This Is Us · Season 1 · Episode 16 · 28 February 2017
S1E16 Memphis
Randall and his biological father William take a road trip to Memphis, revisiting William's past before a terminal diagnosis forecloses the future. The episode operates as a self-contained elegy for the father-son relationship Randall and William almost never had. Sterling K. Brown and Ron Cephas Jones carry it almost entirely without sentimentality.
Full episode analysis below. Spoiler-light verdict above.
Updated
This Is Us Season 1 Episode 16 'Memphis' aired February 28, 2017 on NBC. Season 1 holds 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 217 critics and an 8.7 audience score on IMDb. The episode follows Randall Pearson (Sterling K. Brown) and his biological father William Hill (Ron Cephas Jones) on a road trip to Memphis, revisiting William's past as his terminal illness closes in. The episode is the season's formal outlier: where the series typically interleaves multiple timelines and family members, 'Memphis' is almost entirely a two-hander, built on Brown and Cephas Jones working in close proximity with material that reaches for grief without performing it. Critics who covered the episode routinely cited it as the point at which the show moved from warm, inventive broadcast drama to something capable of genuine emotional literature. The RT consensus's praise for the show as a 'suitable surrogate for Parenthood' understates what 'Memphis' achieves in a single concentrated hour.