In honor of Super Bowl Sunday weekend, here’s a special original piece by yours truly. 

*Spoilers ahead from the latest episode of This is Us.*

In the final moments of the last episode of the ten-hanky drama This Is Us, viewers learn that Jack Pearson, the father of three teenagers, will likely die in a house fire after the finicky Crock-Pot he and his wife Rebecca received from a neighbor, fatally malfunctions. The tight shot on the family’s battery-less smoke alarm, combined with an earlier scene of a wailing Rebecca in front of the Pearsons’ burned-out house, have foreshadowed this ugly turn of events for weeks.

But the first indication that Super Bowl Sunday would be the night of the house fire was when the oh-my-God-something-bad’s-gonna-happen music — those spare piano notes, the aching voice and lyrics — started playing at the end of the most recent episode. You just knew what would happen next. You could just feel it.

Continue reading “essay: how I’m preparing to watch ‘this is us’ on super bowl sunday” →