Finding Your Roots Season 10

I was JUST saying I hadn't seen a new one in a while, so glad there's a new seson.

Fun

Thanks for starting this thread. And, um, I'm going to be the nasty poster, pissing on other people's enjoyment. I apologize in advance. I hate this show. I cannot stand the pertually smug Henry Louis Gates and the smirk he wears. I despise his whole chatty walks and sit downs with celebrities. I hate the fact that the show's producers believe that the ONLY PEOPLE worthy of an extensive and expensive geneology are the RICH and FAMOUS. The people who could AFFORD to have all of that research done, get it gratis.

Oh, those ridiculours questions from Skip, "so, your great-great grandfather was an enforcer on a plantation and would beat slaves. How does that make you feel?" or, "your great great great grandmother was kdnapped by Native Americans and had several children, one of who is your great great grandfather. Do you ever feel close to the tribe?"

Wednesday evenings on PBS... not for me man.

Thank you for sharing.

For those that share R3's sentiments, the show is on TUESDAY nights, so skip your local PBS station at that time.

Anyway.....back to the topic at hand......

oops, apologies, R4 is correct... Skip Gates is front and center on Tuesday evenings at 8pm.

I really did not know much about Ciara other than the fact that I always confuse her with Beyonce until I get a real good look at her face.

Alanis Morissette's story was very interesting.

This show should just be called “black people cherry picking for slave ancestors”

R7, gross. Do you spew your bigotry out loud in-person or just online?

Man, Jesse Williams. Gorgeous, well-spoken AND has a big cock.

OF COURSE, he does.

R9 wonder who he inherited it from? LOL

Will there be Rachel Dolezal?

DONG.

This week's guests - Brendan Fraser and Valerie Bertinelli!

Fat whores rejoice!

R3, I'm not sure people want to watch a show where Fred and Irma from Sheboygan get a genealogy trace.

That may be true R15, but it doesn't change the fact that the program showcases the rich and famous as the only people deserving of Gates' fawning/fangirl adulation. Each guest could EASILY pay for their own geneology and DNA testing to be done.

I haven't watched FYR is ages... what I think would be nice is a short segment at the end where Fred and Irma from Sheboygan do get the Gates treatment. I'm sure there are thousands of Americans who have interesting backgrounds with great-grandparents who trudged over to the states from some war-torn European country and made lives for themselves. Fred and Irma have not been in the movies or written the great American novel, etc... but their backgrounds will make for good TV.

I'm going to watch Valerie to see where that hulking mess Wolfgang's dna came from. Good God he's a mess. That cannot be from the Van Halen side.

That little host has a punchable face -- I don't like him and won't watch the show no matter who the guests are.

I want Harry and Meghan to book a show.

Is Gates the man who was arrested for breaking into his own house?

Yes!

In 2006, I lived in London, and I watched the show that was the inspiration for this PBS show with Gates. It was interesting, and I found this show interesting at first.

But I'm with R3. Of course, any one of us would feel shame upon discovering an ancestor was an enslaver, racist, murderer, etc. The handwringing that goes on after these discoveries is ridiculous (one of the worst was Ben Affleck). It is not you, it's them. They were bad people, or the ones who committed horrific acts.

And I'm sick of the celebrities.

I'd really like to see an average, private citizen discover her or his roots.

I only watch this when I ‘m interested in the celebrities involved, and this batch is scraping the bottom of the barrel, so I don’t imagine I’ll be tuning in much.

isn't Gates gay?

I assumed that, R24, but I'd love to hear some of you gentlemen chime in with some plausible gossip!

They are, in fact, profiling 3 non-celebrities in the series this year.

It's something that people have been asking for quite frequently for years. The series History Detectives kinda touched on this before - researching an item but then would delve into personal histories. And there was briefly another PBS show where they did some research of regular people - again, usually in the context of a historical story.

I love ancestry and I'm very interested in my own, but I find this show unbelievably PBS-y boring. I love Skip Gates, too! Just the show is a bore, I can't put my finger on it. I'll watch a clip on YouTube from time to time, but can't seem to sit through an entire episode.

[quote]I only watch this when I ‘m interested in the celebrities involved, and this batch is scraping the bottom of the barrel, so I don’t imagine I’ll be tuning in much.

