WARNING: The following contains spoilers for This Is Us Season 6, Episode 6, “Our Little Island Girl: Part 2,” which aired Tuesday, Feb. 22 on NBC.
Beth Pearson is a fan-favorite on This Is Us and rightfully so. She’s strong, smart, funny, and she and Randall make the perfect couple even when dealing with their daughter’s relationship. But as the series has gone on, we’ve learned more about Beth, including how she danced before she could walk. Beth was a dancer for her entire childhood — but by the time she met Randall and the rest of the Pearsons, she had quit and left that part of her identity behind.
That’s why it was so exciting to watch Beth confront her old dance teacher Vincent, who contributed to her quitting the sport she loved. In Season 6, Episode 6, “Our Little Island Girl: Part 2,” fans got the opportunity to see Beth’s journey through dance and how she was able to reconnect with that part of herself in a meaningful way. It’s meaning not only to her, but to the dancers of the future as well. The episode opened reminding audiences of how Beth loved to dance even as a little girl and how encouraging her father was of her passions (another little way the show’s parents support their kids).
What this episode glazed over — but the series had explored more deeply in other installments — was that Beth’s mother was always hard on her for following her dreams instead of a realistic career path. She wasn’t the sweet, supportive mom that Jack’s mother was shown to be. So Beth had competing messages at home about her dance career, which contributed to high tensions within her family. Her father then passed away when she was a teenager. This loss understandably haunted Beth and it had an effect on her dancing: it made her unsteady emotionally, which led to her being unsteady physically.
Vincent was Beth’s dance teacher and she was his favorite student — up until she started to struggle. As soon as that happened he dropped her and replaced her. Beth had already lost her biggest supporter and then she lost her mentor. No one reached out a hand to help her get back up after her family tragedy and keep going. Vincent’s abandonment led to her quitting dance all together.
But Beth was able to find her way back to dance in Season 6. She tried opening her own studio, but the COVID-19 pandemic closed it before it can get any momentum. If she hadn’t grown and overcome so much in her life already, she may have been done with dance again, but instead she kept going by becoming a scholarship director at a dance academy, where her whole job is to find great dancers who need a little support and give that to them.
Beth became the teacher that Vincent never was when she encouraged her student Stacey to get back up and keep working after Stacey took a fall. This moment gave Beth the strength to confront Vincent in a way she was never able to before. She called him to tell him that he failed her, and she was right in her assertion that her quitting dance was his failure and not hers. A teacher’s responsibility is to bring out the best in their students and send them in the right direction, even when it would be easier to leave them behind. Beth’s confrontation with Vincent was years in the making and not only was it satisfying for This Is Us fans to witness, but it frees Beth to be a teacher herself.
To see what’s next for Beth and the Pearsons, tune into the final season of This Is Us, which airs Tuesdays at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
About The Author
