THIS IS US: The First Season

NBC-TV’s series THIS IS US is a drama that focuses on one family and the unique blend of joys, love and loyalty that bonds them together into a cohesive unit throughout all the good times and bad times that come their way. MOVIEGUIDE® examined the first season of THIS IS US and found a compelling program that’s pro-family, but that includes some foul language, innuendo and other issues that aren’t appropriate for children.

The program first introduces the viewer to a young couple, Jack and Rebecca Pearson, in their early marriage and parenting years during the 1980s. Pregnant with triplets, Rebecca goes into labor and delivers two healthy children, but they lose the third child. On the same day as the birth of their twins, a black baby boy is abandoned at a fire station’s front doorstep and is brought to the hospital. Jack and Rebecca decide to adopt him, and their family of five is launched.

The program flashes back and forth between the triplets’ childhood with Jack and Rebecca and their adult lives 30 years later. The adult Kevin, Randall, and Kate are shown struggling with relatable issues such as image and weight problems, relationship problems, identity struggles, etc. The family is close knit, but the program doesn’t shy away from showing that love is often messy. Even in their close family, there are hurts and betrayals that require openness, honesty and the need for forgiveness and restoration.

The beauty of THIS IS US is that every episode is cathartic and achingly real in its depiction of life. The show does not try to sugarcoat reality or diminish the challenges of an interracial, adoptive family experience. However, through all their challenges, the Pearson family falls back time and time again on love for and loyalty to one another.

The marriages in THIS IS US are honest in their depictions of the challenges couples often face, but they remain consistently loving, supportive and strong. Similarly, the parent-child relationships are shown at both the truly heartwarming and the brutally heartrending moments. While the show isn’t Christian in nature and does occasionally introduce distinctly Non-Christian concepts, it’s rather biblical in its view of family and marriage. The sexuality in the program is almost entirely implied rather than explicitly portrayed, but sex outside of marriage is viewed as casual and acceptable. There is practically no violence in the show to speak of, but foul language is a concern. Most of the program’s obscenities are “h” or “d” words, but profanities are used casually, and almost every episode in Season One has a strong language warning.

All in all, therefore, THIS IS US is incredibly good about eliminating graphic violent and explicit sexual content. However, it does sometimes address mature, adult subjects and isn’t markedly Christian as it does so. The combination of these mature topics, the strong foul language, and the program’s casual attitude regarding sex make this show unsuitable for children. MOVIEGUIDE® advises strong and extreme caution.