Written for the badass podcast Bad Fat Broads. You should subscribe immediately!

This is Us, NBC’s latest tear jerker drama, has been a runaway hit. Every week the audience is lulled by soft acoustic guitar and whisper singing through emotional and dramatic stories of family, those chosen and hereditary. The way the stories travel backward and forward through time have the potential to feel hokey, but here make pointaint connections that develop a world designed to pull at your heartstrings.

Having been burned by Parenthood, NBC’s emofamdrama predecessor, I avoided This is Us like the Falcons avoid super bowl wins. Being a completist, every week I was faithful to the broadcast of Parenthood even though I disliked every single character by the end. Something about the milquetoast Californian whiteness lulled me in and I couldn’t let it go. Even now I could not honestly say I enjoyed…