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After quite a few emotionally heavy and exhausting episodes, season two’s sixteenth episode, “Vegas, Baby” changed the tone as the Pearsons took on Vegas! Randall and Kevin joined Toby and his “friends” in Vegas for his bachelor party while Beth joined Kate and her friends for quite the bachelorette celebrations. Of course that doesn’t mean there wasn’t drama and some very emotional moments, so check out a full recap from the episode, “Vegas, Baby.”
After the last episode before the hiatus, fans saw Deja show up on Beth and Randall’s doorstep and the episode revealed she did so because she and her mom didn’t have any money to pay their heat bill. As they headed off to Vegas however, the issue became a huge fight for Beth and Randall after Beth wanted to try to let go of Deja’s problems to enjoy Vegas and Randall accused her of being heartless. If that wasn’t bad enough, after Randall gets a call from Deja and goes to find Beth, he finds her at the wrong time as she is on-stage surrounded by the shirtless men from the Magic Mike Live! show.
As Kate uses Beth and Randall’s fight to bring up her own issues, which is namely that she feels like Beth has always been more important to Randall than she has, it leads to a great Kate and Randall moment, which doesn’t come around all that often. After they reconcile, Kate and Beth also have their own bonding moment where Kate tells Beth she was always intimidated by her, and Beth opens up to Kate about being worried and scared and Kate realizes Beth is full of heart and not heartless at all.
Meanwhile, Toby’s Bachelor party also isn’t going as well as he hoped, with Randall bailing, Kate informs her brother that all Toby wanted was to spend time with Kevin and Randall. Toby eventually opens up to the two that he actually has a younger brother but they have never been close, and admits that the three other guys he brought in were basically just strangers, he just wanted to look cool and like he had friends for Kevin and Randall.
Meanwhile in flashbacks, audiences still got tons of Jack and Rebecca time, made all that much more bittersweet as the two celebrated their anniversary. Much like Beth and Randall however, Rebecca was having a hard time because she kept being outdone by Jack’s romantic and grand gestures and after they agreed not to exchange gifts, the Big Three planned their own grand gesture. The kids set up sparkling lights and a romantic spot on the roof for their parents to watch a meteor shower together, where yet again Jack delivered a heart-stopping speech as he told Rebecca that she was his meteor-shower.
Another important detail from the episode was Kevin’s battle with sobriety. For someone to have the addiction issues he did and still be fresh out of rehab, going to Vegas for a bachelor party is full of red flags. Things get more precarious when Kevin thinks he has been cut from Ron Howard’s film that he did with Sylvester Stallone, but instead of drinking Kevin headed to the gym to deal with his frustrations there, relieving everyone that he doesn’t seem to be going down that dark road again.
Eventually as everyone heads back home, Beth and Randall open up to each other about Deja and Beth decides to take Randall to where Deja lives with her mother so he can check up on her. Instead of finding out the two are okay, Beth and Randall discover that Deja and her mother are homeless and living in their car.