‘This Is Us’ Season 5: Will George Floyd's death and BLM protests turn Randall's life upside down?
“It’s no disgrace to be Black, but it’s often very inconvenient...” Randall Pearson's (Sterling K Brown) life is somewhat like that or perhaps even more tense as ‘This Is Us’ Season 5 begins. The time are changing... the world is grappling to survive amid a pandemic and America is struggling with Black Lives Matter protests after a 46-year-old Black man was killed in Minneapolis after a cop named Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for over eight minutes. The incident sparked violent protests all across the country and led to several horrific riots. Not just that, it made people question the systemic racism that has always pervaded American society. The NBC show will reflect all that and more as the premiere episode rolls out where the close-knit Pearsons are back in a socially distanced set-up.
Clarifying that the episodes are not “political” but “difficult and hopeful,” showrunner Dan Fogelman said it was really important for him to get them out on television before the election. Sketching it out on a Zoom call, he said, “It felt important to us to put [them] on TV now with no agenda other than that. We have been working night and day, and the guys have been shooting on weekends to get [them] done in time.”
The series has managed to stay away from political topics, but with Randall as a city councilman in Philadelphia, it dips toes into recent controversies. Fogelman said that the pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement were topics the series had to incorporate, even if it was time-consuming. “I've been working on [these episodes] since late February, because we were making the decision to have COVID as well as BLM woven into the show,” he explained, hinting at how it was the longest he ever spent on the premiere episodes. “We don't speak of Democrat, or Republican, or you-know-who on the show. It's more about American life. Our show has a lot of different pockets and spans time, so it felt almost irresponsible not to kind of take on the moment. I think we've attacked it in a hopefully elegant way that speaks to what our show tries to do and be. It was not a decision made lightly.”
Of Randall, he said, “You have a Black man raised in a white family. It's a very specific situation for our show and our main characters. I think it’s allowing us to explore this moment that we're in, in a way that's very unique to our characters and show. It feels organic to the characters' stories.”
In fact, four months ago, a Reddit fan wondered what it would be like if Randall was caught up in the BLM protests. “Perhaps seeing Randall having uncomfortable conversations with the older Pearsons, or having to address protests within his city as a city councilman? What do you all think?” the viewer commented, picturing how it would be filmed. The theory seems to be quite true to what may happen once the show premieres on NBC, isn't it?
Another fan added, “This would be awesome and really prevalent to what he’s gone through. Adding COVID felt like a stretch but this makes sense. If you remember the episode where Jack and kid Randall have that conversation on the golf course where Jack says he doesn’t see color. Then, kid Randall says then you don’t see my dad. That could circle back and is true to what many older white people are saying right now. I wouldn’t be shocked if Rebecca said something like that.”
A third chimed in, “I think I could see Randall and Beth telling Deja (and Tess?) not to go to the protest because they want to keep the family safe in full COVID quarantine and the girls defying them and saying they’re complicit in the establishment. Meanwhile Randall’s desperately trying to keep as many of his constituents safe as possible but not fully succeeding and giving himself lots of grief for it. Also, as hard as this will be on Randall’s already fragile mental health; he may be secretly relieved at keeping the family in quarantine giving him an excuse not to speak to the rest of the family that hates him right now. Although doing this would require they rewrite the entire season they planned before COVID and these particular BLM protests though so not an easy job I’d think.”
Susan Kelechi Watson — who plays Randall's wife Beth — revealed to reporters, “When we first got these episodes it was like they eavesdropped in on people’s lives,” adding, “Like everybody in America, they just kind of had an ear to the door because so much of it was things that I had lived, or I know people had lived. As Black as Randall and Beth are, they're not experts on how to metabolize all that tragedy. So, I think there's a way that they deal with it with their kids that is honest. They try to create a space where they're in it together.”
She then added, “It's such a unique perspective for someone like Randall who's always sort of questioning his identity, but never waving from the fact that he knows that he is Black,” and also said, “The way he was raised, the conversations that happened in his house, are not necessarily representative of the conversations that he wants to have with his children, by virtue of what didn't happen. They weren’t bad parents, he loves his parents very much and they gave him everything that they knew how to, but certain things were just difficult. They say general conversations regarding race happen much more frequently in households of people of color than they do in mainstream white families because it's just not something that's necessarily in the forefront of the consciousness. Randall has a really interesting sort of 'come to Jesus moment' through these first two episodes that I think is fascinating. I hope you guys dig it, too.”
Get set to watch the two-hour episode of ‘This Is Us’ premiere on Tuesday, October 27 at 9 pm ET on NBC. Following that, you can catch one-hour episodes starting at 9 pm from November 3, 2020.