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S04.E07: The Dinner and the Date


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Loved the episode. The scene with the teacher and the wife in their apartment is an example of where This Is Us tries to give us a peak into even the smallest characters’ perspectives.

Loved the poem. And I am on Team Beth.

I live in West Coast Canada, but I am pretty sure I have seen a Rita’s in Chicago and NYC too, although I have never tried it. Not just a Philly thing. 
 

Is that a real cheesesteak place? I went to Gino and the other one across the street.

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I enjoyed the tour through Philadelphia. I lived there for a while in the ‘90s, and yes, Max’s cheesesteaks are the best. And Boathouse Row (the houses on the river with the lights) still takes my breath away. 

Team Beth all the way! Those were two awkward dinners.

But Annie was the MVP of the episode .

ETA: Travel guides rave about Gino’s cheesesteaks. But no one who lives in Philly likes them or gets their steaks from there.  

Edited by topanga
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4 minutes ago, memememe76 said:

I live in West Coast Canada, but I am pretty sure I have seen a Rita’s in Chicago and NYC too, although I have never tried it. Not just a Philly thing. 

Rita's was founded in Bensalem (in Bucks County, about half an hour from Philly; I lived near Bensalem when I worked in Philly a million years ago.) Wikipedia says they are in 30 states and DC now. (I can think of two or three within a reasonable drive from me here in NJ.)

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9 minutes ago, LaJefaza said:

I had no idea I had anything close to affection for Deja until Malik's mom called her 'that fast lil girl'.

That's funny because it was the same for me. I have never really warmed up to Deja. But when Malik's mom called her that I wanted to defend Deja.

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I didn't mind the episode, in general. It had some solid moments and I appreciate that they allowed both the Jack and Randall stuff to get extremely awkward....because it felt like real life....well, almost. If you ignore parts of the dialogue that was being spoken.

Nobody besides the kids and maybe Malik's father came out looking good during that dinner. Beth, Malik's mother, and Randall were on different levels of cringe. Malik's mother was just plain awful for going into the Pearson home and deciding to judge their daughter, despite the fact that she already has a granddaughter. So I did not mind Beth playing that card at all. What Beth was doing was right; she needed to protect her daughter from a stranger who was judging her in her home. Beth had every right to stand up for Deja. 

But I can't say that Beth took the high road; she didn't need to, of course, but her attitude was also uncomfortable to watch. Similarly to Randall vs Malik's father. Yes, Malik's father came in and was a bit condescending with the quip about Randall's lavish lifestyle. But Randall also, even subconsciously, flaunted his wealth and power when he was talking about the garage.

I think my biggest issue is that we always have episodes about Randall and his family, and I also am not invested in the teen romance, even if I like Malik and I like Deja. And I thought the Malik/Deja day date was pretty sweet. I liked him making her a regular at that restaurant. And the Randall family stuff is miles better than last season's stuff. But I'm not really invested as I could be. 

The only aspect of the Jack plot that I liked was that we got to see a rare, nasty side to Jack. Jealousy does not suit him, but it does kind of show where the kids can get their nasty side from. I was feeling bad for Randall's teacher and his wife. Jack only invited him so he could flaunt himself and try to "win" Randall back to his side, which I'm glad Rebecca pointed out. Jack made the dinner awkward and it was probably a bad idea for Randall's teacher to ever accept that sort of invitation. 

Kevin's always my favourite, so at least we got a small dose of Kid Kevin. The actor has grown up so much, even over the last year. 

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56 minutes ago, Jaclyn88 said:

They're beating a dead horse with Jack, but it seems like every episode he’s humorless and jealous of someone else Or down on himself about something  . He’s just such a Debbie downer at all times . 
 

That could be because he's dead.

36 minutes ago, TheLotusFlower said:

First by talking about Deja as if she was some stray that Beth and Randall took in off the street

Well, they kinda did.

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5 minutes ago, chocolatine said:

Wouldn't Deja's school have called Beth and Randall in the morning, when she didn't show up to class? They would have inundated her with calls and/or located her by tracking her phone, she wouldn't just have been able to spend the day exploring Philly with Malik

I don't know how Deja's high school works, but in my Canadian high school, the phone calls to parents weren't made until the end of the day, when they could deduce which periods that the student didn't attend.

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38 minutes ago, Blakeston said:

When Deja confronted Malik about her misgivings when he reached for her hand, it took me out of the episode completely. What kind of 14-year-old talks like that to a boy who gives her "butterflies?"

She's becoming a Pearson.

3 minutes ago, Lady Calypso said:

I don't know how Deja's high school works, but in my Canadian high school, the phone calls to parents weren't made until the end of the day, when they could deduce which periods that the student didn't attend.

