Mermaid Under

Just the opposite for me. I really couldn't watch much of this. I still tune in when there is a new episode, but it is really from force of habit. I find myself switching away and not switching back. Tamera Mowry may have had financial success in the whole TV/social media/product selling area, but I thought her impact on the world of entertainment was a bit overstated. Both of their stories have been told before. Gates was even more Gates in this episode. He skips over stories that I think sound interesting, and pursues the same narrative over and over. And we don't know what they could or couldn't find out about various ancestors, versus what stays on the cutting room floor because it doesn't fit the narrative.

This episode made Sister Veronica seem more likable, but I don't like the inconsistency in character development. Speaking of inconsistent characters, for Trixie's dinner party, did Sister Monica Joan invite herself? Colette being thrilled with her Mother's budget seemed unreal. I can only suspend disbelief so far. A child that age would want all the toys and clothes, and would want all of her mother's time and attention. There are a lot of adults who don't understand the concept of making choices and saying no to some things for a long term goal. Is Collette some sort of financial savant?

I am glad to see the show return, although I did forget how wretchedly unhappy most of the storylines are. Fred becoming a lollipop man seemed to be the only light moment. Is the actress who plays Lucille looking to move on to other things? They do seem to be setting her exit up. No one seems thrilled with the Sister Veronica character or her storyline. And I can't imagine Sister Julienne being happy that she tricked Matthew into buying her a scooter, thus leaving less of his money for other things the house needs more. Having worked many years ago with a pathological liar, there is nothing cute about it. In this real-life case, it wasn't so much self-aggrandizement, but stress. Whenever he faced anything remotely challenging, he would start with the lies. And get caught. And he got fired from the job where I worked with him, and probably from a bunch of other jobs as well. This. And in the 60s there wasn't much available to help with weight loss except speed. Come to think of it, there isn't much available to help now. Just a lot more people selling their diet books and foods.

There were two things about Eliza and Nash's relationship that I liked from this episode 1 -Nash running up (he must have healed quickly from his gunshot wounds) to tell Eliza about the bomb. He was smart enough to realize she would get one, just like he did. 2 - Without saying anything, helping her to put her office back together (and chatting while they worked) after the annoying policemen tore it apart. They were better, although they both seem to realize they are at an impasse in their relationship as it stands. All of the will they won't they, although titillating at first, gets frustrating and old quickly.

I think I read the same (or a similar) article, but interpreted it differently. The way I read it, she didn't say it was the premise of the show, she said the relationship between William and Eliza was what viewer's were most interested in seeing, and that the characters of Nash and Arabella fed into that interest by putting up roadblocks to that relationship.

I understand all of the interest in the Arabella/William/Eliza triangle. I understand the interest in the human side of things. But I expect PBS and their British imports to do relationships better than this. For me, this is Hallmark Christmas movie channel territory. See here, if you aren't familiar with Hallmark. And couldn't they start with that, and build some sort of grown up relationship, whether it leads to romance or not? I mean we are already in fantasy territory here, so can't we pretend that there are two Victorians out there that don't have Victorian sensibilities and morals?

I just don't think this is police business - I think he found someone pretty and lively who flattered his ego in a way Eliza does not. He is enjoying the attention. The old "men think with their penises" storyline is as overused as the "professional women who aren't interested in marriage just need to find the right man" and "women can't be friends because they are competing for men" storylines.

No, I'm saying that is what other folks on the forum seem to be saying.

I don't understand why William being with Arabella because he secretly suspects her of something (which I don't buy) makes him a better man, or the situation more palatable. All that means is he is willing to mislead someone emotionally for the sake of a case – solving some small con job? Or is she secretly the head of the local crime syndicate? And that would mean he knows being with her would make Eliza feel bad, so using another human being twice for his own purposes.

I know it is called Miss Scarlet and the Duke, but I actually like Eliza better interacting with Nash (last week) and Fitzroy (this week). Let Duke have Arabella, just don't make me watch it. Jealousy will make Eliza foolish and cartoonish (because really, secretly, despite all that she has gone through to be a detective, all she actually wanted was a man) and jealousy always ends up making female characters trite and unoriginal. Really, was the whole story just to get us to the final scene?

Lauper was the only one I really recognized. Nothing in anyone's story was really surprising or new. The only thing that struck me (not judging, just observing) was how difficult reading aloud was for Danny Trejo. They didn't really talk about why or how his father just decided that he couldn't have contact with his mother.

