Talk:This Is Us season 3

E06 (Kamsahamnida) Summary

Trillfendi, I just want to get ahead of any possible issue here. I was writing a summary for episode 6 at the same time as you; when I went to save my edit, your content was already in the article. However, because your edit summary indicated that your text was incomplete, and I agree with that assessment, I substituted mine, which I had completed, in its entirety. Please don't construe this as your edits being unwelcome. --DavidK93 (talk) 15:51, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Because my content was already in the article, I’m politely putting it back. 🙂Trillfendi (talk) 15:55, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

I've edited the summary again, incorporating some of the text previously authored by each of us, along with new text. I don't know of a Wikipedia policy that supports retaining content by virtue of its existence; if you believe something you wrote is better than what I changed it to, let's discuss rather than either of us revert. --DavidK93 (talk) 16:42, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

And I thought common sense was common.Trillfendi (talk) 16:44, 31 October 2018 (UTC)

Trillfendi and Chairhandlers, you appear to have edit warred over the episode summary, without discussing the matter beyond edit summaries, having both reverted each other's changes. I'm inserting myself, because I am the main author of the last version of the content that Trillfendi edited, and which Chairhandlers reverted it to. So, first off, to ensure there are no misrepresentations: I am not impartial; I believe that my version of the summary is better than Trillfendi's, and I support the other changes I propose here; I intend to argue those points. But I want Trillfendi and Chairhandlers to make their points, as well; I want us to discuss all points, and I'm open to being convinced that some proposed edit is better than what I suggest. There are four distinguishable edits that have each been reverted twice and are therefore at dispute. I'm going to break them out into four separate threads below, so please put replies in the thread it actually pertains to; Trillfendi, please use a colon to signify an indented response, rather than an asterisk that should signify bulleted items. (I'm writing all four comments at once, but I will signature them each separately, to facilitate independent discussions.) --DavidK93 (talk) 15:58, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

1) The text, "Kate announces her pregnancy, but Toby remains depressed and their dog Audio gets seriously ill." in the "present" section of the article was changed to "Kate tells her family she’s pregnant, but her announcement looms over Toby’s depression.", at the beginning of the article. No reason for the wording changes was provided, but the reason given for moving the text is "Kate announces her pregnancy at the VERY BEGINNING of the episode, not in the middle." I disagree with both the move and the wording change. This is Us episode summaries--especially those that editors have deliberately spent time improving, and discussing those improvements--have grouped descriptions by time period and then by storyline, rather than interspersing them in as-aired scene order. This is not only precedent and consensus, but supported by MOS:PLOT, which states that "Summaries written in a real-world perspective do not need to stay true to the fiction's chronological order if going out of order improves and condenses the summary. A work with two concurrent, interchanging storylines is likely better told by summarizing one storyline in full, followed by the second storyline." This supports mentioning Kate's pregnancy news adjacent to the rest of Kate's storyline, instead of at the beginning of the summary due to its being the episode's first scene. I think the wording change decreases the quality of the passage. It decreases the word count by 2 (from 15 to 13), yet cuts in half the amount of information in the passage; the actual part of the original text that deals with the topics still covered, Kate's pregnancy and Toby's depression, was only 8 words, so that's been increased by 5 at the cost of the information about Audio. The storyline of Audio being sick was the subject of multiple scenes, and parallels Toby's illness to tie in with Kate's uncertainty over motherhood; however, we could easily cut the word "seriously" and maybe even the words "their dog." Also, "Kate announces her pregnancy" is more accurate than "Kate tells her family she’s pregnant," because Kate also tells her friend Madison about the pregnancy. --DavidK93 (talk) 15:58, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

2) The sentence "Young Randall tricks his parents into thinking “a new kid named Dylan” is bullying him." was added. If this passage had not been subjected to two reverts, I would simply attempt to rewrite it without bringing it to the Talk page. The way the summary is currently written, I don't think that this 15-word passage adds much to the text, which at 220 words exceeds the guideline length of 200 words. Because we've already explained that Randall wanted to learn to fight, and why, the pretext he used is not very important, and is confusing because it's been written after the part of the storyline that actually followed it. That said, we could include this information by changing "Lacking Jack's DNA, Randall wants to learn to fight like him; Jack assures Randall he is already a fighter who uses his intelligence. Young Randall tricks his parents into thinking “a new kid named Dylan” is bullying him." to "Lacking Jack's DNA, Randall pretends to be bullied so Jack will teach him to fight like him; Jack assures Randall he is already a fighter who uses his intelligence." 29 words instead of 38. --DavidK93 (talk) 15:58, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

