Who knows what This Is Us plans to do with Jack for the rest of its final episodes since much of the show seems focused on the present and future shenanigans, but if this is the last stand-alone Jack episode (there’s gotta be more major Jack-and-Rebecca moments at the very least), whew, what a way to go out. “Don’t Let Me Keep You,†which takes place after Jack’s mother, Marilyn, dies from an aneurysm, puts such a perfect button on who Jack Pearson is. It offers some explanations as to why he has made certain choices and reminds us that so much of Jack’s inner turmoil comes from how he’s constantly fighting to keep his past from bleeding into his present.
On top of all this, for those who have been waiting for This Is Us to give Milo Ventimiglia more to do — let’s be honest, he’s been much more of a supporting player since all the Vietnam and Nicky stuff went down in season three — the episode grants that wish and then some. Has he ever been better? The emotional gut punch comes not during some big, showy set piece like a Crock-Pot-induced fire or the horrors of war, but rather from Ventimiglia’s quiet performance. So much is said with just his small facial reactions — you can see it quietly wash over him that not only did he lose his mother, but he lost out on the chance ever to know who she really was. It’s a realization that hits him over and over. It’s devastating. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, but honestly, with all of my heart, fuck this show.
At the top of the episode, as Jack packs for his road trip to Ohio for Marilyn’s funeral in the middle of a snowstorm, we see him try to be very Jack about the whole thing. He’s the Strong Boy, after all. He tells Rebecca that she and the kids should absolutely not come with him (as if that’s going to stick) because three 6-year-olds in a car for four hours in a snowstorm is just not worth it, especially since his mother met the kids only once; to them, she was mostly just a voice on the phone. Plus, he’s sure he’s going to have so much to take care of because that’s what he always did, take care of things for his mother. But still, you can begin to see that he’s becoming unraveled by it all: “It doesn’t feel real,†he says to Rebecca more than once.
But what Jack finds in Ohio isn’t at all what he was expecting. He arrives at Cousin Debbie’s home, where he dropped off his mom 13 years ago after he finally got her out of his abusive father’s house (if you’re tracking the timeline, Jack brought Marilyn to a friend’s house first, then went on that road trip with Rebecca, and then Marilyn moved in with Debbie). He made promises to visit, but he never did. Marilyn came to Pittsburgh just one time after the triplets were born; she was too scared Stanley would find out she was there. The only thing tying mother and son together once she moved to Ohio was a perfunctory 6 p.m. phone call on Sundays. We see a few of those calls, and they are always brief and superficial, ending with Marilyn saying, “Don’t let me keep you†— the woman was forever afraid of being a burden to her son.
It’s not surprising, then, to anyone but Jack, that he didn’t know anything about his mother or her life. In his mind, she was sad and scared and helpless, but he learns over just a few days that she enthusiastically took to the clean slate he gave her. She loved poetry and chocolates and had a cat named Cat Benatar (solid) and a warm and loving bearded boyfriend named Mike, who is endearingly obsessed with the WWF. While Mike shares pictures of happy memories with Marilyn and tells Jack he was her hero for getting her away from Stanley, Cousin Debbie is perpetually annoyed. She’s annoyed that Jack showed up looking to take care of everything, because Marilyn had already taken care of it all — his mother wasn’t as helpless as Jack thought. And Debbie’s annoyed that the highlight of Marilyn’s week was always that Sunday call with Jack when it was clear that he never really reciprocated. Camryn Manheim, by the way, is great in this small role. I would ask if we think we’re going to see more of Debbie, even if her poetry is questionable, but honestly, do we have the time?! The Final Chapter is crowded enough!!
Debbie’s right to be annoyed, but it’s not as if Jack isn’t embarrassed and completely gutted by the realization that he missed out on this bright life Marilyn built for herself. In fact, after a few drinks, Jack decides to call Stanley to yell at him for the damage he inflicted on them. “Even after she left you, you were always there hanging over us, keeping us apart,†he spits at his father. Stanley took so much from them. Still, some of the blame falls squarely on Jack, who never really made an effort. He knows this.
And you know he knows this because Jack, the man who fucking lives to give big speeches in highly emotional situations, can’t think of anything to say when for his mother’s eulogy. Like, America runs on Dunkin’, and Jack Pearson runs on Heartfelt Speeches, you know what I mean? It’s not until — surprise, surprise — Rebecca and the triplets walk through the door of the chapel that Jack knows what to say, which is simply the truth: He talks about how hard it was to live in their house and how, even though they got out, a little piece of them would always be in that place. In order to try to forget that little piece of themselves and what happened in that house, there was no way they could move forward together. They tried their best to build new homes and new lives; Jack did that with Rebecca and their kids, and Marilyn did that with all the people gathered there. He’s grateful, he tells them, for giving his mother what he couldn’t.
Isn’t that such a perfect summation of Jack, though? He so badly wanted to keep any of the darkness inside himself — from his dad, from the war — that the only thing he thought he could do was completely cut off that part of his life. He did it with Stanley, he did it with Nicky, and, in all the most meaningful ways, he felt he had to do it with his mother. Whether or not it was necessary, it was the price Jack felt he had to pay to keep his family safe. I mean, as if this guy’s life already didn’t make you want to stand on a widow’s walk in the middle of a raging storm and scream at the ocean. The tragedy of it all!
At least by telling the truth, Jack gets to end his time in Ohio on a much happier note. Mike teaches the Big Three about wrestling (bless him), Debbie has a better understanding of Jack, and they get to take the kids ice-skating on the pond where Marilyn always wanted to take them one day. They even joke about how Marilyn loved to read sexy novels, which is probably nice and cute for her son.
Even with all of this, the highlight of the episode comes in its final sequence. Back home, Jack wants to make hot dogs and tomato soup. Throughout, we’ve been watching a flashback from when Jack was little, in which he crashes his sled but his mom takes care of everything — his dad will never find out — and makes him this exact meal that they eat together, laughing. It’s a good memory, and now he gets to share something his mother did for him with his own kids. They’re eating and laughing at the kitchen table when Jack suddenly gets up and walks out. Rebecca finds him in the living room, and he turns to her, almost unable to get out the words “I don’t have a mom anymore.†Whatever their relationship was, Marilyn was still his mom, and now she’s gone, and the absurdity and the pain and the shock that come with trying to process all of that is wrapped up in this one sentence and Ventimiglia’s delivery of it. Rebecca holds him for a few moments as he cries, then he wipes his eyes and heads back into the kitchen.
They say grief looks different on everybody, but for me, this is far and away the show’s most honest and real depiction to date of grief after losing a parent — and that’s really saying something for a show that is almost exclusively about dead and dying parents. It’s the suddenness of it, the way you can be fine one moment, eating hot dogs and tomato soup with your kids, and then the next be completely walloped by grief. It clobbers you, that realization that the person who raised you, who loved you for your whole life, is just gone now. It seems impossible. It seems ridiculous. And all of that emotion is right there on Jack’s face. This Is Us loves to lean into the melodrama when it comes to grief (we know this, we love this), and as moving as it is to watch something like, say, screaming in the middle of a lake, it’s this quiet moment and this seemingly simple sentence loaded with complex emotions that really sticks.