A lot of things may suck right now, but not all the things.
Some things—especially some things on television—are very, very good. While Grey's Anatomy is out here giving us Patrick Dempsey as McDreamy, This Is Us has Randall (Sterling K. Brown) doing a full-on strip tease. Sure, it was a mortifying moment that came at the end of a livestream with his constituents when Malik (Asante Blackk) was supposed to have cut the feed, but it could have gone so much worse.
As it was, it was great—the kind of accidental Zoom vid that we'd be happy to accidentally witness, even from a city councilman. It absolutely does help that Sterling K. Brown looks like Sterling K. Brown and has enough charm to sustain most people for a very long time, Buzzfeed memes or no Buzzfeed memes.
Of course Randall's little strip tease went viral, but it wasn't his abs that caught the attention of an older Vietnamese man at the end of the episode. Instead, that still unnamed man was more concerned with the fact that Randall gave a shoutout to his biological father, William Hill.
We still have to wait to find out what's up with this man who appears to have dated Randall's biological mother, so for now we just get to watch Randall dance his shirt off on repeat.
Elsewhere, there were a lot less abs.
Kevin (Justin Hartley) struggled without enough validation from his new director, and we learned through flashbacks that some of that definitely comes from the way Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) pushed him as a teenager. Kate (Chrissy Metz) got to know the biological mother of her soon-to-be adopted baby girl and was inspired to tell Toby (Chris Sullivan) something she had never told anyone before.
Apparently, back when she was dating that horrible jerk Mark (Austin Abrams) as a teenager, she got pregnant. What happened next is apparently a story for another time and another episode of This Is Us.
This Is Us returns Tuesday, Jan. 5 on NBC.
(E! and NBC are both part of the NBCUniversal family.)