【Bawdy Tales of Edo: Octopus & Sea Shell】

This recap contains spoilers for This Is Us Season 1,Bawdy Tales of Edo: Octopus & Sea Shell episode 12, titled "The Big Day."

After the many developments of last week's episode, this week's installment takes place wholly in the past, transporting us back to the day that Jack, Rebecca, Kevin, Kate and Randall became a family.

Rebecca has pregnancy brain

As this week’s episode begins, Rebecca is so pregnant, she’s having trouble getting up and putting on her shoes. Oh, and her shoes don’t fit anyway, because her feet are swollen.

She’s irritable and distracted enough that she forgets Jack’s birthday, which he doesn’t mention because he’s just trying to get through another day alive.

Rebecca is so hormonal that she kicks Jack out of the house to try and get some alone time -- but it doesn't take long before she looks at the calendar, sees that it’s his birthday, and realizes that she's a monster.

Rebecca is determined to make Jack a birthday cake to make up for her grumpiness and walks, no, waddles, to a nearby store to find ingredients. Alas, it's a liquor store, not a grocery store, so the best she can do is a muffin coated with Twinkie filling.

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Jack, meanwhile, winds up at a country club with buddy Miguel, who tries to convince him to buy himself some golf clubs because he’s inevitably going to need to get away from the wife and kids after the triplets are born.

Jack protests and winds up leaving Miguel and a couple of other weary husbands after hearing them grouse about their home lives. Jack realizes he wants to be with Rebecca; as moody as she is, that’s where he wants – and needs – to be.

It seems like so long ago that we saw Jack drinking and being emotionally unavailable in episode 2 (even if that incident technically takes place months afterthe events of this episode). In the episodes since that one brief wobble, Jack has seemed almost tooperfect.

As we saw last episode, he's willing to swallow his pride to ask his abusive father for money, and this week, he realized that as stressful as being a father to triplets (and a husband to a heavily pregnant wife) may be, he still wants to be around for the messy stuff. He's a genuinely good guy, and it's sad that such patience and understanding seem unrealistic compared to the relationships we usually see on TV.

Is he too good to be true? Maybe, but it's so lovely to watch him show up again and again, reminding us just how strong his bond with Rebecca is.

Back at home, Rebecca apologizes to Jack for forgetting his birthday. He says if she does the special dance, all is forgiven. We already know what the special dance leads to: Rebecca’s water breaks.

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Dr. K wrenches our hearts -- and steals an Emmy nomination

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Elsewhere, Dr. K starts his days alone in the house where he lived with his late wife. His son and daughter-in-law are worried about him because he’s alone whenever he’s not working.

He even talks to the chair at the dining room table they used to sit at together, as if his wife was still there -- and our heart breaks for the lonely doc.

Dr. K could be dating a lovely widow who lives in the neighborhood – she invites him to dinner when they bump into each other in the grocery store, but he’s just not ready.

In another heartbreaking scene, Dr. K pays a visit to his wife's grave, confiding that he’s not sure if he can go on without her, even though he knows she’d want him to try. Did we mention this is the episode that’s going to snag Gerald McRaney an Emmy nomination? Because it is.

After meeting Jack and Rebecca at the hospital and realizing that he can still make a positive impact in people's lives, we later see Dr. K having dinner with the lovely widow at her house.

Here's hoping that they have lots of dinners together, because it's kind of impossible not to love Dr. K; we want him to be happy and not work 80 hours a week. The man deserves to relax a little, for Pete’s sake.

Firemen need saving too

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Remember the guy standing next to Jack at the hospital nursery window after the babies were born? That guy turns out to be Joe, the fireman who found baby Randall on the doorstep of the firehouse.

We've seen William leave baby Randall there and hide nearby until he sees the baby is taken in at the firehouse. What we didn’t see until this episode: Joe takes the baby home first, where he’s trying to mend his troubled marriage and thinks the baby might be the glue that can hold them together.

Unfortunately, we can also see from his wife’s expression that it’s not. Joe takes the baby to the hospital after she tells him a kid won’t make everything better between them.

When Joe returns home after the hospital, he asks his wife if they can start over again and reintroduces himself. She does the same and they start to chat with each other like it’s a first date. Maybe there’s hope for them yet.

All the feels

Okay, let’s tally it up: how many times were you punched in the feels this week? We’d say about four times -- that Dr. K story made us full-on cry. Even in an episode that's all flashbacks, This Is Us proves just as potent as it does when it's hitting us with twists, and that's an impressive skill. We're dehydrated, but strangely full of joy.

This Is Usairs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. on NBC.

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