This Is Us "Pilot" Review & Recap

The new dramedy "This Is Us" premiered last night and it looks like NBC's got a major hit on their hands. Both funny and poignant, the show will have viewers hooked after that first episode and eagerly awaiting more. Here's a recap of the "This Is Us" pilot.

Photo Credit: NBC

To start, the show has a fact on the screen, which is that according to Wikipedia, each person, on average, shares their birthday with more than 18 million other people, but there's no proven behavioral link between those people. Unless, of course, they're the people in "This Is Us." The episode then introduces pregnant couple Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) and Rebecca (Mandy Moore), who are celebrating Jack's 36th birthday when Rebecca's water breaks, so they rush to the hospital since they're expecting triplets and they're early.

Successful businessman Randall (Emmy winner Sterling K. Brown) is turning 36 when he gets an email from a private investigator telling him that the father who left him at the door of a fire station when he was a baby has been located. He decides to go meet his father, William Hill (Ron Cephas Jones), mostly because he wants to tell him off. After making a big speech on his biological father's doorstep, about how he turned out pretty okay even though he was abandoned, his father invites him inside. Randall doesn't want to hear any excuses and William doesn't make any, and after Randall tells him off and storms out, he comes back inside and invites William to his home to meet his wife Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) and two granddaughters. (Yeah, I don't really get that either, but I went with it). After Randall puts his daughters to sleep, he comes downstairs in his home to see William looking at a photo of his adoptive parents, though viewers don't see who's in the picture. We learn a firefighter found Randall and took him to the hospital, where his adoptive parents were and he was with them from day one. William tells Randall that he's dying, and then William is seen in Randall and Beth's guest room as they've invited him to stay over.

Handsome actor Kevin (Justin Hartley) is questioning his life and choices as he turns 36, as he's the star on a not-so-great sitcom called "The Manny," a shallow role in which he is rarely allowed to don a shirt or really show emotion. After he acts in a particularly moving scene and is told to redo it without his shirt and in a lighter way, he goes on a rant in front of a live studio audience about how everything is fake and then quits. We learn early on that Kevin has a sister named Kate (Chrissy Metz) who is struggling to lose weight and is also pretty dissatisfied with her life.

Kate decides she's really going to lose her excess weight and attends a sort of overweight people support group where she meets Toby (Chris Sullivan). They go on a date and then back to Kate's apartment, where they are interrupted pre-kiss by Kevin, who's freaking out about the state of his life now that he's quit "The Manny."

We then return to Jack and Rebecca in the hospital, where we learn one of the triplets was stillborn and the other two babies are a healthy boy and girl. As Jack sits in the hallway, their doctor tells him about his life, and how he and his wife lost their first baby and that's why he now delivers babies, and then says something along the lines of taking the sourest lemon life gives you and still managing to turn it into something resembling lemonade.

In a surprise twist, we see a firefighter standing next to Jack as he looks at his twins in the nursery, and he tells Jack he brought in a baby that was left on the steps of the fire station. That baby is next to Jack and Rebecca's in the nursery, and then the camera pans out so we realize that Jack and Rebecca's story isn't taking place in present day. Back to Kevin and Kate who are commiserating in Kate's apartment on her couch who are remembering that their dad used to tell them about no lemon being so sour you couldn't make something like lemonade and the pieces are starting to fall together. Yes, Jack and Rebecca are Kate and Kevin's parents and Randall is their adopted son, so they did end up going home from the hospital with three babies, and Jack and Rebecca's story is occurring in 1979.

With a great premise, an all-star cast, and what looks to be an interesting and emotional season ahead, NBC's "This Is Us" has set itself apart from the other shows on TV right now and is definitely off to a promising start.