In my New Jersey high school, they called early to ask if the parents if the student was supposed to be there or if the parents had forgotten to call them in sick. Then they made the "excused absence" list for teachers to check against for the rest of the day. 

That was a couple decades ago though.

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2 minutes ago, KaveDweller said:

She's becoming a Pearson.

In my New Jersey high school, they called early to ask if the parents if the student was supposed to be there or if the parents had forgotten to call them in sick. Then they made the "excused absence" list for teachers to check against for the rest of the day. 

That was a couple decades ago though.

My high school took official attendance through third period; after that, they would call any parents/guardians necessary. There was a couple instances where my mom forgot to call me in sick. lol So, I definitely would not have gotten away with skipping school like that.

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I love THIS IS US, so any episode I appreciate but... this episode bored me. But a boring THIS IS US episode for me is better than no episode so I am happy. 

I suppose I am not liking these sub plots with Randall and the teacher and Deja with her new boyfriend. But, they have to develop new story lines to keep the show going so this is what they came up with. 

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2 hours ago, Blakeston said:

When Deja confronted Malik about her misgivings when he reached for her hand, it took me out of the episode completely. What kind of 14-year-old talks like that to a boy who gives her "butterflies?"

I get that Deja had to grow up fast, and I can see her having those feelings. But revealing her vulnerabilities in such a perfectly articulated way, to the boy she likes, at the moment she becomes overwhelmed?

The writers are lucky that Lyric Ross is such a terrific actress, because some of the dialogue they give her can't be easy to pull off.

THIS! Are there women on the writing staff? They're going to have to steal someone from Grown-ish if they're going to continue with this storyline. 

Rita's! I don't know that I've ever seen Rita's in NYC but they're all over New Jersey.

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The best lines came from Annie and kid Kevin, keeping up that snark in even the most awkward of dinners! "We never say grace, and we haven't gone to church since the election." "Holy crap, he’s grown up Kevin." No wonder Annie and Kevin are so close. 

It's little things like that this show does so well. Creating subtle familial ties as well as major connections.

Edited by Drumpf1737
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There’s nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than secondhand awkward small talk and passive aggression.  Naturally I watched this entire episode and cringed because I’m a masochist. 

Mr. Lawrence was creeping me out until the talk at the end.  What he was doing with Randall is similar to what we call “grooming” in the classroom today.  I’m glad his intentions were good in the end.

Edited by Spencer Hastings
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4 hours ago, Star Gazer said:

Not to mention I’m sadly not invested in daja and her teenage romance. I have my guilty pleasures of teen dramas, this is us isn’t that. That’s just me. Maybe others differ but I’m here for adult drama not watching teens profess their love.

I generally feel that way about teenage love stories too. I suppose one can go to the CW to see those. But one thing Deja said to her parents that had the ring of plausibility about it was that Malik makes her feel like herself. It spoke to the alienation she still feels having been adopted at a late age into an upper class family.

35 minutes ago, bros402 said:

I am a male teacher, certified to teach elementary. All of the alarm bells were going off in my head. You do *not* get that close to a student. Not even if the parent invites you to their house for dinner. Maybe if after the school year is done, you keep up with the student by contacting the parent - but male teachers are discriminated against. Male teachers cannot do that. Nobody wants a lawsuit or a false accusation.

Hear, hear! I feel that boundaries have to be maintained between students and teachers. There is ever the possibility of improper conduct being perceived, whether it occurs or not. And there is the more mundane issue of favoritism among a teacher's students. I think he should have declined Jack's dinner invitation and suggested a different avenue for discussion.

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1 hour ago, watcher1006 said:

I generally feel that way about teenage love stories too. I suppose one can go to the CW to see those. But one thing Deja said to her parents that had the ring of plausibility about it was that Malik makes her feel like herself. It spoke to the alienation she still feels having been adopted at a late age into an upper class family.

Hear, hear! I feel that boundaries have to be maintained between students and teachers. There is ever the possibility of improper conduct being perceived, whether it occurs or not. And there is the more mundane issue of favoritism among a teacher's students. I think he should have declined Jack's dinner invitation and suggested a different avenue for discussion.

Yes, it can be touchy with teachers. I was taken back when my kids guidance counselor "friended" them and a few of their friends, last year of school. Sure, he wanted to keep in touch, but he was young, good looking and single, they kept him from seeing much but weren't worried about stalking. In grade school, back in my day, kids who had teachers over their house were called "teacher pets" and favoritism was always looked for. Many times it wasn't the kids wanting it, the parents thought it was a good idea.

We were told by 10 if kids weren't at school, sometimes earlier. I find it odd if any school didn't.

