'This Is Us' recap: Welcome to the Pearsons, Uncle Nicky

Spoiler alert! This story contains details from "This Is Us" Season 3, Episode 12, "Songbird Road Part 2."

Not all family reunions are happy. 

Tuesday's episode of "This Is Us" returned at last to the modern-day Pearson clan in the middle of meeting their long-lost Uncle Nick (Griffin Dunne). In the previous episode, which aired Jan. 29, the Big Three met the elder Nick for the first time and found out why Jack (Milo Ventimiglia) claimed his brother was dead for so many years: Jack believed Nick had intentionally killed a child in Vietnam. 

"Part 2" was less about the novelty of meeting a man whose family thought he was dead and more about reckoning with what it means to meet family later in life. This is a topic "Us" covered extensively in Season 1, when Randall (Sterling K. Brown) formed a relationship with his biological father, William (Ron Cephas Jones).

But to the show's credit, it doesn't repeat William's story. Nick doesn't move in to be a grandfatherly figure to the kids. He isn't dying, and he isn't the one who feels he's done wrong in the relationship. He's just a solitary, troubled guy, thrust into the touchy, emotional drama of the Pearsons. As much as Kevin (Justin Hartley) tries at first to force the relationship, Nick remains reticent and withdrawn. Over the course of the episode he opens up, but only a little. It's a quieter, less twisty episode than the last, but just as emotionally revealing. 

We left the Big Three and Nick in a moment of crisis, after the siblings returned to Nick's trailer to find him drinking, with a gun on the table in front of him. This week's episode picks up at that same moment. Kevin takes immediate action and insists Nick stay at the hotel with them, rather than in his trailer alone. After he calls Rebecca (Mandy Moore) to fill her in on what happened, she meets them at the hotel. 

Considering he's been the the flight director of the whole Vietnam War project, Kevin is ready and eager to do everything he can to help Nick, researching veterans' assistance programs and 12-step meetings. Kate and Randall, however, are more wary of jumping into Nick's life and trying to force him to make changes, and they both have their own life dramas. So the siblings leave Kevin and Rebecca to handle it.

And then the episode flashes back to the latter half of that weekend Jack saw Nick in 1992, when Rebecca and Kevin had an outing, while Kate and Randall hung out at home. So weird how that happens.

On their trip back, Kate and Randall remember that day, when the siblings had a "sequin fight" and invented "Pearson Pizza." Kate is wistful about the old house in Pittsburgh, and Randall suggests that they take a detour to their old neighborhood to see it again, even though the house burned down. 

When they arrive, they are initially rebuffed by the family living in the new house built there, but eventually talk their way in. Kate is giddy with nostalgia, but Randall makes it awkward, remembering that on the day they had the sequin fight Jack also yelled at them and threw a plate against the wall. 

Kate is worried that she has blocked out the bad parts of her childhood and her father's memory. But Randall reassures her, suggesting that Jack was a good father precisely because his kids remember the good times more than the bad. He gives Kate some handy parenting advice, and they go home. When Randall arrives, Beth is just leaving to attend to her mother, who has injured her hip. The conversation reeks of secrets and unanswered questions, and suggests Beth's family life will be addressed in next week's episode. 

Rebecca and Kevin have a more tumultuous journey. They convince Nick to check out the vet center Kevin found, but he's irritable and snappy when they get there, and Kevin feels like a failure. Rebecca tries to explain to Nick what a good man Kevin is, but Nick doesn't want to be a prop or a project. 

Eventually, though, Nicky opens up, just a little bit. He tells Rebecca a sweet story about Jack as a child, and lets Kevin fix the roof of his trailer. He says he will go to one meeting, although he doesn't promise to go to any more. They part, with Kevin hoping that they'll see each other again someday. 

As Rebecca and Kevin are driving away, Kevin isn't nearly as elated as you might expect, given what he accomplished. A quick flashback to earlier during their trip shows that at one point, when he was trying to clean up Nick's trailer alone, Kevin relapsed, and drank a bottle of whiskey. With Zoey (Melanie Liburd) and Beth off to D.C. to attend to their mother, Kevin will likely be alone when he gets home.

None of the Pearsons ever get to be happy for too long, it seems.