Season Three Talk

[Enigma X]

Maybe it was the mood I was in due to Super Tuesday, but I felt that last night's episode was more world history and less personal history than usual.  Did anyone else feel that way?

 

 

Yes.

[Arynm]

Juliana story about her great grandmother and the boat had me in tears. I was literally sobbing. I thought for sure Gates would tell her that her ancestor was exaggerating. What a horrific thing to live through.

[StaceyNotStacie]

I wish they would just profile two people at a time.  It seems like they could show so much stuff if they had one less person per episode (and more episodes to show). 

[Judois]

You'll get your wish next week. It's just Dustin Hoffman and Mia Farrow. Looking forward to it.

[Ina123]

Yes. I thought it was more of a history lesson, mostly with Lydia's story.

[ShelleySue]

I wish they would just profile two people at a time.  It seems like they could show so much stuff if they had one less person per episode (and more episodes to show).

 

 

It would be nice if there was a compromise between Finding Your Roots and Who Do You Think You Are.  In Finding he skips around among three (occasionally two) guests and I never feel like it's very thorough.  I hope that the celebrity guests get more information than we are seeing on tv.  Who has one guest but the format is horrible.  There's a brief scene of a celebrity looking at a document and reacting with surprise.  Then we see previews for what is going to happen after the commercial.  Then there's a commercial.  When we return from the commercial they show what happened before the commercial.  I get the feeling that if you skip (no pun intended) the commercials, previews and reviews they probably spend as much time on the single celebrity as Finding Your Roots spends on one celebrity in each episode.  I'm curious to see the format of the next episode with two people.  I hope that it's more in depth.

[Blergh]

Actually, I liked Ms. Bastianich's segment and found it sadly ironic that her Istrian family had been condemned by changing authorities for being not Italian or not Slav SO many times, that they'd literally lost track of what their REAL surname (and origins ) were!

    Yes, Miss Margioles's segment re seeing her great-grandfather's US citizen certificate was quite moving- especially considering that in Romania he'd  had had NO citizenship whatsoever. Also, especially gripping to find out that her grandmother surviving that shipwreck as a small child AND had indeed been fed warm milk to revive her along with other passengers was quite amazing. I'd like to think that her grandmother considered that warm milk to be the start of her new life and 'rebirth' and perhaps even would always think fondly of it as a drink from that point on for that very reason!

     Miss Nafisi  had an interesting point of view re wanting to proud of her heritage even though her family had had to endure a great deal of persecution by their very nation and things hadn't always been easy here. I like how she found out the poetry of her many times great-grandfather seemed to speak of her OWN experiences so many years later.

 

Kudos to Dr. Gates for not only having a staff able to find documents but also able to so translate them so beautifully.

[kassa]

I felt that last night's episode was more world history and less personal history than usual.  Did anyone else feel that way?

 

 

I very definitely felt that way -- at one point I thought "where's the genealogy?"  There was a 10 minute segment or so with no documents at all.  It may have been a result of padding due to three guests with one interesting family story each.

 

Reading Lolita in Tehran was an amazing book and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys memoirs or loves reading as she does.  Her personal story is compelling, but that didn't really come across here.

[AuntiePam]

These three guests weren't presented with the family tree.  Is it because their roots weren't traced back very far?  Maybe they haven't done the tree on every episode -- I don't remember.

 

It amazes me that there are people who can read some of the writing we've seen.  Not just the ancient foreign languages, but the writings from the 17th/18th century, and even the census records.  Some of those are almost indecipherable.

[biakbiak]

If you notice they often have the text type written in the book.

[Snarklepuss]

I knew most of Lidia's story as I watch her show and she has told it on specials focusing on family traditions around the holidays.  What really intrigued me is finding out that she is a lot less Italian ethnically than she even probably thought she was.  I'm even more Italian than her (49%).  But who cares?  Her food and culture is all Italian and she reminds me so much of my own grandmother at times it's truly scary.  It just goes to show that sometimes culture can be more important than blood in making you who you are.

