Why do Toby and Kate break up on This Is Us?
In the present day, the slow-motion train wreck of Toby and Kate’s marriage continues to head determinedly down the tracks. It’s Thanksgiving and Kate and her mom are, per tradition, making sugar pie, but as Kate writes down the recipe, she mentions that Rebecca still hasn’t given her the secret ingredient. No worries, though; it still tastes good. But after letting baby Jack lick the spatula (something we earlier saw teenage Kate refuse to do, as her brothers fret about her weight gain), Toby worries their son is eating too much sugar. This comes up again later, as Kevin (Justin Hartley) shows off the site for the cabin he’s building for Rebecca. Toby can’t get Jack to cooperate, which he insists is because Jack has had too much sugar, and not because he wasn’t using the strategies Kate typically uses to help Jack (who is blind) feel secure in his surroundings. Still harping on their son’s diet at dinner, Toby removes sweet potatoes from Jack’s plate, and Kate finally calls him out for being concerned about Jack getting fat. After Toby shoots back that he’s not an absentee parent and doesn’t appreciate the way Kate treats him, and that they’d be “insane not to acknowledge our genetics,” Kevin demands that Toby remove the Pilgrim Rick hat. This sends Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) lunging for her wine, since we’ve all seen what a big deal the Pilgrim Rick hat is to the Pearsons. Toby later acknowledges to Kate privately that he knows they’ve been at each other’s throats over every little thing, but that he also wants to spare Jack any of the pain that they suffered as fat kids. Kate retorts that her whole life has been a cycle of dieting and binging—one we saw play out in the flashbacks to her Thanksgiving as a teenager, when she tried to subsist only on Brussels sprouts and dry turkey until Randall’s well-meaning suggestions for self-improvement drove her to pile sweet potatoes onto her plate—and she doesn’t want food to have that power over their kids. She says she’s put a lot of thought into what she feeds their kids, and she can’t believe Toby doesn’t know that. We do know that the final nail in the coffin of Kate and Toby’s marriage will come during a family barbecue: Will it be related to their differing attitudes toward food, or is this merely another straw being piled upon the camel’s back?
Is Rebecca going to die on This Is Us?
Fans have been wondering for a while now if This Is Us will culminate with Rebecca’s death, and judging by what the Pearson matriarch does in “Taboo,” it seems she’s certainly planning for that, even if nobody else is. Rebecca asks her kids for a family talk “just the four of us and Miguel” after dinner. “Nothing bad, just want to go over a few things.” So of course, everyone’s mind immediately jumps to something bad, and the possibilities of what Rebecca might want to discuss hang like a dark cloud over the day. Rebecca starts their family meeting by recalling how hard things were for her to manage after Jack died, and that she has the benefit of being able to make a plan for her own eventual passing. She has her children agree that Miguel will be in charge of decisions regarding Rebecca’s care, and tells Kevin that she wants there to be a guest house on the property in case Rebecca eventually needs permanent care (an idea Kevin balked at earlier, thinking Miguel wanted a guest house for his “fishing buddies,” but now sees in a new light). She also says that she would like Kate to step in as the decision maker if anything ever happens to Miguel. And her last request to her children: “You will not make your lives smaller because of me.” She doesn’t want her kids shaping their lives around trying to make memories for and with her. She wants them to live their lives to the fullest, knowing that she loves them and that by making the most of their lives, they are honoring her. Afterward, Kate asks why Rebecca chose her. “You are my daughter and my best friend,” Rebecca answers simply. “It was always you, Kate.” She then whispers the secret ingredient to Kate before heading to bed.
Why does Rebecca’s mom do to her on This Is Us?
In a series of flashbacks throughout the episode, we see an engaged, pre-Big Three Rebecca and Jack preparing Thanksgiving dinner for her parents. Rebecca laments that dessert doesn’t taste quite right since she still doesn’t know the secret ingredient in her mom’s sugar pie, a metaphor for the unspoken things in a family that will come up again and again throughout the episode. Once Rebecca’s mom, Janet (Elizabeth Perkins) arrives, she’s brimming with critique and suggestions. The gravy is lumpy. The sugar pie smells wrong. And does Rebecca have a wedding dress, or does she just want to wear Janet’s? “Starve yourself early on, and it’ll give you a buffer for bad decisions later,” Janet advises. Yikes. “They live in a perpetual hellscape,” Rebecca’s dad, Dave (Tim Matheson) tells Jack, attempting to explain the strained dynamic between Rebecca and her mom. Rebecca’s mother serves herself ridiculously small portions at dinner, and tries to caution Rebecca away from filling her plate. Rebecca, in response, heaps more sweet potatoes on her plate, then refuses to get married at her parents’ country club and guesses that the secret ingredient in the sugar pie is “baloney because you haven’t had a slice of this in 20 years.” So not only are passive aggressive critiques a tradition in this family; so are eating disorders. This, too, will come back later. Jack tries to smooth things over with Rebecca’s mom, only for Janet to reveal to Jack that they’re moving to Connecticut and she worries Rebecca will never visit her. Jack promises they will, but is that true? We can’t help but notice a conspicuous lack of family visits to Connecticut in the Pearson family flashbacks, but maybe those are on the horizon. After Jack spills the beans about her parents’ move, Rebecca surprisingly sides with her mom against Jack, saying he broke their trust. An unexpected twist, but at least it gets mother and daughter back on the same page. Her mother even whispers the secret ingredient in the sugar pie to Rebecca before heading out the door.
