It’s a strange feeling when a television show you’ve watched for years, that you’ve connected with deeply, and that’s carried you through many highs and lows comes to an end. Dawson’s Creek, Friends, Sex and the City –– all these shows left me with that feeling. It was always Pacey. Of course Rachel got off the plane. And that scene of Miranda bathing Steve’s Mum will forever be printed in my mind. It wasn’t until many years later with Schitt’s Creek that I felt this way about a television show. Its characters are drawn with such beautiful hamanity and nuance, that anyone watching feels absolved of their own foibles and failings. Which brings me to This is Us, a multi-generational family drama that has doubled as a warm blanket, hot water bottle, and cup of honey tea since 2016 when I first started watching. What I realized last night, as I watched the final episode, is that what I’ve clung to, and what has kept me going, (and watching) all these years, is the hope that everything will be okay in the end. Same goes for my friends on the Creek, at the coffee shop, and at the Rosebud Motel. Enter that strange feeling; we’ve been living with them, and through them for so long, and now that we know that everything is ok for them, we have nowhere else to look but to our own realities. And hope that we too get our full circle moments, our second chances, our one true loves. It’s naive, I know, to think this way. After all, it’s just t.v. But done well, the people and stories transcend the four corners of your screen and enter your home like they are your family. They aren’t, we know they aren’t, but the experiences –– the struggles and the triumphs –- they’re universal.