I feel they were pushing way too much how clueless Jack was and how Randall needed a mentor. The jealousy might have been real but silly. The rich family and the poor, "I always wanted to see the inside of these homes" vs "I don't want my daughter brought down to your level in your neighborhood" nuance.

It's obvious if Deja had Annie's upbringing or any teen without the drama and horrors she had would look at Malik differently, nice guy but probably not wanting to be serious with him. But Malik "sees her" and she's not a broken young woman, she's Deja and special and he makes her feel seen and heard. He's not rich or with a background that was full of privilege.  He made a mistake but a nice young man.  That mistake though is a child and one with a history we haven't explored yet.  (and we know TIU will) Hopefully she'll grow from it but they might just let her have this for life, but I hope she goes to college and spreads her wings. I hope they don't have him choose to steal or break the law in some way to fit another stereotype later. That would upset me.

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I respect the considerable talent of the young actors playing Deja and Malik, but I just don't care about their teen angst.  I don't want them to be a main storyline for the rest of the season.  But that dinner scene.  Wow.  According to an article linked on the Primetimer homepage the scene was toned down in the final cut.  I can't imagine how much more tense and what other angry words were exchanged.  

The other dinner party was awkward too.  Thank goodness for Kevin's snark to diffuse the tension.  Does anyone really invite a kid's teacher to their house for dinner?  Shouldn't the teacher realize he was getting a bit too invested in one of his students?  It just seems weird to me and a bad idea to become friends with a student. 

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8 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:

The only aspect of the Jack plot that I liked was that we got to see a rare, nasty side to Jack. Jealousy does not suit him, but it does kind of show where the kids can get their nasty side from. I was feeling bad for Randall's teacher and his wife. Jack only invited him so he could flaunt himself and try to "win" Randall back to his side, which I'm glad Rebecca pointed out. Jack made the dinner awkward and it was probably a bad idea for Randall's teacher to ever accept that sort of invitation. 

I found Jack’s reaction VERY realistic and not over the top. Jack is a well meaning but insecure person (as we’ve seen he uses drinking to deal with his insecurities)- our society only usually talks about jealousy in a sexual context but parents get jealous too, it’s not the best part of humanity but it happens, especially if their child is connecting with someone that can provide the child something the parent can not. Parents can be very emotionally possessive. 
 

Had Randall been a girl child and strongly connected with a black female teacher at school I could see Rebecca getting jealous too, but she’s more emotionally aware than Jack so she wouldn’t have behaved as badly. 
 

Im glad Mr Lawrence and his wife went- how many black people has Randall had a chance to have dinner with? Much less someone he admires and would like to emulate. I think it meant a lot to Randall to have that dinner. 
 

I too love that poem by Langston Hughes. 

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8 hours ago, TheLotusFlower said:

Seriously?  I absolutely loved Beth in this episode.  Malik's mother completely disrespected Beth from the moment she got there.  First by talking about Deja as if she was some stray that Beth and Randall took in off the street, trying to blame the whole skipping school thing on Deja, and then with her ignorant passive aggressive comment during grace.  I didn't view Beth as hostile at all.  Was she supposed to slap on a fake smile and pretend everything was fine while being disrespected in her own home?  Malik's mother got exactly what she deserved.

Yup, seriously.  All these points are taken, and Beth didn't have to fake and pretend all was well, but she was most assuredly hostile to guests she invited.  When she looked over at the baby and then told the girls to go upstairs and dinner was over, rude, poor example, and out of control.  No better than Malik's mom.  If I were Malik I'd never want to go back there, but teen love will prevail I'm sure. 

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How is it that Deja gets the After School Special episode? I don't even want to see 10 minutes of her let alone 45 minutes. The only good thing was Beth and maybe a little part of young Randall. Hopefully, Deja will be going to college next year and we can see less of her, if possible.

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8 hours ago, chocolatine said:

Wouldn't Deja's school have called Beth and Randall in the morning, when she didn't show up to class? They would have inundated her with calls and/or located her by tracking her phone, she wouldn't just have been able to spend the day exploring Philly with Malik.

Oh, and I thought the teacher's system of classifying books by publication year was pretentious. Good for him if he can memorize the publication year for all of his books, but what's the point?

That's a really bad system. 

I think Malik looks 12. 

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As if watching one awkward dinner weren't enough, we had to watch TWO awkward dinners.

Jack's blatant jealousy of Randall's teacher was making me cringe so hard, as was Kelly's passive aggressive digs about the Pearsons not going to church. Ugh.

