This Is U.s. Recap: This Is Beth

This Is U.s.a.

Our Piffling Island Girl

Flavor 3 Episode xiii

Editor'southward Rating 4 stars

This Is Us

Our Little Island Girl

Season iii Episode xiii

Editor'southward Rating 4 stars

Photo: Ron Batzdorff/NBC

Listen, you guys know I'grand here for the Sadness Parade that is the Pearson family, but I'd be lying if I didn't admit I was very much relieved to get a intermission from them this week. They are just then sad! I know, I know, we signed up for this, simply don't we deserve a little lightness now and again? Everything is And then HEAVY and And then MUCH. Sure, Beth comes with her ain brand of sadness — she'due south unemployed and feeling lost, plus all the dead dad stuff — merely this long-awaited Beth Pearson showcase episode ends on a truly hopeful note. Beth shines (so does Susan Kelechi Watson, yes please and thank you) and in the stop, finds herself again. She can breathe. In that location is lite. It is very much the contrary of how the Uncle Nicky adventure concluded, praise be!

Beth and Zoe head downward to Washington, D.C., to see Beth'due south mother, Carol (a perfectly cast Phylicia Rashad), a high schoolhouse master who has merely hobbling her hip. (You may recall she broke her hip non too long ago, so Beth is concerned.) Post TLC sing-forth, Beth and Zoe make a pact: They are going to tell Ballad that she needs to think nearly retiring. They have to brand a pact considering Carol is very intimidating (remember I told you, she's Phylicia Rashad) and Beth has a tendency to "clam upward" effectually her. She's a pusher who wants her children to work difficult and excel in their chosen paths. (This makes it extra-tense when Beth finally tells her mother she's been laid off and doesn't know what to do next.) Beth has never been able to stand up upwards to her. Cheers to our patented This Is Usa Flashbacks, nosotros get to meet the evolution of Beth'due south human relationship with her mother, likewise as learn most what happened to that other beloved of Beth's life: trip the light fantastic toe.

We already knew that Beth lost her father, Abe (Carl Lumbly, also great), to cancer when she was a teenager — her grief no doubtfulness helped her bond with Randall, and honestly if one of the Pearsons met someone without a Sad Story, I don't call up they'd know what to do with them — but what we didn't know was how pivotal a office her father played in Beth pursuing her dreams and so losing her way once he died. Piddling Bethany Clark wants to be a ballerina. When she earns a coveted spot in a prestigious ballet school, her mother is skeptical but her father thinks information technology's a no-brainer. Bethany is "our little island girl, who danced earlier she could walk," of grade she'll become to ballet school, even if it means he'll have to work overtime to pay for it. Carol agrees, as long equally Bethany promises to work hard and get the best. No pressure level or anything.

And so she goes. Just things do non go according to plan. She showed much promise — with dreams of becoming the starting time African-American chief in the American Ballet Company or moving to London or and then many things really — but by the fourth dimension she's a teenager (This Is U.s.a. again with the great teen casting: This time it's Rachel Naomi Hilson as Teen Beth) it'south articulate she hasn't lived upward to the hype. Her teacher (Goran Visnjic, in a part besides small to be a one-off, no?) suggests taking upward a different trip the light fantastic toe manner, but no, she's a ballerina. Her begetter, now dying of cancer and seeing his daughter so forlorn, tells her the story of how she became the daughter who "danced before she walked" and reminds her to never forget who she really is. Merely so he goes and dies, she doesn't get a solo in the senior showcase, and her mother hands her a big ol' college guide — to find a new path, to outset fresh. Without her father in that location to remind her, she forgets that she is his "lilliputian island girl" and she forgets trip the light fantastic toe.

Until now, that is. Being in her childhood home surrounded past memories of her father (that scene in which Beth cries as she looks at her dad's chair and admits she forgot who she was because she can't exist her without him is Watson at her best), and of dance; feeling a trivial lost in her life and a picayune high from that joint Zoe had stashed in the firm for future use; Beth finally confronts her female parent. Oh boy, yous guys, is this A SCENE. Beth basically blames her mother for stealing the joy from her life by making her quit trip the light fantastic. She was complimentary before, and then she was non. She tells Ballad that none of her kids tin be around her considering she has "no air" effectually her — "no air to be sad, no air to fail." Because of growing up like this, of being ashamed of her dreams, even now she tin't tell her own hubby that she wants "to exist that fiddling daughter who dances over again." It'south all very sad and moving and honestly I feel very refreshed watching Beth Pearson finally get her twenty-four hour period in the dominicus.

That scene is followed past yet some other whopper of a scene in which Carol tries to explain herself to her daughter — she had a mother to impress, also — and talks most how Beth's male parent lightened her up. He never took life seriously, she took it too seriously. They evened each other out. "He gave me that air that you said I don't accept on my own," she tells her girl. Anyone else getting Beth and Randall vibes here? Randall, a dramatic dreamer, Beth, a realist. I mean, time is a flat circumvolve and all that, you know? Anyway, Carol proceeds to break all of our hearts, peradventure a contractual obligation when appearing on this show, by admitting that after Abe died, she lost that air he gave her, then she calls her Bethany her "little isle girl, who danced before she could walk" and apologizes for taking trip the light fantastic away from her. And that's all Beth e'er wanted — she's not mad, of course, because going to college put her on her path to find Randall, just recognition of the loss is important. We are all crying, but only Beth and Ballad become to hold hands.

With that, Beth returns home and is finally able to tell her husband what she wants to do: She wants to teach dance. Thank you to our handy-dandy flash-forward, we know her dreams work out. The terminal scene where nosotros cut between all three of the Beths, seeing Beth find that part of herself again, dancing in an empty classroom (Watson is a dancer in real life), is gorgeous. Has a Pearson e'er felt and so complimentary?

• TEEN RANDALL SIGHTING. Teen Beth Not Bethany (she changes her name to really testify us Ballerina Bethany is gone) goes to a higher freshman mixer and bumps into her future hubby. He is smitten, she pays him no mind. How perfect!

• Teen Beth feels guilty over her male parent'due south death. He worked so hard to be able to put her through trip the light fantastic toe schoolhouse — it's her fault he got sick and died. Man, she should actually talk to Kate Pearson.

• Randall dropping Beth off at the trip the light fantastic toe school and offer to be her hype man and fully supporting her dream is very peak Randall and Beth and it's nice to see them existence SO THEM again.

• Carol seems like a great principal — equal parts terrifying and concerned. Even with her walker (she at least took a fiddling of Beth and Zoe's advice), she is a fearsome thing to behold in those hallways.

• The sister-cousins getting high in the laundry room was excellent. Them recognizing that Beth was scared of her mother, but Zoe seeing her as a safe space, was of import. Though, now what I need to see is Carol giving Zoe The Business organisation for dating Kevin Pearson. She must have thoughts.

• Now I want backstory on Beth'south backstory: Requite me Abe feeding Ballad while she studies or give me death!

This Is Us Recap: This Is Beth