TV Talk: Partially Pittsburgh-set ‘This Is Us’ goes out on top
W hile some viewers will be sad to see NBC’s family drama “This Is Us” conclude its six-year run at 9 p.m. May 24, it’s at least comforting to know the partially Pittsburgh-set series ends on its own terms with its initial quality largely intact.
The show also ends on top. While overall prime-time ratings are down, “This Is Us” is still the No. 1 show in the key demographic of adults 18-49 for the 2021-22 TV season, a significant feat.
Surely, this season’s realistic and emotionally resonant storytelling helped sustain viewer interest. Even with sad topics — divorce, decline, death — “This Is Us” avoided driving viewers away, perhaps because it eschews simplistic black-and-white depictions in favor of the gray areas that define our shared humanity.
Leading into this week’s series finale, the May 17 penultimate episode wrapped up the story of Rebecca Pearson (Mandy Moore) who passed away surrounded by her “Big Three” children — Randall (Sterling K. Brown), Kate (Chrissy Metz) and Kevin (Justin Hartley) — before being reunited in a train-set dreamscape with her late husband, Jack (Milo Ventimiglia).
With that story resolved, viewers can expect the finale to serve as an epilogue about how the Pearsons endure and move forward after Rebecca’s death.
While “This Is Us” never managed to get to Pittsburgh to film — even though it went to Philadelphia in 2019 to shoot scenes, harrumph! — the show generally got its Pittsburgh references right, aside from some inaccuracies around Pennsylvania liquor laws, including Rebecca buying wine in a grocery store in 1979.
“We do a lot of research,” series co-creator Dan Fogelman said. “Once in a while, we’ll get hit on the internet. … And it’s like, (expletive), we missed that one, but it happens very rarely. And we try and do our best to make Los Angeles (where the show films) into Pittsburgh as best we can.”
In addition to running references to the now-shuttered Downtown bar Froggy’s, the series routinely referenced Pittsburgh sports teams (the Steelers’ Terrible Towel has prominent placement on the lap of a naked Milo Ventimiglia in multiple episodes) as well as Jonny Gammage, “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” and Eat’n Park.
In Rebecca’s dreamscape in the penultimate episode, when she stopped at the train’s bar to talk to the pilot episode’s Dr. K. (Gerald McRaney), Pittsburgh references filled the background, including a Steelers game on TV, Trolley from “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” a bottle of Heinz ketchup and Dr. K cleaning glasses with a Terrible Towel.
Credit for those local references goes to series co-creator Dan Fogelman, who lived in Bethel Park as a child — “There’s a nostalgic version of Pittsburgh in my head,” he said — and to writer/executive producer Kay Oyegun, a 2010 University of Pittsburgh grad.
Fogelman brought up the idea of possibly filming at a Steelers game several years ago, but it never came to fruition.
“Through the show and because of all the times we referenced the Steelers and the Terrible Towel, I’ve gotten to know the Rooney family and the upper-level folks at the Steelers a little bit, and we always talked about getting out there,” Fogelman said during an NBC “This Is Us” press conference earlier this year. “The Steelers have laid underneath the fabric of the show in a really cool way. … Originally, I think it was in season three, I wanted to get Chrissy (Metz who plays Kate) and the ladies out to a Steelers game for her bachelorette party and maybe do a past story where Jack and Rebecca and the kids go to a Steelers game. And we just logistically couldn’t pull it off, (with the) traveling and getting there and the stadiums and the expense of shooting something like that.”
In addition to the references, “This Is Us” offered a recurring role to Western Pennsylvania native Blake Stadnik, who grew up in Beaver County, attended Riverside High and graduated from Lincoln Park Performing Arts Charter School in Midland in 2009. He plays Kate’s and Toby’s (Chris “Sully” Sullivan) adult blind son, Jack, a rock star.
Stadnik began appearing on “This Is Us” in 2019 when his character was shown in far-future flash-forward scenes. Even at Rebecca’s death, the show did not catch up to that future, so it seems likely Stadnik will appear in the finale.
In a flash-forward earlier this season, Stadnik shared his first scene with Metz and Sullivan, though he had met them both previously.
