can I just say again (and again, and again) how glad I am to have Phylicia Rashad around the Pearson home? When she and Griffin first came back around in the episode before last, I called these two a shot in the arm, and I have to say that’s exactly what they’ve been. Phylicia herself is one of the best actors we’ve got; few people are as hypnotic and captivating on television, transfixing everyone with the smallest of glances. Any show would be lucky to have her and I’ll never really get over the fact that we get to watch her work alongside Sterling K Brown and Susan Kelechi Watson. It’s not just Phylicia though; Mama C as a character is exactly the kind of energy Randall and Beth’s family needed around. In a home full of loveable chaos, she’s steady as a rock. She’s got the perfect emotional distance from her granddaughters and can offer them perspective and a safe harbor. She’s clear-eyed and plugged in and has impeccable non-binary pronoun use. She is a woman of the times, after all.
I’ve said before that Tess needs her grandmother around, particularly when her favorite uncle and her dad are going through some shit. I’m grateful that Tess has her grandmother to talk to confide in about Alex and any other teen angst she’s wrestling with. But Beth needs her, too. She needs that center, even though she still occasionally pushes against it. She certainly needs it when Alex comes over to the Pearson house for the first time. Beth is so focused on getting everything right – practicing Alex’s pronouns, being sure they’ve got snacks and feel welcome, that she breezes right past ground rules for what boils down to Tess’s first date around her parents. Deja has every right to be pissed that the rules she and Malik are held to so firmly seem to fly out the window for Tess; and it’s a sign that, as much as she hates that it’s true, Beth has thought about this relationship differently than she has Deja’s.

Beth obviously should have established these rules before Alex got there. It wasn’t fair to them, and it wasn’t fair to Tess. But she didn’t. Beth is acting out of panic. She’s overthinking and under thinking everything, all at the same time. The interruption of Tess and Alex was as painless as it realistically could have been (thanks in no small part to Alex, who seems like a lovely, mature person and who really rolls with this!). Which is not to say, obviously, that it goes well. Beth freaks, Tess acts out. These are very standard, very natural reactions on both their parts. And Tess isn’t blameless here. She knows full well that Deja and Malik wouldn’t be allowed to be in Deja’s room with the door closed, and like any other teenager, she takes full advantage of the fact that Beth missed laying out that expectation. But at the same time – I have to say I’m proud of her for vocalizing her fear and frustration. Beth is a good person and a great mom and she loves her kids more than anything. And she’s having a hard time with the reality of having a queer teen in her house. She just IS. And it’s because Beth and Randall did such a great job with Tess that she’s able to see their failings for what they are, and call them out accordingly. Tess doesn’t want to draw this line between her and her mom. But she knows Beth can do better, and she sees Beth doing better with her siblings, and it breaks her heart a little. How could it not?
Both Beth and Tess have expectations for their relationship here. Tess is clearly wounded by the work she sees her mom having to do. It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate it, or even, on some level, understand it. But she’s just a kid, and she’s grappling with her own issues of identity, and seeing her mom wrestle with the realities of her first relationship rather than celebrate them is really, really hard. And Beth had expectations, too – things she didn’t even really know she still expected. Heteronormativity is ingrained in countless parts of our world and our experience, and as a mother to three daughters, Beth had a playbook in her mind about how it would all go. And she had to throw that playbook out. Just like her own mother had to do, in her own way. For Mama C, it was twenty years of shifting expectations, of distance, of difficulties. It’s only now, months into a global pandemic and a few weeks into living with her daughter, that she feels she can wear down the walls between herself and Beth.
I can imagine it’s hard – maybe even impossible – for Beth to see the lines between her relationship with her mother and the walls forming between her and Tess. I’m not sure how Beth would answer the question of if she’s close with her own mother, but I don’t think she’d rush to say yes. She’d also insist that it doesn’t mean she doesn’t love her mom. And yet, she can’t see that same dynamic building with her and Tess. She can’t see that Tess doesn’t mean any of this as an insult. She sees it as a truth, because that’s what it ultimately is. It’s up to Beth to change that – and denying that it’s happening at all isn’t a great start.
