“That’ll Be the Day” is fittingly framed around the idea of time running out: Kevin is on a mission to make his amends, Randall is doing too much too quickly in his new business/personal venture, and in the past timeline, Jack is trying to get “Big Three Homes” off the ground, a direct continuation from the hopeful place where we found him last week.
The Randall section of the episode feels the most superfluous, if only because its real function seems to click into a sort of thematic puzzle. We kick off where we left him in “Clooney,” taking over William’s old building and vowing to fix every tenant’s problems, one at a time. “I suddenly realized I can do this,” he tells Beth. “My dad was in construction. It’s in my blood.” Beth’s cynicism is again well earned here, imploring Randall to take things slow, but he doesn’t — or maybe can’t — listen. He tries to do a month’s work in a day: fixing washing machines, correcting heaters, plunging toilets. And he’s mostly successful. So too, for that matter, is Kevin, who joins his brother for the day in an effort to distract himself from making amends with the person he’s most scared to face: Sophie. Kevin’s even more obsessive than Randall is — he enthusiastically takes up one woman’s request to tear a wall down in her apartment.
Of course, things don’t go according to plan. Randall leaves a hole in an area where he was working, and an infestation of roaches appears almost immediately, forcing him and Beth to relocate the residents to a motel temporarily. Kevin won’t even leave the building, still destroying a wall even as the rest of the building has been evacuated. Randall goes to get him, and it’s only here that the story line really connects. “I’m almost 40 years old and I’m starting a new career,” Randall confesses to Kevin. “Feel like I’m already running out of time.” He then adds: “It’s hard to picture myself outliving Dad.”
Kate struggles with this in a different way. Suspecting Toby of watching porn, she instead finds that he’s hiding an aggressive dog hunt on his laptop — pictures of cute puppies, links to animal shelters, and so on. He admits he wants a pup, acknowledging in the process that he knows it’s a “sensitive issue” for Kate. (More on that in a minute.) But in “That’ll Be the Day” we see Kate try to push past that pain. She visits an animal shelter, where a lovely employee played by Master of None’s Lena Waithe introduces her to Audio — basically the cutest dog in existence. Kate is smitten immediately upon making eye contact with him. She goes through with adopting the dog after plenty of reluctance — including a teary scene, played beautifully by Chrissy Metz, where she tells him she won’t be able….
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