THIS IS US: The First Season

THIS IS US earns its four-star rating through its honest, deeply emotional depiction of family life. The Pearson family faces grief, identity struggles, weight and image problems, relationship problems, hurts, and betrayals. Yet love and loyalty keep drawing them back toward openness, forgiveness, and restoration.

The show is pro-family and especially strong in its depictions of marriage and parent-child relationships. It presents an interracial, adoptive family without sugarcoating the challenges, while showing the family’s bonds through both heartwarming and heartrending moments.

The cost is significant. Strong language appears casually, with almost every episode in the first season carrying a strong-language warning. The series also treats sex outside marriage as casual and acceptable and addresses mature, adult subjects. Watch it if you’re an adult prepared to weigh those concerns; keep it away from children and young teens.

Jack and Rebecca Pearson begin their family during the 1980s while expecting triplets. After losing one child, they adopt a black baby boy abandoned at a fire station, launching a family of five.

The story moves between the children’s years growing up with Jack and Rebecca and their adult lives 30 years later. Kevin, Randall, and Kate face personal struggles involving identity, relationships, image, and weight, while the family works through the joys and wounds that bind them together.

Four stars means this is an exceptionally strong television drama. Every episode is described as cathartic and real, with a compelling portrayal of life’s challenges. The program’s marriages are honest, loving, supportive, and strong, while its parent-child relationships reach both heartwarming and heartrending places.

The series does not diminish the complexity of an interracial, adoptive family experience. It also understands that love can be messy and that hurts and betrayals require honesty, forgiveness, and restoration. Its craft strength is emotional truthfulness rather than graphic action or explicit content.

THIS IS US is not Christian in nature and occasionally introduces distinctly non-Christian concepts. Its view of family and marriage is nevertheless broadly biblical in important ways. It exalts love, loyalty, commitment, forgiveness, restoration, and the enduring strength of marriage and parent-child relationships.

The series also portrays an interracial, adoptive family and does not sugarcoat the challenges that such a family experience can bring. That honesty strengthens its portrait of family life, while the show’s casual acceptance of sex outside marriage departs from a biblical view of sexual faithfulness. Its mature subjects and non-Christian framing require discernment.

At the center of the series is the belief that a family can remain connected through grief, betrayal, and pain by returning to love and loyalty. Scripture calls believers to “bear with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other” (Colossians 3:13).

THIS IS US is exceptionally compelling, emotionally honest, and deeply committed to family love and loyalty. Its strong language, mature subjects, and casual treatment of sex make it unsuitable for children and young teens. For discerning adults, the answer is WORTH WATCHING — ADULTS ONLY. For family viewing, consider.