“My first time I met Sully, I was getting my first costume fitting, and he comes in and he just goes, ‘Hi, I’m your dad,’ and then he comes over and gives me a big hug,” Stadnik recalled in a recent phone interview. “And Chrissy, I met in the makeup trailer on my first episode, so I’ve seen them quite a few times here and there at base camp, but we’d never been in a scene together so that was really, really, really special for me.”
Stadnik studied musical theater at Penn State and graduated in 2013 before moving to New York, where he currently resides when he’s not performing in regional theater productions nationwide or filming “This Is Us” in Los Angeles.
“This Is Us” producers had no idea Stadnik was from Western Pennsylvania when they cast him in the series. Like his “This Is Us” character, Stadnik is legally blind. Around age 7, he was diagnosed with Stargardt disease, an inherited disorder of the retina.
Stadnik was an episode behind in watching “This Is Us” when we chatted, so he hadn’t yet watched the “Katoby” episode where Kate and Toby’s marriage falls apart. But he relates to the experience of his “This Is Us” character.
“My mom and dad got divorced when I was 3 years old, and they were similar to Kate and Toby. They were very focused on how it was going to affect me the entire time,” said Stadnik, who will perform onstage in “The Secret Garden” in Sacramento, Calif., this summer and in “42nd Street” in Connecticut this fall. “I don’t have any memory of their divorce. I feel like if there’s any trauma or anything like that, I would have that as a deep-seated memory. But they were really wonderful about it, so much so that my mom even bought land and built her house a five-minute walk from my dad’s house so I could always go back and forth. And just like how Kate and Toby after they’re now remarried or in another new relationship, they’re both coming to Jack’s shows. My parents did the same things. I started tap dancing when I was 6 years old, and they always came to my shows together. They may not have sat together, but they came at the same time. It’s remarkable sometimes how much art reflects life.”
That’s certainly one of the hallmarks of “This Is Us,” a series that resonates with viewers — not because of heightened drama like in “Succession” but because “This Is Us” depicts small, but recognizable drama that rings true to real life.
“The prism through which we view people and humanity in the show … is that people are flawed and messed up and make terrible mistakes, but there’s a decency and a beauty to the human existence and the human experience,” Fogelman said. “And if divorce is something that happens to 50% of marriages, I think you can assume that, while divorce will be sad and ugly, we’ll find some way to also make it human and, in its own way, beautiful.”
As for the timing of “This Is Us” ending, Fogelman reiterated that once the show became a hit, it was always his intention to tell a six-season story.
“To suddenly pivot and add more because we don’t want it to end, it wouldn’t be responsible to the show and what we have planned,” he said. “It would start becoming something else.”
Star Susan Kelechi Watson, who plays Beth, agreed.
“We get to actually maintain the integrity of what we came to tell about the story about these Pearsons,” she said. “We get to stick to that road map and exit while it’s still good. We get to walk away and be really proud of something that feels like it’s still resonating with people.”
Or as William (Ron Cephas Jones) told Rebecca in her penultimate episode dreamscape, “If something makes you sad when it ends, it must have been pretty wonderful when it was happening.”
Still, cast members couldn’t help but get a little wistful even as they praised star Mandy Moore for her performance in the “family meeting” scene this season where Rebecca appointed Kate the decision-maker when Rebecca nears her death.
“I’m constantly in awe of the people that I get a chance to play in this sandbox with,” said Sterling K. Brown, who plays Randall. “Mandy Moore, she’s played herself from about 16 to 80-something and without batting an eyelash, being the youngest member of our cast, but seamlessly going through time over the past six years. That scene really, really touched me.”
Brown said it made him sad to think about not seeing his castmates every day, but he vowed to stay in contact.
“I’ll miss the story that we’ve had a chance to tell with one another,” he said. “And I can’t wait for 20 years to (pass to) do an E! ‘True Hollywood Story.’ ”
“It’s not going to be super-juicy,” Kelechi Watson said, “but it will be good.”
“Like the ‘Friends’ reunion,” Brown added.
You can reach TV writer Rob Owen at rowen@triblive.com or 412-380-8559. Follow @RobOwenTV on Threads, X, Bluesky and Facebook. Ask TV questions by email or phone. Please include your first name and location.
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