 

I too shed a tear at the Juliana's grandmother's boat story.

[attica]

I have, over the years, developed a bias about how physically lovely Persian people are. Nafisi did not break that streak. Her mom! Such glamour!

 

Good stories, all around.

[clarkbar]

Despite the pledge breaks, I found this week's episode compelling.  I thought Mia Farrow's reactions to the discoveries about her family were genuine, and the stories complex.  The Dustin Hoffman stories were heart-breaking.  Mia made some interesting points about genealogy not being a big deal in her family because of the adoptions and diversity of her children, but she was obviously touched by the stories and seemed to be sincere about carrying her ancestors' stories with her.

[barbedwire]

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode!  To think Dustin's great-grandma was in the U.S. when he was a young boy but yet he didn't know her.  What they went through!

 

And I adore Mia and her love of her kids.  But I wonder if it will be hard that she has this wonderful chart and stories and most of her kids know nothing of their backgrounds.

[AuntiePam]

I thoroughly enjoyed this episode!  To think Dustin's great-grandma was in the U.S. when he was a young boy but yet he didn't know her.  What they went through!

 

 

That was so sad.  He was born in 1937 and she died in 1944, so he could have known her -- a little bit anyway.  It made me wonder if Dustin's dad knew where she was and chose not to make contact, or if he had completely lost touch with the family and maybe didn't know.

 

Mia.  I remember her from Peyton Place, the marriage to Frank Sinatra, etc.  She's so twee.  Very smart and well-spoken and has a huge heart, but she's just so odd.  In a good way, of course.  I'd forgotten that she was Maureen O'Sullivan's daughter.  Loved those Tarzan movies. 

[Peanutbuttercup]

So was I reading Dustin Hoffman's family tree right/doing my math right? His heroic great grandmother was twelve when she gave birth to his grandfather? Yikes . . . she did have an amazing life story (with or without my possibly faulty math).

[attica]

I felt a bunch of conflicting things about Mia's story. On the one hand, I found it flat-out naive that Mia immediately presumed that her grandmother did not need hospitalization, and that her gf was a monster for committing her. Now, I get that mental health care wasn't exactly cutting edge, but PPD can, in some cases, be severely debilitating to the point of psychosis (Andrea Yates comes to mind.). Perhaps hospitalizing was the best of a bunch of bad choices.  We just didn't see enough information to conclude malfeasance. On the other hand, Mia herself has first-hand experience at being called 'crazy' when speaking in public about uncomfortable subjects, and that's a thing that happens (and has done through history) to women a lot. So, I get the impulse to apply one's one experience to others.

 

I was moved by Dustin's realization that now he had all this stuff to share with his kids and that it wouldn't be lost. 

[geekgirl921]

Yes, that bothered me about Mia's reaction. She was very clearly seeing it through modern eyes. Who knows how bad grandma was? At the time, they didn't know much about mental illness in general and unfortunately this was often the solution. Sadly, it was also how they dealt with women at the time.

[carrps]

Yes, that bothered me about Mia's reaction. She was very clearly seeing it through modern eyes. Who knows how bad grandma was? At the time, they didn't know much about mental illness in general and unfortunately this was often the solution. Sadly, it was also how they dealt with women at the time.

Men had complete and utter control of their wives until very recently. In Mia's grandmother's case, she probably really did have PPD, and that was the treatment at the time. "The Yellow Wallpaper?" That's about a similar kind of situation. I wonder how good the care was at that hospital, if her grandmother died only a few years later of pneumonia. Very sad.

 

Dustin made me cry. I love that Skip is giving this gift to his guests.

[abc123baby]

I did note the age of Libba Hoffman, and I instantly thought she was 11, but maybe 12, and wondered if she was the biological mother of his grandfather, and if not, this could be why they did not connect later.  I was also curious that there was no mention of confirming she was the mother due to the age.  In my own research when you see something like this (very young age of mother) it is something that needs to be checked out.

