Feb 16, 2018 4 min read

Not to tread upon sacred television ground, but I’m bailing on “This is Us.” I am aware that this may alienate me from some, but it’s long past the time to announce that the show has jumped the shark.

That idiom reaches back to the 1970s, when the writers of “Happy Days” hit such a severe storyline drought that they conjured an episode in which Fonzi (leather-clad dude) was in the ocean, on water skis, and jumped over a shark. The show drowned in the contrived stupidity of that moment and never did recover. “Jumping the shark” has become shorthand for the moment at which a television series kills itself off with nonsense.

In the case of “This is Us,” I’m not sure who plays the role of the shark, but I can name the Fonzis.

Let’s start with Mandy Moore, the beautiful actress who plays the role of Rebecca, the now-widowed mother of three adult children. Every episode includes at least three heartfelt Rebecca moments, scenes in which she tilts her head back and speaks down her nose at her children, always in breathy and halting phrases punctuated by meaningful shakes of her head.

I have delivered many monologues to my children, and a few of them have been heartfelt, but I can’t think of a single topic that caused me to break out into dramatic whispers. It comes off as speechy. You just want one of Rebecca’s children (maybe that snotty actor son, Kevin) to say, “Enough, Mom! You love us. We get it.”

But that won’t happen because most of the adults on the show behave that way. They don’t deliver dialogue – they perform Hamlet soliloquies.

The exception is Milo Ventimiglio, who gives a fairly normal reading to the dad, Jack. As we all know, he got killed off a couple of weeks ago, in a fire that started when he left a kitchen towel very close to a faulty Crock-pot. A bad switch sent off sparks, curtains got involved, and you can picture the rest.

Ventimiglio came to the defense of slow cookers everywhere, reminding people that Crock-Pots are safe, and the one in the show was defective, and besides, everybody, it’s fiction.

Maybe viewers in Western Pennsylvania are especially enamored with the show because it’s set here. Local fact checkers are all over social media, pointing out the lapses in historical fact and continuity. But for heaven’s sake, a recent episode showed Jack and Rebecca walking out of Bethel Park General Hospital. That scene alone should cement this as fiction.

The show was good at first, with a unique and effective storytelling structure. The jumping forward and back in time gives context and depth to the characters, and it will allow Ventimiglio to keep working on the show for seasons to come.

But a clever format can’t save a show that takes itself too seriously. I’d like Rebecca to drop her chin and tell Kevin to snap out of it. Or Kate to stop blaming herself for everything bad that happens. Maybe Miguel will get his own storyline soon. I have a feeling he’s not much for long speeches.

Those names may mean nothing if you don’t watch the show. Just picture pretty people who stop every 10 minutes to express deep feelings to those around them.

But I think you can picture a Crock-Pot, which was to blame for a lot of the drama. If the writers give the Crock-Pot its own storyline, I might keep watching.

Beth Dolinar can be reached at cootiej@aol.com.