Just when you thought US television had reached its limits of genealogy and family history-oriented shows, Fox's The Simpsons jumped on the bandwagon this evening!
That's right, in an episode entitled The Color Yellow, Lisa Simpson's homework assignment to explore her family tree brings her face to face with a diary written by an ancestor in 1860. It turns out that such ancestor - Eliza Simpson - and her mother were involved with the Underground Railroad and assisted with the escape of a slave named Virgil.
I won't spoil the entire story but even if you aren't a Simpsons fan, you may want to visit the Fox site to view the episode starting Monday, 22 February 2010 after it has aired. And perhaps this is just the start of seeing a genealogy angle on other broadcast television shows - who knows?
© 2010, copyright Thomas MacEntee
4 comments:
The last episode of Castle also had a (minor) genealogy subplot. The daughter of the titular character had to trace their family history for a school project. It wasn't a big part of the episode but it has been fun to see how genealogy is gaining in exposure on TV. Thanks for the heads-up on The Simpsons, I'll have to watch that. =)
I just watched it and loved it! I usually don't watch the Simpsons, but this was great. I'll have to ask my college age daughter if she caught this episode, too.
Aw, I knew I shouldn't have foregone watching the Simpsons to watch Olympic curling! I'll have to catch this episode!
LOL Greta - last week's episode of The Simpsons was all about curling - named "Boy Meets Curl" - see, you would have been ahead of the curve if you had watched!
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