Who Do You Think You Are?

I loved Shannon's episode of Who Do You Think You Are, since it was so real. I have Irish family I'd love to locate and to see her chance, it was amazing. Love her even more now.

This is one of the better "reality-based" shows on network TV since it has to do with learning about yourself and where you originally came from, but not the best.

Since celebrities are used in each episode, this show needs more diverse people to discuss their genealogy with. There are approximately 10 episodes per season and out of all of the episodes, only ONE person depicted is non-white. We live in a melting pot of ethnicities, and there are hundreds of actors that are non-white that have fascinating genealogy stores to be told.

"Finding Your Roots" on PBS is MUCH more diverse in who's history to follow whether they are black, hispanic, Jewish, or homoesexual. Check your local PBS stations of when it will air. Generally "Finding Your Roots" starts airing in Sept. It's more worthwhile to watch.

As a genealogist, I've gotten ideas from this show on locating info on my relatives. Also, it's fun to see where celebrities have come from.

However, I do wish they'd do this same thing for "not celebrities" and us common folk. Celebrities can afford to pay someone to do their genealogy. Regular folks can't, and it would be nice if this show would occasionally choose someone from the world and do it for them for free (including what they do for the celebrities, flying them to different cities to meet with people and see from whence they came)

Humans love stories, and this show does an excellent job of using television to tell the stories of real people, without being maudlin or mawkish, or throwing them into contrived situations for comic or dramatic effect.

While we are dealing with the ancestors of a very select group of people (after all, how many would watch a show about *my* family tree?), the stories they tell are the stories of all of us: the former German POW who loved his time in an Iowa POW camp so much he came back to the U.S. after WWII. The story of a family torn apart by alcoholism and abuse. The story of people fighting for justice, sometimes at the risk of their own lives.

To get stories told this well, I am willing to put up with the heavy handed references to ancestry.com, and the smiling, infallible librarians and archivists who seem to always have just the right document.

Lisa Kudrow was great in "Friends" but I think this is the show should should put at the top of her resume

Too bad they can't feature everyday, poor to middle/upper-middle class individuals on this show - rather than wealthy celebrities, who can afford to have this done on their own and get a lot more information about their ancestry roots than is even shown in this program. Is the bottom dollar viewership numbers? Anyway, interesting show, if you want to catch-up on the ancestral backgrounds of celebrities.