In the super-popular, critically acclaimed, and award-winning NBC series This is Us Randall aka “Number 3” of the triplets is named after a poet.
We learned this namesake in Season 1, Episode 3: “Kyle” when we see William give Rebecca a copy of Poem Counterpoem by Dudley Randall. William says that Kyle/Randall’s birth mother read this poetry to him while in the womb. Rebecca then takes William’s suggestion to “give him his own name” and changes Number 3’s name from Kyle to Randall. “Maybe you’ll see fit to give it to him someday,” William says, and in fact later we see this book on Randall’s shelf.
Update: In the second to last episode of the series, William reappears and recites Randall’s poem Luzon again. I loved this!
I don’t watch a lot of TV because I am usually reading, so a show has to REALLY be worth my time. Obviously, this show is. In fact, “This is Us” may be my favorite show ever…
And when I see a “literary cameo” in a show, I like to dig a little deeper to pay tribute to it – both the cameo and the show – and learn more myself.
So I decided to investigate Dudley Randall, Poem Counterpoem, and the lines of his poetry quoted in Episode 7 “Best Washing Machine in the World” when Beth (Randall’s wife) and William (Randall’s birth father) gaze up at the stars after eating pot brownies (did I mention I love this show??).
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What I found out about this “literary cameo” surprised me!
for Christmas (and received it – thanks mom & dad) and settled into reading it nearly every evening since then (it is 771 pages long). Now I find myself missing this book every evening. I had settled into a routine of stressing about Theo and his issues. This won the Pulitzer in 2013 so I am late in my praise, but having loved it as much as I did, I still want to write a short tribute to this book.
was moved up a few days due to the White House trying to stop the publication of this book. Of course this book was already on my radar, but would I have dropped everything to read it without this new drama surrounding it?? Maybe not….
, did not like this one. But you can count me in the group who loved this newer book, only the second I’ve read off my 
by Jamie Ford just in time to meet him at my local library. And I just bought his other two books, 
(a bestseller), and 
, which I put on my 
first.