Doug: This—talking to you. I loved being a dad from day one. Just going through this experience that we’ve had and being stronger for it. Being in this position and putting all of ourselves out here like this, and having you two still smiling and laughing. Maybe our lives have changed a little bit, but we haven’t changed. It’s still the same conversations, the same bond, the same love, the same support that we’ve always had. I’m just so proud. And it makes me happy.

And that’s why when you don’t text me I get so sad, Ella. 

Ella: I can’t believe you’re outing me right now! [Laughs]

Doug: I’ll tell you one thing though, when I was your age, my mom used to tell me, “You know, I still think of you as my kid. And all I do is think about you.” And I would think, “Dude, why?” And now that I’m her age, and you’re my age then, that’s what I do. I said to my mom, “You were right about that.”

Cole: Do you think that there’s anything you do differently or ways you feel that are different—in terms of having a son and a daughter?

Doug: I think you’re different kids. You required different things, so I’ve tried to be responsive to what you both needed. 

Cole: Like how you tried to make me play tee ball instead of Ella. And now Ella is a better athlete than I am. 

Doug: What is the key to sports? 

Ella: Soft hands! Any sport, whether it’s basketball, it’s swimming, it’s volleyball.

Cole: I have memories of Doug trying to teach me to drive clutch, and he’s like, “Soft hands.” I was like, “What do you mean!” 

Doug: Yeah, I was not a good driving teacher, either. When it came time for Ella to drive—

Cole: I was like, “Get in the car with me.” 

Getting the call from the Biden campaign

Ella: It was such a mix of emotions. Because it’s super exciting and it’s amazing that a woman of color is on the ticket. It’s groundbreaking. But I think it was also that intense wave of realization and anxiety that, “Wow, I’m not looking at this from the outside. I’m looking at it from the inside. This is all happening to me, too.” I felt extreme love and excitement, but also a little bit of shock.

Cole: I got to join Doug and Kamala for the vice presidential debate. Then I saw the reporters, the cars, and like Ella said, it’s a lot. It hit me again even harder. Doug took me into the debate prep room with Kamala and just to see this massive room—it was awesome. But it shook me a little bit.

Ella: I think it’s even harder that this is all happening during Covid because not being together during all of this is hard. We can Zoom, and we do have a Zoom every weekend, and we talk a lot. But it’s not the same.

Doug: To get to the VP debate, to be there with us, Cole got in a car and drove from LA to Salt Lake City through the day—10, 12 hours. He showed up in his sandals and shorts.

Ella: Birkenstocks!

Doug: I should have warned him. When I first got on to the campaign, it was the same for me. I’d been working from home for five or six months; Kamala was working from home. We knew we were part of the process. But we didn’t know up until when we got called that it was going to be her. After we get the call, an hour later the senior leadership of the campaign barges into the apartment with binders and materials. And the campaign staff is like, “We leave for Wilmington tomorrow for the announcement.” I was like, “Wait, I haven’t worn long pants in five months.”

Campaigning during a pandemic

Doug: I feel so fortunate that we are healthy and that we at least are connected. So when people ask me how I’m dealing with it, I don’t talk about it. Because I feel like people are suffering so much, and the stories we hear are devastating. We have met folks whose family members have died. Then there’s the economic devastation, or people losing their healthcare. 

Just then, Randall that they can only hope for a year without surprises, which means in traditional This Is Us fashion, we are about to get one hell of a surprise. Sure enough, it’s a bombshell. As we flash back to the paramedics ready to call time of death on a lifeless Laurel (William has already fled and taken baby Randall to the fire station), they find a pulse. Not only did Laurel not die, as we thought, but Randall’s birth mother might still be alive today. 

So what’s next? How did the pandemic change what the writers had planned? Here, creator Dan Fogelman explains all…well, as much as he could.

Pre-pandemic, This Is Us was planning to film in St. Louis for Rebecca’s clinical trial. 

If the pandemic hadn’t happened, would Rebecca have gone to St. Louis and returned in time for the Big Three’s 40th birthday? Most likely yes, Fogelman says. “It was one of the things we’d talked about doing, but that’s obviously really tricky right now. [In every day life], health plans are being either postponed or being irreparably changed by the pandemic, so what we’ve tried to do in almost every storyline on the show is stick to our plan and our road maps of where the character’s arcs are going while still accommodating for these world events.” 

In terms of Rebecca’s medical prognosis, “There’s a long journey ahead with this disease, and there’s a path we can still stick to that is not altered forever by the pandemic, but more in the short term in terms of her location and where she’s living.” Still, they hope to get to St. Louis perhaps in season six. “Sterling is from the area, so we thought there might be an opportunity there, but that’s one that had to kind of go by the wayside.”

Rebecca and Miguel’s love story will finally be told. 

Ever since season one fans have been wondering how Miguel and Rebecca embarked on a romance. (All we know for now is that the reconnected on social media about a decade after Jack died.) “We’ve really been looking forward to telling this story,” Fogelman shares. “It’s something that becomes a bigger part of the back half of this season and into next.”

You’ll find out about Randall’s mom sooner than later.

Fogelman says that while he doesn’t want to reveal too much, viewers will learn Laurel’s fate “well within the first half of our season.” He says it’s not something the show will drag out over the next year or two. “There’s a pretty quick answer, and I think it’s elegantly done.” 