 

edited to add: i'm sure it was checked out, I just thought it was oddly glossed over.

Edited March 11, 2016 by abc123baby

[Snarklepuss]

I'm not a Mia Farrow fan at all.  The way she launched into a vindictive smear campaign of Woody Allen was not classy at all.  I get it that she's bitter but she lowered herself too much in the process.  Plus the way she pimped her son and implied that he was Frank Sinatra's and not Woody Allen's left a very bad taste in my mouth.  I see her as a whacko.  I am sure that is an unpopular opinion.  So therefore her strange reactions to things in this episode did not surprise me at all.  I don't think she has both feet on the ground.  She went off on some strange tangent with Gates at one point and for the life of me I can't figure out what she was getting at.

 

That said, I LOVE Dustin Hoffman and found his segment and his reactions very moving.  I had no idea that he did not "own" being Jewish most of his life nor why and what Gates did for him in giving him his family background is a truly beautiful thing, even if sad and tragic.

[Kromm]

Mia Farrow is, as always, a total flake, but it was an interesting story. I did note how she immediately took her own prejudices into hearing the story of her grandmother being committed and never even asked, or considered, the possibility that it wasn't her grandfather being mis-advised by stone age Doctors rather than him trying to do away with her grandmother.  It really does show her ugly side that she had to be talked back around by further reveals about the man to even consider that.

 

But the Dustin Hoffman segment was one of the best the show has ever had. Dustin's one of Hollywood's true good guys, and it was really nice to see him truly connect to this material. I wonder if there was more positive material further back in his family tree... then again it looked like at least on that one side they were never going to go back any further than poor Sam.

 

Yes, that bothered me about Mia's reaction. She was very clearly seeing it through modern eyes.

Not just modern eyes--ones that have clearly been affected by her own life. Mia brings a lot of personal baggage to the table.

 

That was so sad.  He was born in 1937 and she died in 1944, so he could have known her -- a little bit anyway.  It made me wonder if Dustin's dad knew where she was and chose not to make contact, or if he had completely lost touch with the family and maybe didn't know.

At first I found myself wondering the same thing. But they answered that question near the end of the segment, when they told us that she "lived with her family in Chicago" until her death. Now it's possible there were other relatives that also had made their way to Chi-Town (they didn't talk about if Dustin had any uncles or aunts), but I think at the very least it closed the door on the possibility that his father didn't know where his mom was. Edited March 12, 2016 by Kromm

[Blergh]

One thing they never mentioned re Mia Farrow's story was exactly WHO it was who raised her father John after his poor mother was railroaded into the asylum and it would ten years before the First World War so was his father raising him or someone else and who cared for him during that war? It seems evident that John didn't have fond memories of whoever raised him since he didn't pass them on. Very poignant story about her O'Sullivan grandfather (who she DID know) being saved by his own brother-in-law who lost his own life even though he wound up with a crippled arm.

      I wonder if Miss Farrow will at least consider helping her surviving adopted children and grandchildren attempt to seek out their own families of origin even though they came from lands decimated by war and poverty and the records may be fragmentary if they exist at all? At least DNA could help unlock some puzzles.

    

     Yeah, too bad that Mr. Hoffman wasn't given the chance to even meet his surviving grandmother and great-grandmother  in Chicago even if his father was upset over his OWN father's tragic rescue attempt of Dustin's great-grandfather. Perhaps the child would have been frightened at the sight of an ancient woman missing her left arm but it may have opened his eyes re the horrors his family had had to endure so he could have a privileged life. I wonder if his surviving family in Chicago may have somehow helped engineer the great-grandmother's liberation from the Soviet concentration camp, exit from the Soviet Union, then passages to Argentina then Chicago because I don't now how she could have possibly done all that on her own especially considering her  frail, dismembered state.

