For those who watch the show about crying and family, there are spoilers below, so tread carefully.
The piping hot, slow-cooked drama that was brewing between This Is Us and Crock-Pot has now cooled to an appropriate temperature: the much-hyped Super Bowl Sunday episode of the show revealed how Jack (Milo Ventimiglia), the man with the mustache and the often-unwashed hair, died.
I watched maybe 15 minutes of this episode before losing patience. Here’s what I think happened. The Crock-Pot was involved, but it didn’t directly snuff out Milo’s beautiful light. The fire that was started by the bad Crock-Pot was still raging. Jack woke up his family and instead of instructing all of them to jump out of their own windows, he gathered them all in one room so they could escape together...? Though their entire house was completely on fire, Milo Ventimiglia took the time to craft a rope/body-sling out of old sheets so that he could physically lower his entire family to safety BY HIMSELF, SHOWING WHAT A BIG STRONG LOVING FAMILY MAN HE IS. Once his family was secured, he had to find a way to get down. Instead of shimmying down the drainpipe like anyone else would’ve done, he went back into the flaming house while we, the viewers, focused on his family’s sobbing faces, lit as if by candlelight from the flames licking the side of their family home.
Then, via some MIRACLE, this man emerges from the house carrying the family dog and a pillowcase stuffed with money and a photo album. Is the pillowcase their version of a bugout bag, but instead of things you’d need to survive an apocalypse, it’s a VHS tape and a photo album? How did this man survive a trip from upstairs to downstairs in a house that was legitimately on fire?
He didn’t DIE IN THE FIRE as I—and legions of Americans who swore off Crock-Pots—assumed he did! Jack perished of a heart attack at the hospital from the smoke inhalation and the soot in his lungs and Mandy Moore ate a candy bar and didn’t believe the doctor and then cried and cried when she saw it was true. I’m not sure what happened in the rest of the episode, but I’m sure everyone watching who cares about this show cried and cried and cried.
Technically—if you want to be very technical here, which I do—the Crock-Pot didn’t kill Jack. It started the fire that Jack SURVIVED and then the smoke from the fire killed him of a heart attack.
Crock-Pot deserves an apology from Dan Fogelman! Crock-Pot deserves a raise! Justice for Crock-Pot! Thank you.