3) The clause, "partially because he lives all the way in Alpine, New Jersey" is inserted. This is another 11 words that, while not inaccurate, is not necessary either, and pushes the length of the summary. And this is another passage that has been reverted twice, making me uncomfortable with just trying to edit it myself. How about changing "Randall fails to win over his rival's constituency at a black church, partially because he lives all the way in Alpine, New Jersey." to "Randall fails to win over congregants at his rival Solomon Brown's church, where Brown highlights Randall's nonresidency." This reduces the passage from 23 to 18 words, about splitting the difference. --DavidK93 (talk) 15:58, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

4) Finally, "Toby struggles to rouse himself" was changed to "Toby begins to pick himself up," with an edit summary explanation that "The phrase “picks himself up” is specifically said in the episode in reference to Toby’s depression." That explanation is not strictly true. The closest I could find was where Kate says, "I'm gonna get you through this, Tobe. And if you fall again, I will be right here to pick you back up." That's about Kate supporting Toby, rather than Toby's own personal recovery from mental illness. Also, even if the exact phrase were used in the dialogue, we have no obligation to quote the episode directly when we can summarize the content more succinctly. But my main concern here is that the text "Toby begins to pick himself up" may portray Toby's recovery as more successful than the episode's dialogue does. When Kate notes that Toby "felt good enough to get dressed," he responds, "I don't. I want to, and I thought if I went through the motions that I would, but I don't." To better describe what was shown in the episode, how about "Toby feels unable to rouse himself"? I think "rouse himself" is more direct than the somewhat idiomatic "pick himself up," in addition to saving a word in a summary that already hits the guideline word limit. --DavidK93 (talk) 15:58, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

@DavidK93: I’m not going to bother to read all that since I already fixed the episode once and for all when it was tagged the other day. I’m only back over here since the season returns tonight and one thing needs to be sorted once and for all: if someone, anyone, no matter who it is, makes a summary it doesn’t take 3 or more people’s renditions of rewrites just to say the same thing. The difference is I adhere to what the writers wrote as close as possible, I don’t care what idioms are used. What matters is that the summary goes in sequential order as the timeline is completely non-linear and can pick up anywhere in a 40+ year timespan. The thing is, since the night this series debuted I have written a lot (especially season one where I wrote the majority of those episode summaries) of the summaries just to get the ball rolling for the viewers’ sake since nobody else was gonna do it for a while. I’m the type to put it there as soon as the episode is over and go from there. As one could see, those summaries haven’t been changed but for a few words here and there from what I had originally put; because as common sense would have it, people simply build on what’s already there and respect that if someone put effort in to make the summary, they don’t just go discarding someone else’s work. That’s not to say I’m the end all be all, but that’s how episode sumarries go. Someone starts it and others do their due diligence. Now when I wrote the summary of "Kamsahamnida", I was going blow by blow as I watched the episode until it froze up on me. I said I’d be back because there were all of 2 sentences to written when you decided he had to erase everything I already put instead of just finishing it off reasonably. But evidently you took it to mean I abandoned the episode completely and that everything I put was null and void... when I came back ~30 minutes later as evidenced by the so-called edit conflict. There doesn’t have to be a policy for what’s already understood. When the episode airs today, if someone goes and writes a summary immediately, all we’re supposed to do is tweeze it up. Trillfendi (talk) 10:23, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Trillfendi I regret not going back to edit the summary after I tried to engage you on it. I mistakenly thought you'd be interested in such engagement. Now that I know you are not, I will simply work to edit the article while ignoring you, now that you have made it so clear that you do not wish to participate in any conversations about the article content. --DavidK93 (talk) 21:12, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

