This second season of This Is Us has been interesting. For starters, itโs nowhere near as emotional as the first season was, for better and worse. Until last nightโs episode, โNumber Three,โ Iโd only shed tears maybe once. That ALL changed last night, though, buddy.
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See, after dedicating episodes to the backstory for Kevin and watching him deal with his addiction and seeing Kate grapple with her miscarriage, This Is Us took us here pow and took us there pow and got to the storyline that most of us melanatinous individuals care about: Randall and Beth and, namely, some of how Randall became who he is.
In this particular episode we see Randall as a high school junior who is trying to figure out where heโs going to college and has taken an interest in the seminal HBCU Howard University because heโs an adopted black male teenager working through his identity issues and thereโs nowhere better to dig into your blackness than an HBCU.
But the show didnโt just talk about about him being interested. Heavenโs no. After setting us up for two weeks with Jack and Randall taking a trip to visit a college, we find out the trip is TO Howard University. Yes, This Is Us and NBC ventured to one of the blackest places in America: the actual campus in Washington, D.C. Iโm pretty sure I heard a few hallelujahs in the air tonight.
We have shots in Howardโs Founderโs Library and the quad, a cat rocking Phi Beta Sigma gear and the moment Randallโs life probably changed, when we see some black women who clearly set this man on the path toward Beth. Itโs like we see the seeds of Randallโs comfort in his own skin as a black man.
Heโs a black kid whose entire life is white who is seeing a campus full of people who look like him. Even if he doesnโt go to Howard (I canโt remember if we know that he did, though it seems like he was really heading down the road to D.C.), heโs seen the glory. Itโs a glory that many of us who have gone to HBCUs see at some point, either on a campus tour or early on in our matriculation.
You see a sea of beautiful blackness striving for better and for greatness. Thatโs what we saw a glimpse of last night on prime time. Itโs been a good long while since thatโs been the case.
And you know what? I appreciate that. As opposed to creating some nonexistent HBCU and utilizing a random campus, they took us right to one of the gems of black America, and while we werenโt entirely wrapped in the history of Howard, what we did see was Randall feeling at home.
And there was the moment where his blackness felt so comfortable that he hesitated to introduce his father to his new friends because, like many things in life, itโs complicated. He then goes on to explain to Jack, the father he clearly loves more than anything, how that immediate unexplainable thing that bothered Jack about Randallโs hesitation is how Randall feels all the time. Itโs like for the first time, he felt ... home. On an HBCU campus.
And because thereโs NO way that they were going to film on Howardโs campus without some of that HU pride coming through, when theyโre leaving campus, somebody hit them with the hee by yelling out โHU, you know,โ which made this Morehouse graduate well up with pride. This Is Us took Howard to prime-time television.
Getting back to what changed with tonightโs episode, Iโd be remiss if I didnโt mention that this was the first one I found myself tearing up involuntarily. Dejaโs motherโs charges have been dropped, so sheโs come to get her daughter. Randall and Beth, of course, are against it, but Randall comes to the realization that they canโt keep her from her mother and tells a ridiculous story about Pac-Man that even Beth is confused by, but it leads to the moment where Dejaโs mom shows up and they have to say their goodbyes.
Bruh.
When Deja and Randall hugged and he started that prideful ugly cry and you can see Beth in the background having a moment, well, my entire thug was lost to the game. All of it. I was super black and emo in the same episode; Iโm pretty sure this is the moment when NBC was going to buy NBC, because I do NOT see this happening again. Last nightโs episode was basically Ralph Tresvant in 1990 wearing an African medallion while Carl Thomas watched on with an Avirex jacket.
Thanks, Obama.
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