Fuck you, hussy!

Apparently Alanis Morrissette and Claire Danes are distant cousins.

A few months ago, Whoopi Goldberg mentioned on 'The View' she was going to be featured on the upcoming season, and she had already taped her segment. She said what she found out was 'surprising'. She then asked Sunny if she did her interview yet, and Sunny said no she hadn't booked it - but she was also going to be featured on the upcoming season and looking forward to it. I think Joy said they had asked her (or maybe it was Anna) and she hadn't given them an answer yet, she didn't seem that interested.

I really liked the NBC show which came out about 15 years ago - 'Who Do You Think You Are?'. It was well-produced and had interesting guests. It was better than this show.

Whoopi is not in season 10. Those episodes are done fairly far ahead of time so it's likely she'll be on in the next season next winter. Same with Sunny, if that's happening.

I stand corrected - Sunny IS this season. Whoopi is not.

receipts

R32 How can Sunny be in S10 if her episode wasn't taped yet (as of October) ? Yet Whoopi's episode was taped and she's not in S10 ?

If they're so concerned about their roots, why don't they have them touched up by Bobbi Jean down at the Cut-n-Curl? That's what I do.

I am a genealogist and the information they share on the show is often not enough evidence to draw the conclusions that Gates shares. "Oh my, here is an Alexander Baldwin in the 1870 census in Nassau County, New York. That's your great-grandfather, Alec!"

Right place and right name aren't enough to draw conclusions, especially with very common names.

Plus I can't stand the Gates way of hosting/interviewing.

Of course they are doing other research to validate the info, R36.

I like Gates well enough, but I concede the point that the show could make people believe it's that easy, when the actual process is more challenging. (A bit like HGTV.)

It's a TV show, it's not supposed to mimic what these searches are really like. They cut to the chase and leave out a lot of stuff. The HGTV analogy is perfect. I'm amazed at how much they can find on some of the black guests, because for most black people you're going to reach a point where you are shit out of luck.

R38 That's hilarious. Every time I see a Black participant on this show I think "Well...we know where this is going"

Has anyone tried to trace their ancestry? How expensive does it get? I'm a Black so I'd like to go wayyy back, but I'd assume I could buy a new car with the amount it would cost.

I like Gates, he treats his guests with respect and civility. I admire his curiosity and sense of wonder.

[quote]Has anyone tried to trace their ancestry? How expensive does it get?

I did mine for nothing, R39 -- but I only went back far enough to prove I had a Revolutionary War ancestor. I actually found that both sides of my family tree go all the way back to the late 1600s in PA, and Germany/Switzerland before that.

PA kept incredibly meticulous records, so it actually wasn't that difficult to do. And I used the free Mormon website (familysearch.org), NOT their for-profit site Ancestry.com. I found amazing census records online using the Family Search site. There's also the Find a Grave site; that can be helpful as well.

The best part? I did it all online in the comfort of my living room.

I know it may be exponentially more difficult for you since you're AA, but go after the basics first (grandparents, great-grandparents) and see what you can find. Ask all your "old folks" relatives the names they remember. You may be surprised at how much you can find out!

Good luck!

Is there some verificata of said pendulousness?

AAs may be better served by dna matches to go further back. Then connect with cousins on different sites to fill in blanks.

Brendan F. learned that his ancestor was a unionized Pennsylvania coal miner who once shot a scab.

Valerie B. learned that her grandfather abandoned a wife in Italy a week after marrying her and never had contact with their child.

R42 uh, the footage from the Broadway show that he was in where everyone was like OMFG DAMN HE'S HUGE...????

[quote] "Well...we know where this is going"

It doesn't always go to their enslaved ancestors. Some come from free people of color, some had other ancestors not directly from Africa in that time frame, etc.

It’s weird to me that people don’t know anything about their ancestors.

My favorite episodes were Pharrell Williams, Adam Driver, and Marissa Tomei, who is related to Julianne Moore, seriously!

Won't it be a hoot if Sunny Hostin finds out she is not Black ?

R48 She's not. She's PR.

[quote]Is there some verificata of said pendulousness?

Oh, dear.

Oy vey.

