Literally what is This Is Us doing to Beth and Randall right now?

This Is Us has been slowly blowing up Beth and Randall’s relationship throughout Season 3, and their eruption has been hard to watch.

If you walked away from the latest episode of This Is Us numb and wide-eyed, don’t worry. You’re not the only one. “Don’t Take My Sunshine Away” did just that with Beth and Randall. Whatever sunshine and civility still lingered in their fraught marriage was stripped clean by one selfish and savage voicemail from Randall. Our one true Pearson pairing is officially on the rocks.

But the state of their relationship isn’t the sole source of frustration. It’s much more layered than the will-they-or-won’t-they divorce question. This Is Us has dismantled these characters to their rawest forms, a stark contrast from the versions we met back in Season 1. Between career changes and parenting struggles, Beth and Randall have shape-shifted and seen some things. Well, those things come at a cost.

In “Don’t Take My Sunshine Away,” Beth and Randall’s arc reaches a stalemate, as a season’s worth of storytelling arrives at a moment of unavoidable finality. As Randall’s commitments to his new post as Philadelphia’s city councilman eclipses his responsibilities at home, he asks (and expects) Beth to abandon her hard-earned return to dancing.

Logically, it makes sense. Beth started her new job after Randall started his and teaching dance isn’t as demanding. Right? Either way, it’s horribly selfish and un-Randall-like to lay a solution out on the table that doesn’t at least try to help everyone in his family get what they want. There’s a better option than Beth giving up her dream for Randall’s weird, late-in-the-game interest in political leadership.

Season 3 Randall largely focuses on what he wants, how he can help others outside of his home, and how those others view him. When Randall suspects that Beth bails on his “important” dinner with the city council president (she doesn’t), he leaves her a scathing voicemail. There’s no going back from that truly shocking message. Words were said and heard, and perhaps they were words that needed to be said and heard in order to begin the process of healing.

But healing seems so far from grasp. Beth and Randall have entered unforeseen territory, individually and together, and it’s not a pleasurable viewing experience. Obviously, it’s hard to watch two characters you love so much rip apart at the seams, but it’s doubly difficult to see a strong, flawed but likable character like Randall veer into a place that he shouldn’t belong. Has all his goodness led to this flirtation with abhorrence?

Naturally, This Is Us positions Randall as the “hero” of his own story, as a member of the Big Three and one of the series’ major leads. We’ve been trained to not only like him but to trust him and believe in him, which he’s for the most part earned in spades. But it’s almost as if we were supposed to take Randall’s side and view Beth as a villain in “Don’t Take My Sunshine Away.” And though she’s played her part in this marital mayhem, that is something we should never, ever do.

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Juxtaposing Randall’s tense present with a cute story of little Randall obsessing over his science grade rather than enjoying a middle school dance doesn’t excuse his behavior, nor does it offer any kind of meaningful insight as to why he left his wife a nasty voicemail. Why he can’t see that his career affects his family. Why he’s the one so far deep in the wrong that he can’t make heads or tails.

Maybe that’s a bit harsh for Randall Pearson, but he must be held accountable for his actions, and This Is Us appears to have backed into that driveway. He’ll finally have to contend with his near-fatal flaws of perfectionism and dutifulness in ways he hasn’t needed to in the past. He and Beth didn’t plop into this mess out of circumstance. Like all relationships and marriages, decisions add up, and his have been made without the big picture in mind.

Moving forward with the final two episodes of Season 3, the penultimate episode by the name “R&B” will trace Beth and Randall’s relationship from the beginning and incorporate the nuance that’s been missing from their season’s worth of fighting. From sleeping on the couch to Beth taking off her ring (but don’t read into that), everything will mount to a final showdown, in which both parties will undoubtedly take shots and accept their part of the blame.

When you’re so deep in the Pearson rabbit hole, understanding why the series has elected to tear down its endearing characters to messes of their former selves is a harder game than naming foods that aren’t made better by chocolate or ranch. Ironically, right now, they’re each chocolate and ranch: not making each other better. But if anyone can make it through, it’s Beth and Randall.

What do you think about Beth and Randall? Leave your thoughts in the comments!

This Is Us airs Tuesdays at 9/8c on NBC.