'This Is Us' recap: 1x13 - 'The Big Day' 

Milo Ventimiglia, Mandy Moore, Justin Hartley, Sterling K. Brown

At some point, the Jack and Rebecca backstory fatigue will probably start to set in, but today is not that day. Not when we’re getting such delicious new birthday sprinkles as these.

Of course, we already know what happened on “The Big Day” and most of what was said, but it seems putting on such a brave face for those we love is not just Jack’s game — there were some other husbands we know walking around in severe pain that day, too. They were just more adept at hiding it.

If there’s one thing this show has absolutely nailed — and I’m speaking from experience here — it’s how wackadoodle certain moments of pregnancy can be for an expecting mom. In the early stages, Rebecca’s obsessed with being with child(ren), and in the blink of an eye, she absolutely hates it. By this point, her shoes don’t fit anymore; she’s starting to waddle to a socially prohibitive degree; and oh, yeah, her mood’s bouncing around more aimlessly than a lotto ball. Yep, been there for

Her anxiety over having yet to properly nest for her forthcoming babies is all-consuming. So much so, in fact, she fails to realize she’s kicking Jack out of the house — basically, because his breathing is annoying her right now — on his own dang birthday. Her cavalier cruelty is top-notch at this point, slinging cuts like “Jack, when you’re done talking to your girlfriend, can you bring up some toilet paper?” while he’s on the phone with Miguel, who just so happens to throw out a golf club invite to give him an excuse to give Rebecca some space … after the vital TP roll delivery, of course.

feel like Miguel’s a traitor and a half for what will happen with Rebecca? Or is it just me? That’s going to be a really hard sell for both of them when we get to explaining their hookup, because NO.)

Jack actually turns to prayer over her endless ire in the car, but his answer is simply Rebecca sticking her head out the front door to say — probably for the 50th time — “Hey, thanks again for the bathroom sex at Froggy’s, Jack.” If this show were taped before a live audience, that’s when the bemused “ohhhhhh” crowd sounds would kick in, but alas.

It turns out to be a pretty good thing they spend the day apart, because Jack gets to bear witness to the kinda dad he

want to be — some spendthrift just inventing reasons to get away from his family — and Rebecca has a sweet epiphany that she’s married a good egg who’s going to be an amazing dad. She penguin-walks her way to the nearest store — which just so happens to be a liquor store — equipped with a recipe for some fancy almond chocolate cake, the ingredients of which aren’t on hand at this particular booze mart. She lays it on thick with the poor cashier about how she

to make her man something homemade because she’s been torching him so far today, and that’s when he gets the bright idea to have her squeeze Twinkie icing onto a muffin, and voila! Homemade birthday cake … or about as close to it as she can possibly get right now.

As we know from way back in the pilot, all he really cares about anyway is the traditionally risqué birthday shimmy she’s supposed to do for him, but, hey, at least we know where he got the strange yellow “Terrible Towel” to cover his junk with back when —

how he got that video camera they use to make so many great home movies.

After that, there’s not much new for us to learn about Jack and Rebecca’s journey through their hospital stay: Her water breaks pre-celebratory coitus, they get a sub-in doctor because Dr. Schneider’s appendix burst, and, well, two of their three babies make it through the delivery safely, which is when Kyle-turned-Randall enters the picture. Oh, and they’ve got a predisposition to loving Stevie Wonder music, apparently, but who doesn’t?

In the backdrop of this bittersweet moment of their lives are two men grappling with their own sets of agonizing challenges: the ebullient Dr. K and Joe, the fireman who dropped off Randall at the hospital and accurately claimed that “life is strange.”

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