I am a genealogist. They called me for help researching one of their guests. They gave me the limited information he had. I told them immediately that what he was telling them made little sense, that he obviously did not understand his father's line and told them to go back and check again. He assured them he knew what he was talking about. On the show they skipped his father's line . However, they did a DNA test which confirmed what I had suggested.....even to the point of finding a DNA cousin who lived near the profiled celeb.

Very interesting R52.

Seems like they've had some surprises on the show. Joe Man Jello found out he had a whole different family and a partially black one at that (his father was his father, if I remember right, but either the grandfather or someone upline wasn't who everyone thought it was).

Also the Kerry Washington thing.....where she found out she was a sperm donor baby.

R53 I remember that episode from last year. It was very interesting - here he is thinking he is 100% Italian, and whoops !

What roots could the high society Lens possibly have? How interesting could a shtetl and a boat ride to Ellis island possibly be?

On the next episode: Dr. Gates informs a quivering-jowled Lens that she does, after DNA analysis, descend from the porcine species.

Less sardonically, I predict a fascist in Lens timeline.

R52 How do you become a genealogist? Is it lucrative? Do you enjoy it?

R52 Jesus, that came across a little shortbusy. I meant...what kind of education does it require? What type of work do you do?

Last week was LeVar Burton (I can't believe he's heterosexual but apparently he is) and actor Wes Studi, who I had not heard of before.

This week is....Sammy Hagar (!) and Ed O'Neill.

The Ed/Sammy episode was interesting....if sort of standard for the show.

But damn, Ed O'Neill was the hottest thing on two legs when he was in college. Beautiful.

I saw the preview for FYR with Ed and Hagar. Looed like Sammy has opted for the "old homeless guy at a Salvation Army lunch" attire. Was I right?

He also sounded quite addles, maybe foggy. Was I right about that?

R63 He was pretty lucid, but yeah, he definitely looked like an unmade bed.

He comes from trash.

Next week is Bob Odenkirk.

We have yet to be subjected to Lens. Or Miss Warwick.

The Bob Odenkirk and Iliza Schlesinger episode was good. It’s weird to me that she knew nothing about her family’s recent history.

Did they find the missing money Dion Warwick stole from all the AIDS patients?

This week's episode is Jesse Williams.

Can a DNA test tell us the branch of Jesse's tree that gave him his sizemeat?

I love this show - but some of them are really hit or miss. About 1/4 of these shows are searching for SOMETHING interesting and what they find is meh.

Others are really profound. Not surprisingly, it's very touching when black people are able to gain some sort of history and get an idea of their ethnic African makeup.

I watch it religiously.

A nice part of them doing so many celebs over the years is finding out which are distantly related. They sometimes have connections in real life.

R39 For free you can start on Family Search and then appeal to people on Reddit for advice on the Ancestry sub for lookups if you hit brick walls.

If you do a DNA test, Ancestry.com has tree building where speculate ancestors might match up as it has people’s trees linked, but you must buy a membership to see them. You’re also facing potential shoddy research by others. However, if people uploaded family photos and made them public, you can grab those. You can also reach out to cousins on the platform

Not only Jesse Williams R69, but Sunny Hostin too. In respect to Sunny, let’s hope those researchers crossed their t’s and dotted their i’s.

Interesting. Jesse has Swedish ancestry through his mom, so he definitely got a good mix for sizemeat.

He's smug but....he sho is pretty

The last time I did one of those type things I discovered some of my black family members owned slaves in and around St. Tammany Parish.

Did anyone else find some of Jesse's speech mannerisms, for lack of better words, gay-adjacent? He spoke about sharing some of this with his children, and I know he's been through a messy divorce, but inquiring minds and all of that.....

R77 - yes, he totally threw me off. I was going to say - this man is clearly gay - then I looked him up.

Doesn't mean he is not - but yeah - he was giving off heavy gay vibes

He’s always had a lisp.

Jesse is not gay. He is a huge pussy hound. Everyone knows this. Now if you talkin about Jusieeeee.

Jesse has probably benefitted from the casting couch and a few male mouths. Especially with the monster he's got between his legs.

R81 why lie?

R82 where's the lie?

Miss WARWICK is on tomorrow!

Are they propping up corpse or will she be a hologram?

