This Is Us Season 6 Episode 13 Review: Day Of The Wedding
Jack Ori
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So there you have it, as the officiant declared at the end of Philip and Kate's wedding.
This Is Us Season 6 Episode 13 focused on Philip and Kate's wedding, but the story wasn't about them.
The wedding was the vehicle for exploring Miguel and Randall's reactions to Rebecca's disease advancing, which put a damper on what should have been a happy occasion.
This Is Us skipped most of Philip and Kate's courtship by jumping forward five years, leaving viewers to fill in the blanks.
In real-time, Kate's wedding directly followed her divorce from Toby, making this relationship feel rushed. But maybe that was the point.
As Randall said at the wedding, time felt like it was flying by all of a sudden, and this time jump certainly gave viewers that same sense of time going too fast.
Philip is Kate's happy ending, and it seems like that's all we need to know. Kate got married without any soap opera-like delays, and we presume they lived happily ever after.
Her life with Philip might have been interesting, but it wasn't the point. Everyone's life is changing, and Rebecca and Miguel's lives, together and separately, are coming to their end. Rebecca's cognitive decline is worsening, and it's hard for everyone to deal with.
This is likely the last happy occasion that Rebecca will be lucid enough to attend. Everyone was trying to put on their happiest face and enjoy themselves anyway, but they all know what's coming, which made this wedding a little less joyous.
Randall: It's one thing to understand these changes in Mom, but it's another to accept them.
Miguel: You think we should taste this Pinot Noir now?
Randall: What if she starts calling me William?
Miguel: Then let's toast to not calling her William.
Rebecca's condition is taking its toll on Miguel, too. He's the one who is living with her day in and day out while she loses her memories.
It has to be doubly painful for him to live with her belief that her late husband is coming back. Jack was his best friend, and it took Miguel and Rebecca a long time to get past his ghost to be together.
Plus, he's the one who is losing the woman he loves to this disease, minute by painful minute.
Only Randall could miss that Miguel was desperate to escape from Rebecca's disease for a few minutes. He spent the entire wine tasting talking about it until Miguel told him bluntly to stop.
Rebecca: That's very funny, Jack.
Randall: That's Kevin, Mom. Dad hasn't been around for a while, remember?
Rebecca: Why would you say that?
I know Randall is anxious and sad about Rebecca's deterioration, but come on! How hard was it to figure out that Miguel was trying to get a break?
Randall also tried to correct Rebecca when she insisted that Kevin was Jack. If he needed to say anything, he could have left it at reminding her that she'd just called Kevin by his father's name.
He didn't need to remind her that Jack was dead, which would serve no purpose except to agitate her.
I don't fault Randall for these missteps. He's not used to dealing with this irrational, out-of-touch-with-the-present Rebecca, and no one's taught him how to handle her worst moments.
While I loved that Rebecca was still able to sing at Kate and Philip's wedding in the end, I wish they'd considered her dementia when planning their wedding.
Many dementia patients do better earlier in the day, so instead of allowing Rebecca to relax for 12 hours before the wedding, they could have had the ceremony in the morning and had her perform her piece relatively early on so that she'd have a better chance of being able to do it.
Just as Kate takes Jack's unique needs into account, at this point, she needed to take her mother's. But unlike Jack, she's not used to thinking of Rebecca as disabled or having to make special accommodations for her.
It's understandable that she didn't, even though it was annoying that she and Philip put Rebecca -- and everyone else -- through Rebecca having to perform later in the day when she wasn't at her best.
I'm not sure this is going to work out. Believing it all will be fine does not come naturally to this Englishman, but I am trying because if this doesn't work out, it will crush your sister. Tell me, if your mother starts floundering around out there, do you have any Senatorial pull to create a city-wide blackout?
Philip
The whole mess showed how much Philip loves Kate, though.
Philip wasn't sure that Rebecca would be up to performing at the wedding, but he put on his bravest, happiest face about it because it was so important to Kate that Rebecca be able to do this.
He reassured Kate that Rebecca would be all right, confided in Randall that he was trying to be optimistic for Kate's sake, and came up with a ridiculous Plan B in case the worst happened.
If that's not true love, I don't know what is!
Finally, we learned that Kevin spent time with three different women the night before the wedding.
I couldn't care less who Kevin ends up with, as long as it's not Sophie. Rebecca only supports that relationship because she's stuck in the distant past, where Kevin and Sophie's attempt at staying married should have stayed.
Kevin and Sophie tried twice, and both times were epic failures. It would be cliche and unbelievable for her to turn out to be his happily ever after now.
I'm rooting for Kevin to ultimately end up with the wedding singer.
She's a different type from what Kevin usually goes for -- anyone else notice that both Sophie and Madison are perky blondes close with Kate? And he hasn't tried and failed to have a relationship with the singer before, so that's double points in her favor.
The past storyline was cute, but it mostly demonstrated how much everything had changed.
In these lighthearted scenes, a totally with-it Rebecca wanted to prove she could still be spontaneous. This story was more fun than the heavy wedding scenes, except when Rebecca said she didn't want to forget who she was.
Those words were a little TOO prophetic, and it was heartbreaking.
Your turn, This Is Us fanatics. Hit the big, blue SHOW COMMENTS button and let us know what you thought of Philip and Kate's wedding! You can watch This Is Us online right here on TV Fanatic if you missed it.
This Is Us airs on NBC on Tuesdays at 9 PM EST / PST.
Jack Ori is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. His debut young adult novel, Reinventing Hannah, is available on Amazon. Follow him on X.
