‘This Is Us’ Return: Viewers ‘Helped’ By Three-Week Olympic Break Before Show Returns Claims NBC Head
This Is Us viewers will reportedly be “helped” by the series three-week Bejing Olympic break, claims an NBC head. The brief intermission will reportedly allow viewers a complete viewing experience as the series winds to a close this May. Initially, the NBC series was to air without any breaks throughout the season. However, this brief period of reflection will benefit viewers more so than repeat episodes, which would have reportedly aired at some point throughout the season in order for This Is Us to end as scheduled.
‘This Is Us’ slated to return to NBC Feb. 22 after a temporary hiatus for the Winter Olympics
The Winter Olympic Games began on Feb. 2 and will continue through Feb. 20, reported Business Insider. NBC postponed the season 6 premiere of This Is Us to Jan. 2022 to limit the number of starts and stops during the show’s final bow.
Season 6 will contain 18 episodes as the story of the Pearson family winds down.
A new episode titled “Our Little Island Girl: Part Two” will air on Feb. 22. This Beth-centric installment was co-written by Susan Kelechi Watson (Beth) and Eboni Freeman and will delve deeper into Beth’s attempt at revisiting her dream of a successful dance school and her conflict about its potential for repeat failure.
It is a partner episode to the first installment that featured Beth titled “Our Little Island Girl.” That episode aired during season 3.
‘This Is Us’ viewers will be ‘helped’ by this temporary break in the long run when the series returns
In an interview with Variety, Steve Kern, head of scheduling for NBC, claimed this three-week break will create a cohesive viewing experience for fans of This Is Us.
“We don’t love having it off for two weeks [during the Olympics], but those two weeks would have been repeats or preempts anyway because there are 18 episodes and 21 weeks,” Kern explained.
“And so it actually helps us. For the last season, it’s a much better viewing experience to know every week the show is on, it’s an original episode,” he continued.
“When we made the decision to hold This Is Us for January, we knew it was going to have to come off for not only the two weeks of the Olympics but also for a third week. The State of the Union is usually on a Tuesday,” Kern said of NBC’s programming plan for the series.
“So we knew going in that was part of the plan. We felt like the best thing for fans was basically to have 18 original episodes over 21 weeks,” he concluded.
Fans will have to endure one more break during the show’s final season
This Is Us will go on hiatus on Mar. 1 for President Joe Biden’s televised “State of the Union” address.
Following that one-week break, This Is Us will program new episodes through to its series finale.