Kevin, Madison, Nicky, and Miguel
Wedding planning is rolling right along at Kevin and Madison’s house, now that their engagement is plastered on the cover of US Weekly and a new wedding planner is coming over on the regular. The wedding isn’t going to be huge, with just Randall and Kate standing up with each of them respectively, but it does certainly seem like it’ll be fancy. And listen, if that’s what they want, then godspeed. Weddings should be exactly what the people getting married want it to be – not what their relatives, wedding planners, or any other bystanders think they want it to be. Kevin picks up on something behind Madison’s eyes as they discuss the venue that makes it seem like she’s not a hundred percent on board for this, and yet when he prods her a bit, she doesn’t speak out.
Granted, this doesn’t seem to be the best time for them to have a longer, deeper talk about what they both want in their wedding. Not when Nicky grumbles his way into the planning meeting like a persnickety wrecking ball. But as Madison tells Toby later on at the playground, she’s also just not used to vocalizing what she wants. It has never been her strong suit to begin with, and it’s natural that she’d have an even harder time speaking up to an extremely famous celebrity with the resources to make literally anything she wants possible. It’s a lot to manage all at once, even for someone more secure in speaking up for themselves and their needs.
This is the thing about Kevin Pearson, though. He means it when he says none of this matters to him. All Kevin EVER wants for the people he loves is for them to be happy. That’s it. It may seem naive, and it may seem like he has ulterior motives, but he almost never does. The moment Madison comes back around and asks for what she wants, he agrees before she can even finish the sentence. This is the kind of thing that makes me more certain that Madison and Kevin are a really great match for each other. She needs someone who will encourage her and build on her certainty of mind; he needs someone who appreciates him for who he is, for his humour and his kind heart. So for the record, while that ending montage of Zoe, Cassidy and Sophie looking at the proposal announcement was sweet and lovely, I also hope it’s not portending any grand romantic gestures coming from any of them. Just let us have this, show.
While Madison and Kevin focus on the wedding day itself, Nicky offers his assistance to Miguel for rehearsal dinner planning. And honestly, this is where Kevin’s naivete does come back to bite him. From the first moment Nicky asks about Miguel, he’s out for blood, referring to Miguel as “the guy who’s banging my brother’s wife.” Kevin and Miguel have the most directly challenging relationship of any of the Big Three, so it’s telling that even Kevin immediately defends his stepdad. But ultimately, Kevin is still just too excited that Nicky wants to play a part in the wedding planning to see what’s coming.
Nicky and Miguel were always destined to have a complicated relationship, at least at first, and this is the only time they’ve spent any real time together. (The only other time they even would have MET was Nicky’s first Thanksgiving with the Pearsons, and god knows he had enough to work through already on that holiday without adding Miguel into the mix.) Nicky is used to solitude and the unflinching selfishness that can come along with it. He’s not used to collaborating or, frankly, communicating with anyone outside his own very small world view. Miguel and Nicky have barely anything in common and no clear way to relate to one another. Even if they didn’t have a shared history with Jack, this would have been a tough combination. But when you add that in? When you add in the fact that Nicky sees Miguel as having replaced Jack as his best friend and brother, not to mention whatever it is Miguel must think of Nicky and his estrangement with his best friend, these two become a powder keg.
It’s worth noting again that Kevin is the only one who’s ever come at Miguel in a way that’s even close to the way Nicky comes at him here. Kevin’s the only one who’s ever vocalized the emotional challenge that is Miguel and Rebecca’s marriage. But he’s also seen the good that this marriage has done Rebecca, and he has a more holistic view of the relationship than Nicky (or the viewer, for that matter) possibly could. So Kevin’s willing and able to jump to Miguel’s defense when Nicky finally leans all the way in and confronts Miguel about his marriage.
Miguel handles it beautifully. He doesn’t owe Kevin or Nicky or anyone else an explanation for his marriage. (“There is only one person that I owe an explanation to, and that is the one person that I can never give one to. I certainly don’t owe one to you.”) And yet, it must have struck at so many deep-seeded fears for Miguel. To have this man, the closest person to Jack he could find in his life, attack him about this must have been a horrific blow. Because as much as I give Jack shit for establishing such unreachable expectations for his family and his loved ones, this is one moment where Miguel’s interaction with that expectation is warranted. While I certainly don’t want Miguel to torture himself about it (and to his credit, I don’t think he does), he’s got every right to wonder.
Everything that combined to make Nicky and Miguel a powder keg can, just as easily, turn around to be a blessing. Ultimately, I think (or hope!) that’s what will happen here. As Kim said, for both Miguel and Nicky, the other person represents as close a link to Jack as they can ever truly get back. Miguel must see in Nicky pieces of his best friend. And Miguel is the only one who can paint a true picture of Jack’s adulthood for Nicky. I sincerely hope that this is the beginning of a really beautiful friendship.
