Thursday, December 15, 2011

CSI has Genealogy Plot

Last night while watching one of my favorite shows “CSI” the original that takes place in Las Vegas, featured genealogy. Now I wasn’t too happy that a genealogist was killed and they were figuring out why he was killed. Also, I wasn’t too happy when he was killed for opening up some skeletons in closets.

However, this brings up a good point, what do you do with information you find that is a skeleton in a closet.  My theory, which is only my opinion, is to leave the door to the closet shut, especially if it involves living people.

You might ask, what was this terrible skeleton? Well, let’s remember this was TV and the story line would be rare, at least I hope no one has come across such a story line. A young woman wanted to find her grandfather, since this would be the only male that would be able to walk her down the aisle for her wedding. The Grandfather and Grandmother divorced many years prior and no one has heard from the Grandfather. The young lady had one male uncle who was in prison for life for the three strikes you are out rule. However, it was discovered that perhaps the grandmother was pregnant at the time of the divorce and left the male baby at an orphanage. The genealogist tracked down the orphan who then became curious of his ancestry. He followed the genealogist back to his mother and when the orphan contacted the mother, she wanted nothing to do with him because “He was the spawn of Satan” as the mother stated. Turns out the mother molested her 13 year old son who is the one currently in prison and became pregnant. Might be why the grandparents divorced in the first place. Well the orphan killed the genealogist, you know “killed the messenger”, for opening up the closet and letting the skeleton to fall out. So moral of the story, leave those damn closet doors shut and you might want to nail them shut.

There were a few other things in the story I didn’t like, for example CSI tracked down the dead genealogist partner who was at a cemetery teaching a group of people how to rub gravestones. OUCH! I thought this was a no, no because it can damage stones. One of the “students” asked about rubbings and she stated that is why she uses rice paper and rubs lightly. In my opinion, this was just a stupid scene to show.

Second, when this same genealogist was helping one of the CSI people to track down the young lady’s family, she asked “what information did they already know. “ She then recorded this information onto a Descendant tree. When was the last time someone actually filled out a Descendant tree? Well I am sure it was because people would feel comfortable seeing this form. Personally, I would have used a family group sheet.

The plus side of things, it talked about genealogy and one of the CSI people became interested in genealogy. I hoping someone in the audience has become interested in genealogy because of this show. This would be a win, win situation for our hobby.

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