This is us
The hill
Season 6 Episode 9
Editor’s Rating 3 Stars ***
Photo Credit: NBC/Ron Batzdorff/NBC
Apparently we’ve known for some time that Kate and Toby’s marriage isn’t of this world for long, but ‘The Hill’ – number two, the entry point in the final Big Three trilogy, co-written by Kate herself, Chrissy Metz, starring David Windsor and Casey Johnson, and directed by Mandy Moore, no less – are leaving the relationship DOA, and we haven’t even gotten to the Green Egg explosion we were promised. There’s no going back from the things Kate and Toby say and the insights they have as Kate heads to San Francisco for the weekend to mend what broke between them. You shouldn’t want to come back from it either – it’s clear that they are different people than when they first met and want things in life that just don’t add up. Oh, besides, Toby sucks. So there is.
Kate exits the booth after “A Thanksgiving to Remember” and decides that her current situation, with Toby traveling back and forth to San Francisco for work and being away four days a week, is simply “unsustainable.” All they do is fight, and it’s not healthy, it’s not funny, and besides, it really ruined the Pilgrim Rick hat. She thinks it’s time for her to spend a weekend in San Francisco, see what his life is like up there, and think about maybe they could all have a life there together. But let’s be honest with ourselves: Kate doesn’t want to move to San Francisco. She loves her life in Los Angeles. she loves her job Jack feels comfortable there in her home. They have a routine that includes a song to help Jack get to the park. Neighbor Gregory is… there I guess. Good god, they’re gonna do more with Timothy Omundson, right? Also, Kate is Rebecca’s number two now, and she doesn’t want to be that far from her mother. It’s a shame she doesn’t realize that until she gets to San Francisco or a lot of the mean things these people say could have been avoided!
Even if Kate thinks she’s considering life in San Francisco, she’s nowhere near where Toby is, and that’s becoming an immediate problem. Between lots of calls and work stuff, when does Toby have time to charge those AirPods? — Toby wants to show Kate all that San Fran has to offer … and also show her a house he’s willing to bid on. All of this is overwhelming, from the over planning to the assumption that they are definitely moving here. But Kate mostly goes along with it to show that she’s trying. Only when Kate learns at a cocktail party with Toby’s co-workers that her husband recently turned down a job offer in Los Angeles does she finally have enough.
The thing is, Kate doesn’t just have a problem with uprooting her life and moving to San Francisco — she has an increasingly growing problem with who her husband has become lately. He’s no longer the lovable jerk she fell in love with. He is much more serious and in his job and status. Most importantly, it seems, he wouldn’t be caught dead in a Hawaiian shirt. That might be an advantage for most, but not for Kate Pearson. She misses that old Toby (not to be confused with Old Toby in the preface, Jesus Christ, that show) so much that she apparently got him killed by Tyler Durden. Kate is a Fight Club fan and imagines hanging out with the version of her husband she married. I don’t think it’s about Fight Club, but we don’t have the time. It’s one of the most bizarre things This Is Us has done and I’d like to send it back, please. How are we really doing Fat Guy in a Little Coat right now? If it came down to showing us that the old version of Toby was annoying as hell and the new version is kind of an asshole, then I think mission accomplished.
The fight that follows after the cocktail party is pretty brutal. Chrissy Metz and Chris Sullivan lived in those characters, you know? Yes, I understand why Toby would be offended if Kate says she misses him, especially as he likes who he’s become – he’s getting everything he ever wanted. He tells her he was unhappy before and all the stupidity was self-defense. “You fell in love with a coping mechanism!” he yells at her, and honestly, that’s the moment they both should know there’s nothing here worth fighting for. The person she loves does not exist. Assume, of course, that this moment doesn’t nail the nail in the coffin enough for you. In this case, there’s also the part where Toby hits on Kate to get her to acknowledge that she’s now happier than ever, that she’s having the life she’s always wanted — god, this man has to deal with it lives with her brother, huh? — and all she needed to do was get rid of him. It’s true that Kate is happy and feels like she finally has a purpose, but the way he says it is just cruel. I think we know that Fight Club’s first rule is to drive off the person you claim to love by saying unnecessarily mean things. I mean maybe? (I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen Fight Club.)
After some time to breathe, Toby says he’s glad they both found what they wanted and “evolved.” He then issues an ultimatum: He sees no other option than for Kate and the children to move to San Francisco. The problem with that is that what he means is that there is no other option for him. He could have taken that job in LA or looked for others, but he doesn’t want to. Kate goes for a walk because she knows what she wants to do – what she needs to do – and just needs a little nudge.
Throughout the episode, we also revisited the same spots in the Pearson timeline as Kevin – the first day the neighborhood pool opens, the Thanksgiving night when Kevin, Randall, and Kate head to the empty pool before it closes . The first story is all about little Kate who doesn’t want to go in the pool. She is scared and thinks she can’t swim. She has a firm grip on Jack’s neck. He tells her that she can do it, that he believes in her, she just has to try. She has to believe in herself that she can do it. But no, why would she ever let her father go? “Today isn’t the day,” Jack says to Rebecca as she finds her out of the water and back into the lounge chairs.
In the Thanksgiving Pool story, Kate and Randall just talked Kevin off the edge and got him to agree to go home, but when Randall and Kate went into the pool, they wouldn’t let go of the brick supporting the door back. You are trapped inside. It gives Kate time to talk about how she feels trapped in Pittsburgh, how sad her life is, but how she has no idea what she wants to do or who she wants to be. Her brothers try to reassure her that she will find out, but she is lost. Randall and Kevin decide the only way to get out of the pool is to climb over the fence. Kate is scared but the boys go first, again reassuring her that she can do it. Kate decides to give it a try. Then she falls. She won’t try anymore. She can’t, and that’s it.
And then we have to talk about the eponymous “hill” situation in San Francisco. When Kate and Toby went to the cocktail party, they were waiting for their Lyft on a corner near Toby’s apartment. Kate knows the place they are going to is nearby, so she suggests walking, but Toby guns her down. She pushes a little more until he explains that it’s going to be uphill. Kate knows right away that he means that he thinks she couldn’t physically take the walk. This makes me want to slam my fist through a wall for two reasons. First, of course, just feeling angry is itself; It’s all the more obvious that Toby, who no longer believes in Kate like her family did in the other story arcs, is no longer right for her. These San Fran hills are no joke, but at least give her a chance! Let her decide what she can and can’t do. The second reason is that it continues to be annoying to watch this show that doesn’t allow Kate to be more than her weight. She is more than her body, and yet This Is Us always returns to it. let kate live!!
After Kate and Toby’s argument, we return to this hill and she is determined to go up it, even if it’s hard and she’s scared. As the arcs from the other two timelines showed us, Kate only had to believe in herself to be successful. Her family already believes in her. There must be so many other ways to show Kate that she believes in herself other than this one. It’s meant to be an empowering moment when she makes it to the top, but it only adds to my general confusion as to what this show is doing with its positive fat representation opportunities. Kate is more than her weight and body!! Anyway, up the hill she calls Phillip and asks him to consider her for a full-time teaching position that is available at the school. So it looks like Kate made her choice when it came to Toby’s ultimatum.
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