Teen Kate’s boyfriend is all kinds of awful on ‘This Is Us’

For weeks fans have been wondering what is actually up with Marc, aka the older guy from the record shop that Teen Kate has been dating on This Is Us (Tuesdays, 9 p.m. ET, CTV). Well, after getting snippets in the Kevin- and Randall-centric episodes the past couple of weeks, Tuesday night’s Kate-centric episode (directly by Justin Hartley!) made it official: Marc is awful.

A flash to the past

There were tons of red flags leading up to the episode, but they were always from another character’s point-of-view. After seeing the situation through Kate’s eyes though it became super clear that Marc was emotionally abusive. Among the red flags? Marc getting mad for no good reason and then ignoring Kate. Or asking her if she really needed that piece of chocolate because she’d been “working so hard” and then eating it in front of her. Viewers are invested in Kate and have been for four years now—watching her let someone treat her that way is frustrating, but from Kate’s perspective we see that it's not so black and white. Someone actually loves her, for the first time. She doesn’t consider herself worthy of love, she just lost her father, she’s watched men fall all over her mother her entire life and both of her brothers are in solid relationships. She probably thinks this is the best it gets. And it happens IRL to smart, beautiful women and girls. So it’s all kinds of great that This Is Us is tackling the issue in such a real way.

Wow, this episode...what a gift to be a part of a show that touches on such important topics that aren’t easy to discuss #thisisus

— Chrissy Metz (@ChrissyMetz) February 12, 2020

The sad thing is, the family had been too caught up in their own drama to realize just how bad things had gotten for Kate, until Rebecca finally stepped in and—without judgement—asked to go for coffee with the couple so that she could get to know Marc. (Chalk up one to Rebecca in the parenting department.) As predicted, the coffee went terribly. The dude showed up late and in a rage having just quit his job, and basically announced he wanted to whisk Kate away so they could write songs together.The immediate plan was to write at the cabin, of course, but Marc once again spun out on the way there and got scary AF behind the wheel. Why? Because Kate didn’t want to quit her job in solidarity. So Marc stopped the car and when she got out for some air, he threw her stuff at her, called her fat and sped off like the class act he is. Sure, he later came back with a blanket, but Kate had already called Rebecca and at that point Beck’s Mama Bear knew something was up. And so the episode ended on basically the same cliffhanger as last week, with Teen Randal and Teen Kevin joining Rebecca in the car to go and save their Katie-girl.

A stint in the present

Speaking of cabins, the next episode will definitely take place there since the present-day Big Three (sorry, SAD Three) are headed that way to lick their wounds and regroup. So what did it take to get present-day Katie-girl to the same sad state as her bros? Her husband, for one. Toby seemed more than a little hesitant to go on the retreat for families with blind kids that she’d booked for them, so she asked her mom to go instead. And really, that might have been the best thing for everyone since it gave Toby time to think and Rebecca and Kate time to reconnect.

And that’s all she needs now ? #thisisus https://t.co/U96MBHwa0B

— Chrissy Metz (@ChrissyMetz) February 12, 2020

And, fishy neighbours and their beep-balls aside, it was also a great excuse to have Mandy Moore and Chrissy Metz do karaoke together (Alanis’s “Ironic” was their preferred soundtrack because of course it was). That’s the kind of mother-daughter bonding the show has needed for a while now, and it definitely tracks with the whole theory that moms become your best friend later on in life. Thankfully, their truce also led to some truth-telling, which the show has also needed more of lately. Kate confided in her mom about her marriage struggles and got a Jack Pearson-level pep talk in return, and Rebecca finally—finally—told Kate about her memory diagnosis. For those keeping count, that leaves Kevin as the last to know, and anyone who watches this show knows that he's probably going to react poorly when he finds out.For now, the episode capped with a sweet throw to Toddler Kate. Thanks to a cute storytelling moment between the babe and Jack in an even further flashback, fans learned that Rebecca always has been Kate’s hero. Hopefully that means the matriarch’s arrival at the cabin next week will be a welcome one, but hey—at least there are only six more days until everyone finds out.This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on CTV.