This Is Us “Pilot
The Pilots and Petards Podcast! The podcast with nothing much ado about aircrafts, and potentially everything ado with first episodes of a filmic series. Join us today as we cast judgement on the immensely popular family drama this is us will be hoisted, or not hoisted: as always that is the question!
- Petard = bomb
- Hoist a pilot = bad episode
- Not hoist a pilot = good episode
Show Notes
Episode Intro and Announcements: Follow our blog and contribute to the pre-recording discussions. Subscribe to us on your local podcast app. If you want to help leave us a review on itunes/apple podcast or tell your friends about us.
Background: All three of your hoisters have watched at least the first season.
Summary: The intergenerational story of the Pearson family unfolds as Rebecca and Jack are expecting triplets. This storytelling jumps from the date of their birth and 36 years later as we see a successful business executive find his biological father who left him at a fire station all that time ago, and a brother and sister living in Hollywood dealing with fundamental unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life. Grabs you kleenex this story gets real and tugs those heart strings!
High Points: 3 Dimensional Character Development; brisk efficient storytelling with a ton of showing and not telling; and past/present story telling.
Alyssa Low Points: Using Wikipedia to misleading the viewers; Kevin; and the dialogue getting dangerously close to sappy and corny.
Crabman Award: by split decision the Fireman
MVPs: Dr. K and the death scene.
Dangling Threads of Interest: white people adopting black kids and the eating disorder anonymous scene.
Watch or Rewatch: two yeses and a no.
To Hoist or Not to Hoist?: super solid not hoist
Quest for the Best/Worst: Click here to see the full list and the new #2!
Petardar:
- Major Dad
- Black Panther
- Parenthood
- A Walk to Remember
Next Week: Rick and Morty
Plugs:Plugs: Pilots and Petards official closing music is an instrumental Entheos remix of Alive. Intro, outro, and ad background music mixed by Jake Drew. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, or join our facebook group.
Shop Talk:
Pilots and Petards Podcast 
The show starts by quoting Wikipedia as fact. Ugh, I’m trying to get past that.
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I finished the show and not sure. This is not my typical form of entertainment. It is trying to connect to people on an emotional level. I have a hard time feeling empathy for tv characters especially if I am just meeting them. This show sets up multiple story lines, in different time periods but I don’t feel invested in any one story. It almost feels like they are trying to draw as many people in as possible, an overweight woman who wants to loose it, a dude who is having a midlife crisis about his job, a husband and wife starting a family, and a man searching for his past. It just didn’t resonate with me. I perfer a mad scientist space traveler and his grandson.
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I didn’t rewatch it yet. Is too inclusive a low point?
Drew called it emotionally manipulative before.
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I agree with Drew.
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My wife says the show isn’t meant for me. That I need to be capable of feeling emotion for it to resonate, ouch.
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Mrs Christ and I watched the pilot of This is Us twice, Mrs Christ is a devoted fan I would have continued watching the series but I would always fall asleep during the show.
I did not hoist the show
MVP Randall, he added some great humor to a show I found a little boring.
Randall knocks on the door, William answers, Randall tells William what an ass hole and son if bitch he was and how he left him at the fire station, but look how he turned out and turned around to leave William says want to come in. Randall says OK. That’s funny
Crabman goes to Jacks hair and beard and smoking in the hospital
I do not think someone who never met their father would care to find him
I think the skinny girl is going to get fat
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Just had the chance to listen to this one last night. You three are hilarious. I thoroughly enjoyed your review of the show more than the show itself, but after really listening through your critical eyes and brains, I am going to attempt to add more analysis into my own pilot watching from now on!
It interests me how the pilots that I have watched are hit and miss to reflecting the entire season of each show. I adored the first 5-6 episodes of season one due to many of the same emotional reasons Mo mentioned in this podcast, but the show totally slowed for me after that due to a lot of the reasons that Jimbo mentioned with the alternating storytelling.
I loved how Drew and Jimbo hit on the rules of adoption and how we all love to FEEL that baby Randal could have just gone home with the other babies, but the pilot disregards this notion of law and plays to the emotional brain. I think I often get caught up in the emotion pulls of series and books that I rarely attempt to analyze things like this at all. You three have given me a challenge!
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