E10 (The Last Seven Weeks) Summary

The summary for this episode was recently reverted by Trillfendi; she did not use the undo function, but she replaced the summary with its previous content. I have reverted that reversion, because I believe the three edits she reverted (including one by me, which was the most significant of the three) were all constructive. Trillfendi has expressed what I believe to be a novel idea about editing summaries, which is that they should only be "tweezed up," but not rewritten. I deliberately rewrote the summary in its entirety, because I saw several issues with the summary as written at that time (which was written mainly by an IP user). It had significant text dedicated to, in my opinion, recreating the experience of watching the episode in describing events ("The episode starts with the night of election and shows anticipation in the faces of the Pearson family."), when the content could be included more concisely with a simple chronological ordering and storyline grouping, per MOS:PLOT. It omitted most of Randall's storyline, including an entire time setting (at the Vietnam Memorial in 1998) and the storyline beats with his moral quandary over the oppo research, Beth's agency in resuming the campaign, Reverend Hawley's neutrality, and the substance of Randall's late-night conversation with Beth. I did not believe that the best way to improve the article was to merely rearrange the existing sentences and correct them for grammar, so I rewrote it instead, although I did deliberately keep a couple of phrases that, although I would have written them differently, got the job done as they were, and I wanted to be sensitive to Trillfendi's previous implied criticism that I care overly for "what idioms are used." Two subsequent editors made small edits to the text. Trillfendi reverted these contributions, with the implication that she found nothing of value in them. Her edit summary, "Don’t remove accurate infomation (yes, that means “original complete set of 1977 Star Wars action figures” not “Star Wars toys”) or go rearranging the chronology." is also problematic; she describes edits inaccurately (she changed "toys" to "action figures," and that change stood in in my edit and through to the last version she reverted), and purports to give orders to other editors. I try to avoid reverting edits that aren't obvious vandalism, but I do feel comfortable with a one-time revert of a reversion of constructive edits. --DavidK93 (talk) 20:29, 22 January 2019 (UTC)

Once again, you did the exact opposite; instead of replacing a few sentences, you completely deviated of the episode. The IP user didn’t have a strong command of the English language but at the very least they recounted the events as they happened which all was required was copy-eding. That tidbit about the Vietnam War memorial barely took up 5 minutes of the episode. Trillfendi (talk) 22:21, 11 February 2019 (UTC)

Trillfendi, there is no such thing as "the exact opposite" of an editing philosophy. But I did what I said I did, and you are correct to identify that I did not do what you suggested. I don't know what it means to "completely deviate of the episode." I think you mean that I deviated from what you see as the main plot, but it's not clear which specific plot or events you consider that to be. In your edit summary, you wrote "(putting emphasis on irrelevant subplots defeats the purpose of the episode. The episode is about the last 7 weeks leading up to election day. Not a memory from his teenage years. Not Zoe and Kevin’s relationship status.)" I disagree, in multiple respects, that this argument justifies your reversion. You claim that I put emphasis on "irrelevant subplots." Like most episodes of This is Us, "The Last Seven Weeks" contains a subplot for each of the three Pearson siblings; the election is the title plotline, but Kevin and Kate each have a strong narrative thread in the episode as well. I summarized those plotlines as I did the election plotline. You also deleted portions of the summary that pertained directly to the election plotline, such as the oppo research and the pulpit speech. You said that my summary content "defeats the purpose of the episode." But my content doesn't affect the episode; the purpose of Wikipedia is not to fulfill the purpose of the episode, but rather to fulfill the purpose of a prose summary of the episode. You said that the episode isn't about "a memory from his teenage years." This is Us uses a consistent storytelling technique that juxtaposes events in multiple time periods. So the episode is partly about the events of the flashback, which covers two elements: the ongoing story of Nicky, and Randall's search for meaning (bookended by the end scene; you deleted the content that described it). Wikipedia's existing This is Us summaries generally summarize the scenes that don't take place in the present, which has been successful in presenting the plot of the entire episode. I do not believe the inclusion of the 1990s DC scene in the summary, as I wrote it, put an inappropriate emphasis on the scene; so your statement that the episode is not "about" the events of the scene is accurate, inasmuch as a television episode is not typically about the events of a single scene, but rather is about the events of all scenes in the episode taken together as a single artistic product. The scene is in the episode, so the episode is partly about the events of the scene, and so I included a description of the scene as part of the description of the episode. You mentioned that the scene was "barely 5 minutes" of the episode. The running time of a standard hour of commercial television is 42 minutes, so that's 5/42 = 11.9% of the episode. 22 of my summary's 203 (oops, slightly over guideline) words were about that scene, so that's 22/203 = 10.8% of the summary. The emphasis on the scene in the summary could thus be regarded as highly faithful to the emphasis of the scene in the episode. You also wrote that the episode isn't about "Zoe and Kevin's relationship status," but you actually reverted the summary to a version that dedicates more space to this subplot. My last version spent 55 words of Kevin and Zoe, while the one you reverted it to uses 77 words there. I actually thought the IP user's command of the English language was just fine; I simply thought that the summary was a little disjointed, slightly inaccurate, and not fully in keeping with MOS:PLOT. For those reasons, as I stated, I didn't feel that the goal of writing a good summary of the episode was best met by copy-editing the existing summary. As a stopgap measure, however, I have gone ahead and copy-edited that summary. Nevertheless, I believe that my previous version was better, and to be clear, I reject your position that Wikipedia content should only be copy-edited and never rewritten. Do you have a policy, guideline, or essay that supports this position? You wrote that the summary you prefer "recounted the events as they happened." It, indeed, contained a description of events that were depicted in the episode. The summary I wrote also contains a description of events that were depicted in the episode. You have written many criticisms about the summary I wrote, which I believe I have answered here. It doesn't seem to me that you have written much favorable about the summary you prefer, though. What are your arguments that state that the summary to which you reverted the article, as copy-edited, is superior to the summary that I wrote and prefer? --DavidK93 (talk) 19:35, 19 February 2019 (UTC)