There’s one more challenging brotherly relationship to close out in this thread, and that’s Randall and Kevin. The whole hour, Kevin has been putting off asking Randall to be his best man. (And how nightmarish that must have been for Nicky, to start to pick up on the possible rift between his beloved nephew and his own brother.) As Kevin says, it’s not that he doubts Randall will say yes. It’s that, as he puts it, “When you stand up there next to me, I don’t want there to be anything between us.” There’s a long road ahead for these two to not have any animosity between them. There’s the weight of race and rivalry and identity and every awful, beautiful thing that comes along with each of those words. Randall has just spent the day in his first transracial adoptee support group when Kevin calls, and I have to say I worry he’s not ready to have this conversation with his brother. He’s only just begun to walk this road himself. But the plane tickets have been booked, and the conversation is scheduled. We’ll find out how it goes soon enough.
Kate and Toby

With Kate officially starting work at Jack’s music school, Toby’s stay at home dad status has formally launched. He’s taking it admirably, along with welcoming Madison’s deep well of playground recommendations, but what we learn here is the real reason Toby’s been acting out so much since losing his job. It’s not just that he was anxious about money, or that he was defensive of his position as a breadwinner for the household. It’s that he genuinely loved his job. (“I loved getting dressed up for it, I loved making coffee to take to it, I loved doing it.”) And I, honestly, loved hearing him talk about this so clearly. We don’t get a lot of “I love my job” talk in This Is Us from the folks who aren’t running off to follow their dreams. And more often than not, our jobs are NOT our dreams. But that doesn’t mean we can’t love them, or find identity and meaning within them. Toby genuinely loved what he was doing, and he didn’t want to give it up or lose that part of himself. And he doesn’t find that same satisfaction from spending all day with his kids. And THAT’S OKAY. It doesn’t make him a bad or disconnected father, any more than a mother wanting to go back to work makes her a bad parent.
The troubling thing is that he doesn’t tell Kate any of it. I suspect it’s because he doesn’t want to make her feel guilty about her own work, or seem like he’s going back on his agreement. But there’s a space in between Toby acknowledging that the current arrangement makes more sense for their family and him yelling at Kevin for no reason, and that space would be him honestly telling Kate what he wants and how he wants to work towards it. It feels ominous, especially juxtaposed against Madison and Kevin, that Toby doesn’t speak to Kate honestly when she gets home from work. It’s yet another moment that leads me to believe that, as much as we love these two, they may not make it.

Kate has had a lot of first days in a new job these past five seasons. Most of them have barely lasted beyond the single episode. (Remember that one time Kate was a badass, great assistant to a Hollywood person that wasn’t Kevin and then she just… stopped?) This one, I think, is going to have a longer life; not just because Kate is ultimately great at it, but because it’s linked directly to Jack’s life. But for now, she’s still got a lot to prove. Particularly to the teacher she’s working for, who apparently had little to no say in her hiring and has no idea why she just skated past many more qualified applicants.
I watched this whole sequence remembering my own days as a music student. I had a lot of different teachers along the way; some technical, some emotional. The ones that worked the best, though, were the ones who did both. They were the ones who said “allegro” AND reminded you what it meant. Kate doesn’t have the technical skills, and her unnamed compatriot doesn’t have the emotional ones. But their powers combined are exactly what kids need to learn music. If this guy is worth half his music education, he’ll see that for what it is. And even if he somehow doesn’t, Kate sure as hell will.
Colors of the Painting
- I know I said I don’t want Kevin’s exes to come back around to mess with their wedding, and I stand by that, but what I DO want is for Zoe to come back and hang out with Beth and the girls.
- I will never tire of Phylicia Rashad’s specific delivery of “Bethanyyyy” and I hope she never stops.
- Nicholas Pearson walked into that backyard with a baby monitor clipped to his shirt pocket. That’s all I have to say about THAT.
- Mama C is reading a Toni Morrison collection entitled “The Source of Self-Regard,” and if you haven’t revisited her words lately, consider this your reminder to do so.
- “I was very focused on the pronouns and the poppers.”
- Miguel insisting that Jack act out the entire engagement, knee, ring and all was extremely endearing and sweet and made me weirdly sad that no one was around to help him plan his own second engagement.
- The photo of the season, so far at least:
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