For me, there was a big difference between Beth judging Malik and Kelly judging Deja. Malik chose to have sex and that's how he ended up a teen parent. Deja, on the other hand, didn't choose to have a mother who is an addict. She didn't choose to be in an unstable home environment. She didn't choose to be in a situation where she went into foster care. Those things happened to her. Judging her for any of that is like judging someone for getting the chicken pox. That's something that happened to her through no choice of her own.

For the record, I don't judge Malik for having sex. Teenagers have sex. That's an indisputable fact. Teenagers have been having sex as long as there have been teenagers. I don't think he's a bad person because he had sex. My point is only that he had a hand in becoming a teen parent whereas Deja had no control in the situation with her mom and her home situation which is what Kelly was being judgey about.

As for Kelly accusing Deja of being fast for cutting school, WTF? Lots of people who cut school aren't having sex. I used to cut class because I was bored and wanted to go to the beach. I wasn't running around having sex though.

What annoyed me about the whole cutting school plotline was Malik's insistence that he had to show Deja Philly RIGHT NOW. Like you can't take do that after school or on the weekend?

8 hours ago, chocolatine said:

Wouldn't Deja's school have called Beth and Randall in the morning, when she didn't show up to class? They would have inundated her with calls and/or located her by tracking her phone, she wouldn't just have been able to spend the day exploring Philly with Malik.

8 hours ago, Lady Calypso said:

I don't know how Deja's high school works, but in my Canadian high school, the phone calls to parents weren't made until the end of the day, when they could deduce which periods that the student didn't attend.

At my high school, the teachers took attendance every period using a scantron sheet which were clipped to the classroom door. Office aides came by ten minutes after class started to retrieve the attendance sheets which were taken back to the main office and scanned. At the end of the school day, there was an automated system that would call the house and report how many periods of class you had missed that day.

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10 hours ago, TheLotusFlower said:

Seriously?  I absolutely loved Beth in this episode.  Malik's mother completely disrespected Beth from the moment she got there.  First by talking about Deja as if she was some stray that Beth and Randall took in off the street, trying to blame the whole skipping school thing on Deja, and then with her ignorant passive aggressive comment during grace.  I didn't view Beth as hostile at all.  Was she supposed to slap on a fake smile and pretend everything was fine while being disrespected in her own home?  Malik's mother got exactly what she deserved.

I really dislike Beth but yes you hit it head on. As much as the Jack episodes annoy me, i loved this one. Randall’s poem was just great. I love those kids all of them past and present. And honestly i got a bit hoppy at deja and Malik, even though she was making a Randall like speech. I may have missed it, did they kiss? It really did bring me back to my first serious boyfriend and like i said i got goopy 🙂

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6 hours ago, Spencer Hastings said:

Mr. Lawrence was creeping me out until the talk at the end.  What he was doing with Randall is similar to what we call “grooming” in the classroom today.  I’m glad his intentions were good in the end.

Thank you for spelling out what was (at least partly) bothering me at the back of my mind. I get why he would connect with the one black student in his class, but he really shouldn't be appearing to have a favorite like that. I would think most school administrations would probably frown on a teacher going to dinner at a student's house like that, too.

5 hours ago, bros402 said:

I am a male teacher, certified to teach elementary. All of the alarm bells were going off in my head. You do *not* get that close to a student. Not even if the parent invites you to their house for dinner. Maybe if after the school year is done, you keep up with the student by contacting the parent - but male teachers are discriminated against. Male teachers cannot do that. Nobody wants a lawsuit or a false accusation.

I'd think being the only minority teacher in the school, getting close to the only minority student, adds an extra layer to that, too. Shows poor judgment at the very least.

I had a teacher in high school who was a total hippie (complete with long hair and tie-dyed t-shirts) who was everyone's favorite. But he absolutely kept a professional distance. He told his us once that he would have us call him by his first name but he wasn't allowed to do that. Once you graduated, he fully expected kids to call him by his first name if they saw him around town (and he played in band so it wasn't unlikely). And it was around the same time as the show - I would have been a senior when the Big Three were in 7th grade.

5 hours ago, bros402 said:

I'm in central Jersey. I've seen Rita's, but Ralph's is much better.

Me, too, and I agree. 😉

1 minute ago, nlkm9 said:

I may have missed it, did they kiss?

Yeah, it was at the end when they were looking at the lights on the houses. (How long were they out, anyway? From the morning before school started until after dark..?)

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What 14 and 16 year old acts like De ja and Malik? I am a teacher and I can promise you none of them act that mature.. and are we supposed to blame Randall and Beth for putting a stop to 14 year old De ja dating a 16 year old with a baby? No parent would be like.. sure .. here's my blessing. On the other hand, I get why Beth got annoyed with the other mother... but I can't stand her overall attitude about everything. She just comes off stuck up and cold to me and I haven't really liked her since the beginning. 

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