If last week These are U.S gave us the most basic sketch of what Randall’s mother was doing in the years after her birth, this week’s episode fills in the details of Laurel’s story with heartbreaking colors.
Most of the hour, entitled “Biological Mother”, consists of Hai telling Laurel’s story while Randall and Beth listen. Almost all the action takes place in New Orleans, where the Pearsons – as promised – travel to hear the man who says he can explain why Randall never knew that his birth mother had survived the overdose he thought killed her.
The quick answer? Circumstance and shame. Read while we elaborate while detailing the main developments in this week’s episode. (And listen to what Sterling K. Brown had to say about Randall’s epiphany here.)
MEET LAUREL DUBOIS | Beth and Randall were not at Hai’s house – without masks, although they quickly determine that they were all quarantined and tested – for more than a minute when the older man dropped his first bomb: the house was actually Laurel, the which means it’s now Randall’s. They go inside, where they sit in the kitchen and Hai begins to tell the story.
Laurel’s family was one of the most distinguished in New Orleans. His father (played by Hawaii Five-0/Boston Public alum Chi McBride) was a banker. (Side note: And that’s The Bernie Mac Show(It’s Kellita Smith as her mother – can we get another grateful applause for this show’s deep and secret guest cast selection bank?) Laurel had an older brother who was killed in the Vietnam War when Laurel was a young woman. When her sadness over his death became unbearable, Laurel visited her aunt Mae, who lived nearby.
Mae, the somewhat bohemian sister of Laurel’s father, lived nearby, grew vegetables to sell at a farmer’s market, and generally seemed to be much less rigid about everything than Laurel’s parents. And when Laurel’s sadness threatened to overwhelm her, Mae advised her, “God can take your pain away, but you have to let it go.” Then Laurel entered the lake behind her aunt’s house and screamed her feelings.
At that time, Hai – a Vietnamese refugee who came to Louisiana with his parents after the war – was fishing nearby. Thinking that Laurel was drowning, he jumped into the water to save her … which irritated her deeply. “To be honest, your mom was the love of my life,” Hai says to Randall, explaining that, although Laurel was dating a man named Marshall at the time, Hai and Laurel met at the farmer’s market after the lake incident and I started to leave. They finally fell in love.
But when Laurel’s father strongly suggests that she should accept Marshall’s impending proposal, she runs – and asks Hai to go with her. He cannot leave his parents and knows that Laurel’s family will never accept him as their man. Then she leaves for Pittsburgh, where the cheapest bus ticket takes her.
At this point, Randall is impatient. He wants to know what stopped Laurel from finding him. “Prison,” Hai says simply. Should we continue?
‘SHE WAS PUNCHING’ | After William runs with baby Randall and the paramedics manage to revive her, Laurel spends a few days in the hospital before being arrested for drug possession. She and William don’t have a phone in the apartment, so her only call is to her family’s New Orleans home. And although her father realizes that it is her, she is overcome and is unable to say anything to him.
Laurel’s lawyer advises her to plead guilty, imagining that the judge will show the young woman mercy. Laurel’s lawyer is wrong. She was sentenced to five years in prison and finally transferred to a prison in California because of overcrowding.
“She said that there was not a single night when she didn’t dream of you,” Hai tells Randall, who is crying softly. The older man continues: Laurel was released in 1985, returned to New Orleans and stayed with Aunt Mae. “I think she was punishing herself,” he says. “She felt she lost her right to be a mother.”
After Laurel tells everything to her aunt, Mae (The practice(LisaGay Hamilton) confesses that she got pregnant by a married man when she was young. “I lost both and that changed me,” she recalls. Laurel cries a lot while worrying that “my son will grow up thinking that I don’t love him”. Once again, Mae tells her to let the blame go “or it will strangle her”. Then, that night, Laurel slid into the lake in her nightgown and let out a huge, painful cry.
Hi again, HAI | When Hai and Laurel find themselves at the farmer’s market after their return, they wave to each other in the square. But he is married and is about to be a father, so they don’t have much of a relationship – “We had a few moments,” he says. “Small, but enough.” – in the following years. But decades later, when she didn’t show up at the vegetable stand one day, he went over to her house and found that she had a cancerous and very aggressive tumor.
Then he cooks for her. He cares about her. And he is there when she dies (which, thank God, for once this program didn’t feel the need to have us watch).
NIGHTSWIMMING DESERVES A QUIET NIGHT | That night, back at the hotel, Randall cannot sleep. Then he drives to Laurel’s house, walks into the yard, takes off his clothes and enters the lake. When he is submerged to the neck, he hears a woman’s laughter. “My baby,” she says, and suddenly, the oldest Laurel is in the water with him.
Poor Randall starts to cry. “I didn’t even know I was looking for you. Now I found you and you are gone, ”he tells her. She apologizes and gently tells him that he needs to let go of all his sadness and pain. Then he screams into the night, full of anguish and loss.
Laurel tells her son that she loves him in Vietnamese, as we saw her say to Hai earlier, so she appears as Laurel younger and tells him again in English. “I love you, too,” he says, completely overcome and undone – but perhaps in a good way? – for all the effort.
THE SUPPORTABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING | The next day, in the car, Beth comments on how Randall looks “different. Lighter. “And he It’s quite smiling. “I know my birth story, Beth. And it’s not just about being left in the fire department, ”he says. Knowing that William and Laurel loved him, but they screwed up royally with the universe (and by “universe” I mean all the racist and class systems that created a world in which bringing the three together as a family has become virtually impossible) is a balm. for Randall’s aching spirit. So, yes, he’s feeling pretty good about it.
Great? He then decides that he will call Kevin and start to heal that crack, because he no longer wants to get attached to the bad things. “I want to let it all go,” he announces … but is interrupted when Kevin, who is also driving, is unable to speak: Madison is in labor and Kevin is returning home from Vancouver to be with his bride, hoping that he will get there in time.
Now it is your turn. What did you think of the episode? Were you satisfied with Laurel’s story? Sound off in the comments!