Photo: @NBC
I’ve been a fan of This Is Us from the very beginning. I truly can’t think of a show that could compare to it—it’s in a category of its own. One of the ways in which I’ve been able to connect with this show is in how they are portraying anxiety in Randall's (Sterling K.Brown) character. We’ve seen instances of his anxiety before—flashbacks to when he was younger and would have panic attacks that his father, Jack, would help him breathe through and calm down from.
It wasn’t until the show picked back up this January that they really went deep into how bad Randall’s anxiety really is. There was a time where we saw him have a breakdown at his old job and it got to be too much for him, but something about how his anxiety was portrayed this season just felt different. We’ve seen him as this strong character, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders for so long now that sometimes viewers forget he even suffers from anxiety. That is what I find fascinating and so relevant because so many people (myself included) have experienced different ranges of anxiety from it existing just under the surface while everything on the outside looks fine, to having it be completely debilitating.
This season, Randall has gotten the point of breaking down again, but worse. At the end of the first episode, viewers are shocked as Randall checks in on his family and then walks downstairs for a glass of water, only to be confronted by an armed man inside their home. Watching this gave me chills and my jaw dropped while my heart raced. Of course, they leave the viewers with that parting shot, not knowing what is going to happen next.
A lot of theories came out online that maybe Randall’s anxiety had gotten so bad, especially with his mother ’s (Mandy Moore) health declining, that he was hallucinating the intruder. However, we come to find in the next episode that the intruder was real. To have someone that suffers from anxiety experience their one safe space, their home, their haven, be violated like that, can be detrimental. Thankfully, the intruder leaves, harming no one in the family. However, Randall becomes obsessed with keeping the house safe, checking his phone every time the motion detectors go off on the new security system he has put in.
At this point, the viewer witnesses Randall’s downward spiral as he keeps trying to hold it together the best he can, usually for the sake of everyone else. There’s a flashback in that episode where his father, Jack, (unintentionally) puts pressure on Randall as a young boy to hold it together for the family since his siblings are “high maintenance” and he needs to be the strong one. Clearly, we can see this sense of responsibility has carried over in his life. For someone that suffers from anxiety and panic attacks, actually being fully immersed in a panic attack feels like you have absolutely no control, which in turn makes you panic even more. Randall has lost control of being able to keep his family safe in their own home, he’s lost control of being able to protect his mother, Rebecca, from a likely diagnosis of dementia, and ultimately he loses control of himself when he beats up the man he encounters robbing a woman. Did he do something heroic by helping the woman? Of course. Did he need to keep beating the guy up so much? Not really. He took it too far and ultimately exploded. When he goes into work after that incident, everyone is calling him a hero, and he turns around and walks right out of his office. It’s finally happened. He has completely lost control. He doesn’t feel like a hero. He knows he needs help and calls Kevin.
Another major theme we see in these first couple of episodes that are so important to consider when trying to understand Randall, is how often we see him plagued by night terrors. Him dreaming of his younger self looking through the window as his mom tends to the garden in a lightning storm shows the ultimate loss of control. He’s witnessing someone he loves being in a dangerous situation that could kill them, but there’s nothing he can do about it, no matter how hard he tries to scream and bang on the window, no noise comes out. Seeing all of his night terrors brought me back to when I used to have those exact same kind of nightmares all of the time, and it broke my heart for his character.
Thankfully, overall, I believe society and the media in general have gotten better about discussing mental health issues including anxiety and depression, without it being so taboo. (The show A Million Little Things also does this brilliantly). The way in which they portray Randall’s anxiety in This is Us is so spot on, and Sterling K. Brown does an amazing job.
In an interview he did with The Hollywood Reporter, Sterling K. Brown discusses his experience filming these scenes, saying "It is exhausting and the playing of it is exhausting! I think for the majority of the episode I felt scared all the time. I asked myself the question, what is it like to live with fear just under the surface of not being able to control your environment, or thinking that there is a way to actually control your environment? And then when that illusion is taken away from you, how do you see yourself in relation to the world, right? Every day after shooting I'd just go home and take a bath. I needed to relax because there's tension in my body that I'm looking to release. With Randall over the course of four years there are times in which there's a goofy charm that he gets to enjoy and relax into, and then there's moments of great trauma and grief, and trying to figure out how to keep it all together. This episode is definitely falls into the latter category.”
I hope Randall seeks the professional help he needs in the coming episodes, because he can’t always rely on Beth and his siblings to help him out—plus, he usually waits until his anxiety has gotten to a debilitating level before he realizes he no longer has control over the situation.