But why tell the story of Randall’s birth mother now?

“For us, Randall’s story has always been one of identity, and the story of his birth mother is one that we’ve never really filled out or told,” Fogelman says. “So this first half of the season is to do just that. It sticks with the plan of the when and the how and why of Randall’s big picture arc.”

My husband was a rock. I never saw him break once—until he had to call his parents and say out loud “Eva has breast cancer.” It took him a long time to be able to say those words without crying.

I knew then that I wanted to document my experience. I wanted to make sure my kids would know me. I wanted a visual reminder of what I was about to go through. I didn’t want to forget. I don’t want to be one of those people who goes through breast cancer and then forgets the hard times, so I decided to start filming every step of my journey for a documentary.

I was recovering from my first surgery when I got a call from my oncologist. The cancer had metastasized up and down my spine and into my liver. It was stage IV breast cancer—also known as metastatic breast cancer—which is considered terminal. I remember lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, while my husband started making calls to our friends and family members. I didn’t just have cancer; I had incurable cancer. 

The next day we went back to the doctor to discuss the full results of my PET scan. I was with my mom, a friend, and my husband. The doctor asked if I wanted to be in the room when she delivered my results. I said no. I waited in the lobby as they discussed how the cancer had spread everywhere—to my liver, bones, and skull. I would soon learn that I’d need immediate surgery to put a rod in my leg because my left hip was about to break from the metastasis. I was in shock. I had just run a 5K and was a regular at Orangetheory. Now my hip was about to break?

Rounds of chemotherapy ensued, each one making me feel like I had been hit by a truck. I had a party to celebrate the completion of every round, which gave me something to look forward to. Because I was responding well to the chemo, I got the green light to get a mastectomy, followed by several weeks of radiation, which basically burned off the skin on my right breast. It was awful. But it was working.

Earlier this year, my scans were pretty clear. I started traveling again, and I spent back-to-back weekends raising money to fund breast cancer research. Life was good. Then I got another call from my oncologist.

“I was just looking at the results of your brain scan,” she said. (I get one every six months.) “There’s a small spot on your cerebellum. This is something we’re going to have to discuss.”

I already had an appointment scheduled to get my chemotherapy infusion, which I get every three weeks and will continue to get for the rest of my life. But now we needed to talk about how the cancer had spread to my brain, and my new treatment plan, which included radiation.

I was hysterical.

I had been doing so well—and now this. What if these are the last years of my life? I wondered. How am I going to look at my kids again and tell them this? I wanted so badly to raise them. I know people who have lived with metastatic breast cancer for 18 years. I wanted to be one of those people.

After recovering from the traumatic brain episode, I got more bad news: The cancer had spread somewhere new, this time to my right lung. Although they are tiny little spots, every new discovery forces a change in my treatment plan. Because there are a limited number of treatment options and a limited amount of time each plan could potentially work, the goal is to stay with the same treatment plan for as long as possible.

I’m trying to take everything day by day. I just celebrated my 44th birthday. In six weeks, I’ll get another scan to determine whether I need to jump to the next line of treatment. Whatever it takes me to persevere on this earth.

Pre-cancer, I worked as a pharmaceutical rep. I’m now retired. I live right by the beach in Ventura. My attitude remains positive, as it’s always been. I get to hang out with my husband and kids. There’s this beautiful slow pace about life now that I had never experienced before. It forces me to be present and that is the ultimate gift. There’s a hundred percent chance that we’re all going to die, so the question is: How do you want to live?

Kim Kardashian West is catching some heat on Twitter for her 40th birthday party. No, not the surprise 40th birthday party her family threw that recreated all her past birthdays. I’m talking about her other 40th birthday party: the one that took place on a private island. Wait, you didn’t hear about that?

Well, it happened. Kardashian West posted photos from it on October 27. “40 and feeling so humbled and blessed,” she wrote in the caption alongside several photos of her family and friends frolicking on an island. “There is not a single day that I take for granted, especially during these times when we are all reminded of the things that truly matter. For my birthday this year, I couldn’t think of a better way to spend it than with some of the people who have helped shaped me into the woman I am today. Before COVID, I don’t think any of us truly appreciated what a simple luxury it was to be able to travel and be together with family and friends in a safe environment. After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time. We danced, rode bikes, swam near whales, kayaked, watched a movie on the beach and so much more. I realize that for most people, this is something that is so far out of reach right now, so in moments like these, I am humbly reminded of how privileged my life is. #thisis40.” 

She also posted these bikini shots, presumably from the same trip: 

On the surface, Kardashian West covered all her bases in her caption. She says her guests quarantined, they did multiple health screenings, she recognized her privilege, blah, blah, blah. But…we’re still in the middle of a global pandemic. People are losing their jobs and loved ones left and right. Even if she did ensure this trip was safe, to post about it is tone-deaf. Why not just…go on the trip? And saying nothing at all?

Anyway, it didn’t take long for Twitter users to start roasting her, many co-opting the language, “After 2 weeks of multiple health screens and asking everyone to quarantine, I surprised my closest inner circle with a trip to a private island where we could pretend things were normal just for a brief moment in time.” There were other jokes, too. Peep them for yourself, below:

Kim Kardashian West hasn’t responded to the backlash yet. Maybe she’s still on the island?