Why did Miguel and Rebecca stop speaking on This Is Us?
In a flashback Thanksgiving scene (which we saw being planned in “Our Little Island Girl: Part Two”), Rebecca and teenage Kate (Hannah Zeile) are making a sugar pie. As they put the final touches on dinner, the Thanksgiving guests start to arrive, and things get awkward immediately. Kevin (Logan Shroyer) announces to a newly arrived Randall (Niles Fitch) and Beth (Rachel Hilson) that he and Sophie broke up, and Matt (Matt Corboy) and Marguerite (Elena Evangelo) both show up as Rebecca and Miguel’s dates, respectively, bringing out the passive aggressive claws in both of them. As the day progresses, it only becomes clearer that Rebecca and Miguel are functioning as a unit, and neither one of them is really interested in their dates, even if they refuse to admit it. As Miguel carves the turkey (at Rebecca’s request), they both try to compliment each other’s dates, but somehow everything comes out feeling a little condescending. To drive the point home, after dinner, during a game of adults vs. kids taboo, Rebecca directs all her clues solely to Miguel, the only one who has the history with her to understand all of her inside jokes and references. The round ends with her screaming “I love you Miguel,” likely making both Matt and Marguerite wonder what they’re still doing there. Still smarting from his split with Sophie, Kevin tells Miguel after the game that sometimes, he can hear his dad’s voice expressing his disappointment in his choices. He makes it clear that if Miguel makes a move on Rebecca, Jack will roll over in his grave. And while we, the viewers, all realize that Kevin is just lashing out of his own pain, Miguel lacks that perspective and seems shaken by Kevin’s confrontation. On the front porch, Rebecca and Miguel both admit that their barbs about each other’s dates weren’t harmless, with the clear implication being that they were both acting out of jealousy. Rebecca sounds like she’s about to make a confession along those lines, but before she can, Miguel tells her he’s moving to Houston. “I don’t know what else to do. You’re my favorite person,” he says before walking away. That night, an inconsolable Rebecca cries herself to sleep, the only words she’s able to utter, “He’s moving to Houston.” It’s gonna be a long eight years.
What was the secret ingredient in Rebecca’s sugar pie?
We never find out. Maybe when we’re older.
What happens next on This Is Us?
The synopsis for Season 6’s eighth episode, titled “The Guitar Man,” reads, “Kevin takes the twins to the cabin in hopes of proving himself as a father.” Now, this begs a couple of questions, since in the present day, the cabin is not yet built. So is he taking his infant children to the empty site where the cabin will one day sit, or will next week’s episode be predominantly a flash-forward to when the children are older and the cabin is finished? And if so, how old will they be? The past couple episodes have seen Kevin playing guitar extremely badly, so it would make sense for him to be the “Guitar Man” of the episode’s title (hopefully his skills will have improved by then). However, another candidate for the titular “Guitar Man” could be the grown-up—or at least, more grown than he is now—Jack Damon, who we know grows up to be a successful singer and songwriter. After all, if we’re in the future, it’s always possible we could see a teenage or even adult Jack. We still haven’t picked up the threads of Déjà’s (Lyric Ross) confrontation with Randall (Sterling K. Brown) over her relationship with her college-aged boyfriend Malik (Asante Blackk), although she mentioned in “Taboo” that Malik hadn’t been responding to her texts, making us wonder if something’s going on in his corner of the world. And of course, we’re still in the dark about the identity of Kevin’s future wife, although if we’re getting a Kevin-focused flash-forward next week, maybe we’ll get a few more clues. Hungry after that Thanksgiving episode of This Is Us? Try one of our 85 Amazing Pie Recipes Sure to Bring Family And Friends Together.
