“Sometimes” is a deeply haunted episode of This Is Us. And in refining its focus to three rich story lines — as opposed to the scattered quality that’s defined the show’s past few weeks — it also happens to be one of the best of the season so far.
This, perhaps problematically, has to do with including neither Kate nor Randall, both of whom are stuck in thin arcs right now — the latter increasingly so, despite Sterling K. Brown’s continued excellent work. Instead, the only Pearson sibling to appear in “Sometimes” is Kevin, and it’s directly tied-in with the Jack-heavy material going on in the other timelines: the Vietnam War, which we return to for the first time, and the early stages of Jack and Rebecca’s romance.
Let’s begin with the opening, which essentially outlines how the infamous necklaced passed onto Kevin wound up around the neck of a Vietnamese woman — who’d later be photographed beside Jack. The sequence is neat: The episode opens on the necklace being made; then moves to it being sold to servicemen; then to a man who bought it trying to use it to pick up a woman, only to leave it at a bar where he sees her with another man; and then to another man picking it up, only to die on the battlefield; and then, finally, to a woman finding it and putting it on. It’s a subtle beginning which reflects what This Is Us does best, peering into so many lives and tracing their connections.
Kevin is still obsessed with the picture as he and Zoe land in Vietnam, but he soon finds himself irked by something else: Zoe’s reluctance to open up to him. She hints at a troubled dynamic with her father when she asks him not to tag her in any Instagram photos; he lives in China and she doesn’t want to see him, but won’t say exactly why. This grates at Kevin: He realizes she’s said very little about her family, and that as he falls for her, he wants to know more. As of now, he knows she’s smart, ambitious, and plenty adventurous — that last detail evidenced by their first lunch in Vietnam, where she gorges on marketplace bat. (She’ll later regret the choice.) While out, Kevin spots a tourist wearing the same necklace as his father’s — and learns it’s but a cheap souvenir gift, without the singular, special value he’d ascribed to it. Though of course, the backstory is as significant as Kevin initially thought; little does he know.
Kevin says at the episode’s beginning that he felt his father the moment they touched down in Hanoi, and “Sometimes” indeed carries that ghostly element. Much of it comes from what Jack himself goes through in this episode. While the “Vietnam” episode was more of a structural feat, this is the first time the show really lives in Jack’s experience of the war, allowing us to get a better glimpse of his trauma.
In the War timeline, we begin where we left off: on Jack and Nicky’s reunion. Nicky appears volatile and unstable as he embraces and pushes his brother away, expressing joy and anger at seeing him. “Don’t touch me. Don’t look at me. I’m not here,” he tells Jack at one point. He gets in his face, trying to scare him away. But Jack doesn’t budge, indicating he’s going to get him help. “I got charged with Article 15 — that’s unbecoming conduct,” Nicky tries explaining. He appears broken, hopeless. (Recap continues on Page 2)
