Primetime pathology: This Is Us and heteronormative ideals

Abstract

Despite its popularity with viewers, the television series This Is Us, which aired between 2016 and 2022, has received relatively little scholarly attention. Yet there is an emerging critical consensus that viewers’ self-image and behaviour is informed by the lessons they learn from the series. This article explores the series’ representation of gender as ideological precept, analysing the ways characters modify their behaviour to conform to gendered expectations at the same time as those ideological behaviours lead to relationship conflict. I argue that This Is Us sells viewers the fantasy of good intention and performative affection, whilst implicitly normalizing unhealthy behaviours: poor communication, impulsiveness and self-centred decision-making. That the characters in the show exhibit these traits – these pathologies – is justified in the logic of the show, which paints them as righteous protagonists. Reading the series against the grain reveals that these individual shortcomings can only be understood as pathologies, presented as they are in the series with no material base.