NBC's "Who Do You Think You Are?" and the Obsession with Notable Family Trees

For a while this last year, it seemed that the reality show was hanging off a precipice of overexposure and might even usher in a new era of scripted fiction rather than scripted non-fiction. Unfortunately, a whole slate of new and continuing reality shows defused that thought. The brighter news arrived during the goldmine time frame of the mid-season replacement where what should have been on in the fall gets instead egregiously moved to spring.

There started the accusatory-titled, true reality show "Who Do You Think You Are?" on NBC. It borrowed yet again from a British TV show while still bringing a fresh American concept of celebrities investigating and connecting their family trees back to surprising people in the American and international timeline.

Take note that the word "celebrities" was likely the selling point of the show in the pitch meeting. Using ordinary people to scope out their family trees and the possibility that they could be related to European royalty or American witch trial victims wouldn't be what we'd watch, according to network suits. And they may be right, even though the chance for every American to individually broadcast their family tree on national TV would have led to more intense and fascinating drama than anything on NBC at 10 p.m.

We have to praise "Who Do You Think You Are?" anyway for avoiding the instigator of this show: Celebrities being connected to a fellow but disparate celebrity through a lineage line. We've heard enough about President Obama being very distantly related to Brad Pitt or how George W. Bush really is a long-distance little brother-cousin to Bill Clinton. Then came all the protracted family tree connections among Hollywood to the point where it seemed every notable in America came from the same attractive but internally flawed gene pool.

It was enough to believe in a mysterious correlation akin to Harvard's Skull & Bones Society where those linked genetically get into positions of entertainment power. Not that there's any definitive proof of that in "Who Do You Think You Are?" as viewers saw Sarah Jessica Parker have several conniptions over being related to an unassuming Salem Witch Trial victim who happened to be exonerated and helped end that blight in history. There was also Emmitt Smith investigating his family tree, only to find the compelling connections to slavery through his fourth great grandmother.

As of this writing, the only one in the series that appears to prove the eerie elite gene pool theory is Brooke Shields having bloodlines to French royalty. Otherwise, the show succeeds in celebrating more down-to-earth lineage and how it can uplift a life rather than depress it if you ultimately find out you're not related to George Washington.

Of course, that won't be acceptable to everybody. The obsession to link everybody to someone significant in history is still there. Even Ancestry.com understands this as part of their advertising campaign with NBC and "Who Do You Think You Are?" (See Resource at end.)

That's why Ancestry.com is reportedly creating a free "We're All Connected to One Person" family tree program that I managed to learn about before release. This lineage line doesn't require research on anybody's part because it automatically connects us all to one fascinating person Ancestry.com researched back to the middle 1700's and long after Biblical Eve. Using a mathematical formula kept under wraps, most people on the planet will be connected to this one person through the earth's populace of myriad cousins.

According to Ancestry.com: The lineage connections to how you're related to me, him, her, and everybody else:

Your cousin 1 billion times removed was Jonathan Newbury who was once a worm farmer in early 1940's Northern California. He chose this career after giving up a career as an actor in Hollywood. Once thought to be the new Tyrone Power after just one movie in 1940, he gave up his acting career to get closer to what he termed more affable worms.

Newbury started an independent political party called the Egalitarian Worms in 1944, yet his party was shunned by Democrats, Republicans and most independents. However, it brought attention to alternate politics for the first time in Hollywood and worm farming in the entertainment world as a viable and alternate form of employment.

He died in 1967 and was given a special eulogy by his farm after burial.
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Newbury was a direct descendant of Capt. Joseph Van Castle who steered one of the first ships into Ellis Island from Ireland on New Year's Day of 1892. His steamer was called The Pint, but was also loaded with 10,000 pints of whiskey that also ended up in the same place where 3,000 Irish immigrants were while being transported to America. The arrival into port nearly turned to disaster when everybody aboard emptied what they'd drunk all over Ellis Island authorities.

After the Irish immigrants became marked with the infamous lapel chalk marks for indication of illness, Capt. Van Castle came to rescue them from certain banishment from America. An explanation of what happened sped up the first Irish immigrant entries into New York City. The night was reportedly celebrated by finishing off the transport of whiskey.

Van Castle died in 1912 on none other than the Titanic after being demoted to stoker in the doomed ship's coal bunkers. Records show that he fell overboard after a drinking binge two hours before the fatal iceberg hit the ship.
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Van Castle was a direct descendent of the person we're all reportedly related to: Helena MacVelaniquekyotosteinbergkofi. This woman, born in Scotland in approx. 1724, had 100 million different cousins comprising every ethnicity in most every continent and reflected in her family's surname. Statistically, her bloodlines would have connected at least once to one of your distant antecedents.

MacVelaniquekyotosteinbergkofi was an only child who had the distinction of dating one of the Princes in the British royal line for two years. Her other distinction was that she decided to walk away from marrying the Prince at the 11^th hour, which was virtually unheard of at the time. She went on to an ascetic lifestyle of working in a small bakery before marrying a poor British cobbler named Smith--thus ending the MacVelaniquekyotosteinbergkofi surname.

End note: Ancestry.com guarantees this unique finding, though will gladly research further via their usual fee to find you a more famous lineage connection. They nevertheless encourage the celebration of the MacVelaniquekyotosteinbergkofi line for being the new emblem of genealogy that connects us to someone nobler than the most notable notables.

References:

http://www.nbc.com/who-do-you-think-you-are/

Resource:

http://nbc.ancestry.com/