And meanwhile

Okay. I am, generally speaking, a Dionne fan. I thought she looked good at the KCH.

But she looked terrible and also seemed a bit off in this episode. Almost like she'd had a stroke. Her facial movements were just weird.

The receipts (note, this link is probably only good for about a week)

I thought Dionne Warwick's segment was good - she was very engaged and very interested in what Gates had to say. As for Brooks, I FF'd through it - not interested in her.

[quote]I thought Dionne Warwick's segment was good

That's Miss War[bold]r[/bold]ick to you, you hussy!

They should do Barbra Streisand's family tree. It would be appropriate with her new memoir out.

R91 she would never allow it unless she had final cut over everything they say on the show.

Which, after the Ben Affleck controversy, they would never do again.

Candace Owens should go on this show to not only explore her roots but also find some grease for them roots and edges.

SNL should do a parody of this, where people find their root haircolor. Some never do!

This week was Anthony Ramos and Tracy Morgan.

Ramos is kinda, as the kids would say, low key hot. He looks like he's packing.

Tracy Morgan's injury seems to have rendered him somewhat childlike. It was actually kinda sad to watch.

Show is now on hiatus through all of March since March is Money Begging Time at PBS. The final 2 episodes of the season are in April.

R95, I wondered if Tracy was more emotional because of his head injury but he learned some pretty deep things about his roots and his family so his reaction was understandable in any case. Did you see the one with Pharrell Williams? He got so overcome with emotions they had to stop filming and resume weeks or months later.

Anthony Ramos is sexy as hell.

Ramos is a guy who we could actually call "king."

His ancestor was apparently the king of Tenerife.

What did Pharrell Williams learn that was so upsetting? Honestly, I cannot stand this program, do not want to search and listen to/watch supersmug Skip Gates.

ByJupiter - Yes, you've made that abundantly clear, repeatedly.

I like this show, like Henry Louis Gates, and like talking about it with interested people. Maybe you can make your own "I hate Skip Gates" thread and then all the people that, like you, hate the show and/or hate him can all discuss your shared passion.

OR you can just continue to post here and be the turd in the punchbowl, I suppose.

As for the Pharrell question, he was deeply upset at learning about his enslaved ancestors.

For some reason, the segment where he's so upset they actually stop taping - and he returns another time in different clothes - is not on YouTube. It's from an earlier season.

Mandy Patinkin found out about family killed in the Holocaust and was emotional as well, this was in a more recent season and is on YT.

Pharrell found out his ancestors were the offspring of a rape victim from slavery.

The most shocking episode imo was Pamela Adlon finding out her family turned her own family over to the Nazis.

PSA: A new episode with Michael Douglas and Lens Dunham airs tonight.

I've enjoyed pretty much every episode I've watched (on Youtube).

Yes, the LENS episode was last night......it was DL Christmas!

She actually wasn't terribly annoying, other than trying to act coquettishly girlish toward Henry Louis Gates a few times.....hilariously failing of course.

Michael Douglas had a very interesting backstory.

But the whole time I was like "Boy she got FAT" and "Boy he got OLD."

Oh yeah, Lens is distantly related to Larry David, and Michael is distantly related to Scarjo.

Jesse's monster.

[quote] Michael Douglas had a very interesting backstory.

I was watching through my fingers, hoping that his Russian grandfather’s career crimes didn’t include rape.

That was the last of the celebrity shows for this season.

Next week, for the season finale, they are doing something that has NOT been done before.....three "regular" people's stories.

** gasp ** R109, what will Skip talk to them about? Will he get to fanboy about their amazing careers as they caually stroll (Gates with cane of course) down a picturesque NYC street?

How ordinary of the program!

*eyeroll*

Did Lens find out she’s descended from a plow horse on a shtetl somewhere? She’s built like she is.

R112 Lena looks like a great-looking zaftig 60-year-old.

The "real people" episode was really good, if a bit repetitive - two of the people featured were trying to figure out parentage for one of their ancestors. One was trying to figure out why an ancestor had been abandoned.

Very interesting and I hope they either do more or have that be its own show.

I will say that when it comes to regular people, I think DNA Family Secrets was a much more interesting show.....mainly because the questions were asked about more current people vs a few generations back.