If we are sharing family stories that we wish HLG's legions would work on, if we could surmount the sign up process, here's mine. My grandmother and grandfather (maternal) were married in 1918. My mother always said that her father said he met his future wife's father and her sister Sarah (my grandmother's younger sister) only one time. Sometime before they were married, the father took off and never returned - he had taken off before, and come back, maybe more than once. This time he didn't. It doesn't sound like anyone looked for him, or suspected foul play. The younger sister died in the flu epidemic of 1918. Except she didn't. When we were stuck cleaning out my grandmother's older sister's house (both my grandmother and Aunt M's only daughter were dead, so there was no one else) we found a bill from a local cemetery. Sarah died in 1940, not 1918. She is buried in a grave by herself, away from other family members, and not under the family name. Her mother, who was still alive at the time, paid for the grave, burial, and headstone, so obviously she was part of the lie. We don't know who else knew the truth. There are lots of other little details flying around, but no one to explain exactly why they lied about her death.

Did anyone else think that HLG seemed a little less than enthusiastic about the idea of opening up the program to the non-famous? The wording of the video (I've tried to ignore you for 10 seasons) and his presentation sounded like he had been resisting this "pressure" for as long as he could. Also, given the things that they are asking people to do in order to qualify (not that any of it is unreasonable to me) means that they will only get a certain subset of folks - they definitely want to do all they can to limit the number of stories they have to investigate to find two or three that will make it on the air. I'll put it right out there now - the qualifiers will have ancestors that were slaves, ancestors that owned slaves, or ancestors that were killed in the holocaust.

I knew when it was announced that I would enjoy Carol Burnett, but I didn't realize how much. She asked the question that the show never does - because it makes things muddy, and doesn't serve their purpose - nature or nurture? HLG is always telling his guests that they inherited their courage or strength directly from their ancestors (always a good trait, never a bad one). And anyone with half a brain knows it isn't that simple. Carol Burnett had two alcoholic parents but didn't become an addict herself. At least two of her daughters had addiction problems. Was that DNA, or being brought up in Hollywood, with money? Nature or nurture?

I agree with you about the limitations, but I think there is one step that happens before all of things you mentioned. You have to be a known name that will bring in an audience beyond genealogy buffs (Hollywood, Broadway, politics, science) to even be considered for this show. I think that is one area where Gates has some say, because we have had some much lesser known academics and artists that are probably his personal friends.

This reminded me of one of the most egregious "how does that make you feel " moments of this episode, when it was revealed that Daniel's ancestor was denied a civil war pension because her husband's heart disease was unrelated to his service. I'm not exactly sure, but HLG said something like "how do you think she felt about that". Has anyone ever responded "how the hell would I know?" As a host, can he take some other track rather than always trying to force his guests to be articulate about something so far removed from their lives and reality.

Okay, I have to admit that I liked the on-screen personas of this week's guests better than last week's guests, and somehow that made it easier to watch. There wasn't anything really new in their backgrounds. And apparently they couldn't find any evidence of slave-owning in either family tree, because we didn't go there. It didn't stop him from asking them how they felt about every other damn thing that happened 300 years ago.

You mean like Carly Simon and Roseanne Cash? I wonder if he called them.

Julia Roberts was less annoying than I expected her to be. I'm barely familiar with Edward Norton. Regardless of who the "celebrity" guests are, this show is so repetitive, and I guess I'm finally tired of it. Even using genetic genealogy to determine that Julia Roberts was really a Mitchell wasn't that interesting. I kept waiting for CeCe Moore to show up. And I think I switched to an episode of Poirot that I've seen about 20 times when we got to the "your ancestors owned slaves, how does that make you feel" part. Is it the nature of the program, or the host?

I wasn't sure the final voice over was Vanessa Redgrave (I missed the intro, so can't say). It sounded stronger than she has in recent episodes, and I had the impression they got another actress with a similar voice, but in better health..

I thought they were lip syncing to the Nancy/Frank Sinatra record. I have some vague understanding that at one point in time it was considered entertaining to watch folks lip syncing to records. Jerry Lewis in his early career had such an act.

I think the default CTM plot is to jam a whole bunch of horribly sad, desperate stories into the first three quarters of the show, and resolve them too easily in the last quarter. Not my favorite Christmas episode either. Tim Turner doesn't look quite as tubercular- the actor has put on a bit of weight. And nice to see Miss Higgins using her superpowers for good.

Carol Burnett - I'm looking forward to her. Julia Roberts I might skip. I think she still doesn't get along with her brother Erik, so I wonder if they will even mention him. And what is the point of having Tamera Mowry without her sister? Since they usually have two or three guests per episode, and try desperately to tie in some theme for all of them, I'm looking forward to seeing who gets grouped with who and why.

According to the futon critic 11 episodes of a 13 episode order were completed for this re-emergence on broadcast TV. But only 6 have been scheduled to air.

Frederic Neu's obituary said that he had 9 children, and that some of them survive. It didn't say how many, and it didn't name them. You didn't need a war or an epidemic; infant and child mortality was really high, right through the early 20th century. It was just assumed that you would have children who didn't survive.