Best TV Show of the Week

Who Do You Think You Are on NBC

By Ally Matteodo

NBC’s illuminating series Who Do You Think You Are? aired Friday, April 1 at 8:00 ET/PT and represents a thoughtful, interesting Best of the Week that the entire family can enjoy.  This program focuses on celebrities seeking out their family roots.  As they search for clues into their past, sometimes the uncovered photographs and documents can lead them across the country, or even across the world.  This particular episode focused on Academy-Award winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow and her quest to uncover her ancestry.  Paltrow’s profound love for her deceased father and grandfather leads her to research her grandfather Buster’s mother, Ida Hyman (her great-grandmother).  Buster made passing remarks during his life of his mother’s negligence—sometimes the children would be sent home from school because of their unwashed countenances.  Yet research reveals that Ida possessed the gift of intelligence—she attended Hunter College and was in the top 82 percent.  Further digging reveals that Ida’s mother Rebecca died of cirrhosis of the liver, and her younger brother Samuel perished as well.  In addition, Ida’s daughter Helen died at the age of three from a shock fracture when she was run over by a wagon.  These tragedies put her life in context, and Paltrow even remarks that if her grandfather knew of his mother’s trials, he may have been less rueful and more compassionate regarding his upbringing.  Paltrow also learns that Ida’s husband, Meyer Paltrowitz, her great-grandfather, was the son of Simcha “Simon” Paltrovitch, a rabbi, who was the son of Tzvi Hirsch Pelterowricz, a renowned rabbi in Poland and master of the Kabbalah.  These illuminations resound with Paltrow, who has always been spiritually curious, and it also makes plain that she comes from a long line of ancestors who deeply revere and love their fathers.       

This show holds the viewers interest by framing the stories of the celebrities in the form of a mystery.  They’re out to uncover relics and clues that will lead them on a journey of discovery.  Military documents, house deeds, and census records all contribute to fleshing out a clearer image of who their ancestors were, and what they went through.  History gains a more personal relevance as dates develop new meaning—when people can place periods of time within the context of their own life, the world becomes a richer, more inter-connected space.  This program makes one appreciate the sacrifices all of our ancestors made in order to secure rites we take for granted today, including freedom from oppressors and equal opportunity.  Who Do You Think You Are? aptly demonstrates that to know where you’re going, sometimes it helps to know where you’ve been.         

Best TV Show of the Week

The Parents Television Council - www.parentstv.org