This Is Us favorite moment: season 3 episode 16’s the butter churn kid

Every episode of This Is Us is filled with special moments, whether it’s glances exchanged, one liners, or entire scenes. And sometimes, it’s a background actor.

Last week’s episode of This Is Us featured the milestone of the Big Three’s first school dance, which filled Rebecca with sentimental feelings of nostalgia for her own first dance and feelings of disappointment for Jack when she learns he never got to have that right of passage.

The setting and style of the Big Three’s dance surely brought out feelings of nostalgia for viewers of their same generation as the class of ’92 walked onto the dance floor to the sound of Snap!’s “The Power.” Kevin, bow-tied and hair slicked back, was clearly channelling Tom Cruise’s Risky Business (1983), while Kate sported a logo-patched jean jacket.

As the Pearsons arrive at the school gym, several student extras are already strutting their stuff on the dance floor. One student in particular embodies the “awkwardness and anticipation” that Rebecca remembers so well from her first dance as he studiously performs a perfectly graceless butter churn. It is delightfully awkward and sweetly funny and sets the scene and the mood perfectly.

He’s just some random kid, perfectly anonymous and not very stylish, but he’s out there doing his own thing and that’s part of why he stands out from the crowd.

This is his most prominent moment, but he can be seen throughout the dance if you keep an eye on the background. At one point he even seems to be watching Jack and Rebecca just before they sneak off to the library. He is racked into focus briefly when Rebecca suggests there are enough chaperones for the moment and he seems to be looking right at Jack.

He even shows up in the left-hand side of this still from the episode. Sometimes its the little details that make the biggest difference, especially when setting the mood of the scene.