‘This Is Us’ Season 5 Episode 3: Who is little Linh and grandpa on fishing trip and are they related to Laurel?
Tying little threads of the past, present and future together, ‘This Is Us’ manages to bring a smile and throw a bucket of surprises each time. After the shocking cliffhanger in the two-hour premiere about Randall Pearson's (Sterling K Brown) birth mom Laurel, there was one big question on all minds: Is she still alive?
Titled ‘Changes’, the new episode begins on a beautiful, sunny morning as a little girl named Linh (Brandilyn Cheah) innocently asks her grandpa Hai (Vien Hong), “Do fish sleep?” Her grandpa remarks, “Yes, but not like we do. They rest.” Restless and jumpy, she exclaims, “I wish they'd stop resting. I'm getting hungry,” and screams, “Wake up!”
Her grandpa then tells her to “be patient.” He says, “Breathe, granddaughter!” In no time, she gets a big one on her fishing rod. “I got one, I got one!” she screams in delight and her grandpa helps her bring it out of the water. They catch a huge fish for dinner.
We see the duo again in another flashback as her grandpa cooks a delicious meal. When the little one comes running to him with a zillion questions, he asks her to say it again in Vietnamese. She then retorts, “You said we have to speak Vietnamese only when we are fishing.” Defeated, her grandpa replies, “You always get the last word in every language.”
Her impatience builds on. “Everything takes so long. Fishing the fish, cooking the fish...” she whines. Her grandpa then tells her, “You need to learn patience, Linh,” and then confesses, “I learned to cook because I wanted to impress someone very close to me. I will not tell you who I cook for but I will show you how I cook for her.
The little one is intrigued. “Her... It's a girl.” Then she asks, “The woman you're trying to impress with your cooking... Is she the woman in all the pictures around here?” Not ready for a complete revelation, her grandpa says, “So many questions... In such a little body.” But then spills the beans. “Linh, it's the woman in all the pictures.” The camera then pans over to a picture of him and a young woman. And she is Laurel — Randall's biological mother.
With another cliffhanger, the final scene leaves the mystery hanging in the air. What happened to Laurel after the EMT noticed she could breathe again? How did Laurel meet Linh's grandpa? Why didn't she go back to William “Shakespeare” Hill? Will Randall ever meet her again? Is Randall's new Black therapist his half-brother? After all, he is a young father too.
With William gone, will Randall seek answers about Laurel’s roots, just like he did when he took William to Memphis? Much of Randall's birth story — and why he left Randall at the fire station as an infant — has to do with Laurel’s drug use and eventual overdose and that may be explored further as more episodes roll out.
After the two-hour episode of 'This Is Us' premiered on Tuesday, October 27, at 9 pm ET on NBC, the one-hour episode ‘Changes’ is all set to telecast from 9 pm ET to 10 pm ET on Tuesday, November 10.