E13 (Our Little Island Girl) Summary

Trillfendi, I see that you edited the summary for "Our Little Island Girl" to rearrange some of the sentences in the plot summary, without substantively changing them. The summary was previously organized chronologically within the storyline, presenting the story of Beth's youth followed by Beth's storyline in the show's present timeframe. I think your edit was intended to instead present the summary in the episode's scene-by-scene order. I believe that the resulting summary is more difficult to follow, and differs from both guidelines and consensus. As the summary lacks the visual cues of Beth being either a child or an adult, a person who didn't see the episode may not readily be able to determine that two consecutive sentences about Beth and her parents are separated by twenty years in their settings. This issue is nonexistent when the summary states "In the past," followed by the entire past storyline, and then "In the present," followed by the entire present storyline. The actual year, or other information about the setting, serves the same purpose when followed by one storyline's summary in its entirety. This is the format that the community has settled on for This is Us episode summaries, and is supported by MOS:PLOT, which states, "A work with two concurrent, interchanging storylines is likely better told by summarizing one storyline in full, followed by the second storyline." Rather than revert the change, I am writing here to invite you to make a case as to why your preferred sentence order improves the readability or clarity of the episode's plot summary. --DavidK93 (talk) 20:47, 5 March 2019 (UTC)

Neutrality isues with the episode descriptions

Hello again, everyone! I wanted to post here with a concern I had regarding the overall tone of the episode descriptions. I worry that they are not sufficiently neutral. I have a particular concern that the wording as it now stands in the descriptions for this season may be making Randall out to be the "bad guy" in many respects. We know that Beth said she had car trouble when she was late to the dinner Randall wanted her to attend with him, but we never saw that, and given that she wasn't all that keen on going anyways (which was a sentiment that was shown through her on camera), I have a hard time believing what she said in that case, because we saw how she felt about it. As for Randall "reneging" on his promise to drop out when Beth was no longer on board, she made that request of him after he had made promises to the constituents that were being overlooked. And we know that they were overlooked because they agreed with and elaborated on the issues Randall cited in the debate. What these examples come down to (and I won't mention the "R & B" episode which aired Tuesday night, though that would add to the proof of what I am concerned about here) is the fact that the actor playing Randall wouldn't be billed third in this series if he was the one "reneging" on promises or being unreasonable. In order to maintain the neutral point of view that Wikipedia guidelines mandate, we cannot afford to allow biased wording to shape the episode descriptions. To do so would go against other Wikipedia policies as well, at least, insofar as I understand them. Just wanted to post these thoughts, for what they are worth. --Jgstokes (talk) 06:16, 27 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi Jgstokes. I'm just noticing your comment. I think you're shedding light on the fact that Randall, like many fictional characters and real people, is complex and sometimes makes difficult choices. It's not unusual for a major character in a work, even a top-billed character, to make controversial, unpopular, or immoral decisions. You are right that Randall made a commitment to his constituents, but he no less made a commitment to his wife. He told his wife one thing, and then did something different, thus reneging on the original promise. Certainly, many alternative wordings are likely possible, and if you feel you have a different way to describe this plot development in a way that you think is more neutral, I encourage you to edit the summary accordingly. Describing Randall's actions in this way is not intended to ascribe negative character traits to him, but at the same time it is not necessarily unacceptable to ascribe negative character traits to a work's major characters. In this case, I think the conflict you're describing is indeed present in the work, and shows that Randall often overextends himself and overcommits his resources, sometimes to his or his family's detriment--something with which I can identify personally. Ultimately, the plot summary should describe the narrative facts of what happened on screen; further assessment of Randall's character would be better suited to a "Reception" or "Analysis" section. --DavidK93 (talk) 13:12, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Production - Casting

In "Casting", R. C. Jones is mentioned as still being series regular when he was credited as such only on 2nd season after the character's passing, while in S3 he was special guest star. And the source article doesn't even mention who's main cast, who isn't. Gevorg89 (talk) 19:47, 25 December 2023 (UTC)