[kassa]

I too marveled at the lady's trek.  I have to assume that she made it to Argentina with faculties intact. I don't think they said how long she stayed there -- long enough to get citizenship (or buy papers saying she was one).  So she could have declined with the final voyage.  And maybe she stabilized and bounced back once she was with family and safe and cared for.  What an ancestor to point to!

 

It seems like they had quite copious records from the asylum that Mia's grandmother was at, so maybe there was incriminating stuff there we were not privy to, but I too wondered why she was so quick to jump to the conclusion that her husband put her away for some nefarious reason.  If she was truly, literally delusional, she could have been a serious danger to that child and herself and others, and the man might simply have been following the best advice he was getting from her doctor.  Presumably he thought his lovely young wife would have the baby and they'd be a nice family -- obviously things went very, very wrong.  As horrible as things were for her, I wouldn't assume that his motives were anything but pure reaction to a terrifying change in personality.

 

It is true that we don't know who raised him after that.  Maybe they knew and just left it out because it was something simple like "his aunt moved in and took care of him."

 

I did laugh at young Mia asking her grandfather if he was Jesus and his telling her not to be daft and to go to sleep.

[Snarklepuss]

Mia Farrow is, as always, a total flake, but it was an interesting story. I did note how she immediately took her own prejudices into hearing the story of her grandmother being committed and never even asked, or considered, the possibility that it wasn't her grandfather being mis-advised by stone age Doctors rather than him trying to do away with her grandmother.  It really does show her ugly side that she had to be talked back around by further reveals about the man to even consider that.

 

Exactly.  Not to bring Woody into this nor to excuse what he did, because some of that was pretty clear, but it makes me wonder how much of that story she exaggerated due to her baggage.  This baggage could go even farther back than him.   While it's true that in that time there were some evil men just happy to have an excuse to dispose of their "shrew-ish" wives, this was in an age before medication and it's easy to forget just how much medication can save people today from a truly horrible fate.  My own best friend is horribly bi-polar but saved by the miracle of medication.  With it she is completely normal.  Without it she is literally a basket case with no hope.  Back then what choice would any husband have had but to "put her away"?  Not much, as far as I can see.  Truly sad.

[Kromm]

Exactly.  Not to bring Woody into this nor to excuse what he did, because some of that was pretty clear, but it makes me wonder how much of that story she exaggerated due to her baggage.  This baggage could go even farther back than him.   While it's true that in that time there were some evil men just happy to have an excuse to dispose of their "shrew-ish" wives, this was in an age before medication and it's easy to forget just how much medication can save people today from a truly horrible fate.  My own best friend is horribly bi-polar but saved by the miracle of medication.  With it she is completely normal.  Without it she is literally a basket case with no hope.  Back then what choice would any husband have had but to "put her away"?  Not much, as far as I can see.  Truly sad.

There are always choices, even that long ago, but practicality and finances limited a lot of them. A really rich person could have hired a private care giver, for example, but what were the chances this guy was that rich? It's unlikely. I mean this is assuming something dramatic happened, like some kind of break with reality, wild uncontrollable behavior, melancholia/deep depression, a suicide attempt, etc. These people, and I mean by that the doctors of the time, had no clue about post-pregnancy chemical imbalances, although they of course weren't such total dummies that they didn't know it had to do with the pregnancy. It of course seems suspicious that she was still there, committed two years later, to die from a simple disease, because you'd think even without the kind of medication we have today that anything related to post-pregnancy would even itself out eventually, but I certainly don't know if that's always the case, and even if it were true, that could get back to horrible primitive doctors just as likely as some schemer husband. 

[kassa]

Just being locked in an insane asylum for a couple of years is going to mess you up, I'm thinking.  The chemical balance might straighten out with time, except I imagine under those hopeless surroundings it would likely just mutate into deep depression/catatonia or at best institutionalization.