This Is Us puts Kate and Toby through the wringer

When I did a big This Is Us series-long rewatch at the beginning of the pandemic, I couldn’t believe how different the season one versions of the characters felt. While it’s normal for characters in a long-running series to grow and evolve over time, This Is Us seemed to make a particularly decisive shift after its critically acclaimed but somewhat artistically scattered first season. And no character felt that shift more than Toby, whose larger-than-life class clown persona mellowed into a still goofy but much more conventional husband and dad type.

“The Hill” makes the bold choice to literally bring those two versions of Toby into conversation with one another as Chris Sullivan dons his season one fat suit and Hawaiian shirts to represent the “old Toby” that Kate sometimes imagines in place of her svelte, career-driven husband. It’s a big swing artistic choice that made me nervous at first. Kate cites Fight Club as a parallel for her imaginary Toby and there are moments where it does kind of feel like she’s slipping into full-on psychosis as she argues with her Husband of Christmas Past. But, in the end, “The Hill” uses the device for a surprisingly moving look at what it’s like to grow into the person you were meant to be—even if that means growing apart from the person you love.

As with a lot of these Big Three trilogies, there’s a slight sense of “The Hill” filling for time in its first half, as the show revisits footage we saw last week (and the episode before that) to reestablish the three timelines its anchored in. While present-day Kate takes a trip to San Francisco to visit Toby and get a feel for the city, 20-year-old Kate admits how aimless she feels after the Big Three get trapped in the abandoned pool complex. Little Kate, meanwhile, stubbornly refuses her parents’ suggestion that she put her face in the water at the pool. Like last week’s Kevin-centric episode, a lot of this is familiar territory for Kate and her apathetic passivity. But while “The Guitar Man” didn’t build to anything hugely revelatory for Kevin, “The Hill” delivers a pretty stellar final act that helps make up for the more underbaked stuff that came before.

That culminates in a brutally realistic six-minute argument between Kate and Toby after she learns that he turned down a job offer in L.A. without telling her about it. After spending the entire trip swallowing her frustrations for the sake of having a pleasant time, Kate reaches her breaking point. And This Is Us delivers one of its best-ever fight scenes as Kate and Toby finally hash out everything that’s long gone unsaid between them.

What’s great about the fight is that it allows both characters to have reasonable points of view. Kate and Toby both want the best for their family, but they have different priorities and perspectives on what that means. Kate is focused on the present and the great success she’s had getting Jack to learn his home environment, as well as the advantage of having cousins around for her kids to grow up with. Toby, meanwhile, is obsessed with the future and what it will cost to support a family that includes a child with special needs.

The undercurrent of both of their points of view is that Kate and Toby really like the lives they’ve carved out for themselves in L.A. and San Francisco, respectively. Kate feels fulfilled by being a working mom with a meaningful job and family close by. And Toby feels fulfilled living in a cool city with a high-status job that makes him feel valued and important. He’s much more in the wrong here for having lied about the L.A. job offer and for trying to manipulatively get his way without talking things through with Kate. But this is more so an issue of two people growing apart than it is a situation where one person is a complete villain.

It’s brutal to hear Toby explain that the old version of himself that Kate loved so much was a coping mechanism for a miserable, insecure, self-loathing person. But what’s nice about “The Hill” is that it roots itself in the positives of this situation as much as the negatives. When Randall and Beth were having martial problems back in season three, the show framed divorce as the worst possible thing that could happen to them. Here, however—particularly because of the flashfoward forewarnings—there’s hope to the idea of Kate and Toby splitting up and getting to live the lives that make them happiest. Their time together allowed them both to become better, more self-actualized people. But that doesn’t mean they need to cling to their relationship if it’s no longer serving them.

Chrissy Metz co-wrote this episode (which was also directed by Mandy Moore), and it leads to some of her best-ever work on the series, particularly in the silent reactions where Kate is processing her world turning on its axis. Whether she’s swallowing her annoyance with a breezy “No worries” or putting on a happy face for a real estate agent, Kate spends a lot of this episode out of sync with her emotions. In the end, however, she discovers that her own rhythm can carry her further than she thought.

Though it’s a pretty simple metaphor, “The Hill” taps into something that feels very truthful about what it’s like to classify yourself as the type of person who can’t do physically challenging things and what it’s like when you finally push yourself out of your comfort zone and actually do them. Little Kate refuses to put her face in the water. 20-year-old Kate claims it’s impossible for her to climb a fence. But 40-something Kate walks up a hill that Toby had previously deemed too difficult for her.

Kate grew up in an environment where her dad and brothers tended to coddle her (just look at how Jack treats little Kate vs. little Kevin at the pool). And she married a man who seemed to performatively put her needs first. In the end, however, it’s when the going gets tough that Kate truly finds the strength to stand on her own two feet. There’s a stunning look of triumph on Kate’s face when she makes the call to apply for a new position at her music school. For maybe the first time in her life Kate is a woman who fully believes in herself. And that’s quite the hill to climb, indeed.

• It’s fun to watch Chris Sullivan leap back and forth between goofy “old Toby” and the more sullen, controlling version of the character as he exists today.
• Have Jack and Rebecca ever looked hotter than they do in their early 1980s pool attire?
• Loved that shot of Kevin casually throwing the life preserver at Randall.
• It’s interesting that Kate and Kevin are mirror images of each other. They’re both aimless, but he’s driven by action while she’s driven by inaction.
• I was expecting to get another Jack/Rebecca scene between when she chastises him for almost letting Kevin drown (“He’s just a child!”) and when she explains to Kevin that his dad was just trying to build up his character and he should listen to him. That’s quite the shift!
• I suppose it’s still there on a subtextual level, but it’s odd that we’ve gotten no explicit follow-up on the abusive relationship/abortion storyline that’s ostensibly coloring so much of 20-year-old Kate’s life at this point.
• Next week: We finally get to learn what little Randall was doing at that pool while Jack and Rebecca were completely ignoring him.