I am – Hercules!!


A reality series about celebrities who look into their family trees, “Who Do You Think You Are” was shepherded to NBC by Lisa Kudrow, who also serves as one of the delving famous.

On one hand I found myself sighing “oh brother” a lot; like too many newer “reality” enterprises, this one seems to swim in artifice, with everybody apparently feigning shock and surprise over and over. (The series also often comes off as an hour-long commercial for ancestry.com.) On the other hand I did find myself devouring all seven hourlong episodes in short order. It IS fascinating how we all seem to be part of one big family tree, and how radically our ways of life have changed over the generations.

Did you know that Barack Obama and George W. Bush are both great great great great great great great great great great grandsons of Samuel Hinkley, this fellow who lived in Massachusetts about 20 years after the landing of the Mayflower? Did you know Obama is a direct descendant of England’s Edward I and is also related to Queen Elizabeth, Price Charles, James Madison, Lyndon Johnson, Gerald Ford, Dick Cheney, Harry S. Truman, Winston Churchill, Robert E. Lee, Elvis Presley, Wild Bill Hickok, Robert Duvall, Brad Pitt and John McCain? Sounds like a joke. Not a joke.

Sarah Jessica Parker and husband Matthew Broderick are featured in separate episodes (episodes which should be of great interest to their shared progeny one day). Nobody in this series seems to have a family tree as jam-packed with celebrity as our president’s, though Brooke Shields – whose blood has ties to European aristocracy – comes close. The other branch-climbers are filmmaker Spike Lee, actress Susan Sarandon and athlete Emmitt Smith.

Entertainment Weekly says:

… While it may be fascinating for Parker to learn that she also had a relative who was part of the gold rush, for viewers, sitting through an hour of centuries-old genealogical minutiae feels more like fool's gold.

The New York Times says:

… It’s great stuff for the historically curious, full of musty libraries, faded documents and the occasional DNA swab. …

The Los Angeles Times says:

… as is so often the case with "reality television," there's nothing TV producers hate so much as actual reality (bo-ring!), and so everything is tarted up with superfluous soundtracks and staging, with breathless voice-overs, mood lighting and lots of half-baked psychology. … That so many of these celebrities, with their wiki-pages and Us Weekly montages, appear to know so little of their almost immediate heritage is astonishing, proof that nothing is more democratic than the past.

The Washington Post says:

… Parker has been seduced by the narcissistic narrative that transfixes most genealogy nuts: "It's my people," she declares. "I have stock in this country . . . real roots . . . I belong." (Where did she think she came from? The moon?) "It's changed everything about who I thought I was," our movie star says. It's changed what I thought Sarah Jessica Parker was, too. I thought she was too busy for this sort of thing.

The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says:

… Much of the show is made up of either Ms. Parker's unscripted exclamations ("Wow, that's so crazy!" and "Un-be-lievable!") or declarations that sound completely scripted ("It's changed everything about who I thought I was!" and "I never felt I was really American"). The best moments are the little glimpses into Ms. Parker's personality and familial relationships. These are few and far between … Ultimately, the real question is not "Who Do You Think You Are?" but Why Should Viewers Care? This series does not offer a persuasive response.

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… To a degree, surprise is a natural reaction. However, it can be overdone, as in the premiere episode when Sarah Jessica Parker learns relatives on her mother's side briefly looked for gold in California and before that barely survived the Salem Witch Trials of 1692. … If one dispenses with the seemingly coaxed melodrama, the well-rehearsed family scenes and the endlessly repetitive bumpers, an occasional nugget of helpful information on tracing family roots is discovered. …

Variety says:

… Each week a different celebrity delves into his or her ancestry, yielding hours that manage to be interesting and infuriating all at once …

8 p.m. Friday. NBC.

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