Catelynn & Tyler's open adoption will stay open; for other first mothers, not so much

 Lorraine

Breaking News: First Mother Carla Moquin lost her case to have the adoption of her daughter overturned because the adopters, Susan Englert and Demyn Platenberg, went back on their open adoption promises. Carla is planning to appeal to the California Supreme Court.  Now back to the regular programming:

Before we leave Catelynn and Tyler, America's most celebrated birth/first parents, it's obvious that their decision to relinquish their

(Pro) Adoption Special: Dr. Drew encourages teen moms to give up their babies

Jane

“Adoption is a loving and courageous decision.” Dr. Drew (whose real name is Drew Pinsky) parroted these words at least half a dozen times on the MTV (Pro) Adoption Special, an offshoot of MTV’s popular 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom which aired July 12. I think I first read these words in an Ann Landers column in the 1950s.

In Plain Sight**** Gets Adoption Reunion Right

So after watching the documentary Google Baby on HBO2 and brushing my teeth to get the bad taste out of my mouth about how these babies-to-order are being put together like clam chowder and gestated by poor Indian women, I saw that one of my favorite crime dramas, In Plain Sight, is on. The show is not so much about solving a crime, but dealing with the lives of the people who will go into the witness protection program after they testify against the bad guys.

Whaddaya know? The episode, The Born Identity (get it?), is about a man who is adopted and...before he goes into the witness protection somewhere he wonders if these people running the program (Mary and Marshall, the leads), can find his birth mother. He'd been living in the basement of the public library, and we already know he left his other family at 15 and moved to Seattle and lived off the grid since. He's a well-read genius with an IQ of 142 who discovers a bomb in a garbage can and can identity the two men/terrorists who left it. He's been looking for his (first/birth) mother for oh...ever since he left his adoptive home...some twenty years ago. Said he didn't fit in. 

Well, the show got it RIGHT; the male lead, Marshall Mann, is knowledgeable about Primal Wound theory and says they need to find his mother for the guy before he disappears into the witness-protection anonymity; Mary Shannon, whose father walked out on the family and she does not know his whereabouts is cynical and against it; but they get someone to check the record for the guy and  Presto! locate his first mother. Trouble is, she's dying. All the dialogue was spot on, and they locate his mother in a hospice in California. They race there but she's already gone, and the after gathering is taking place.

The son speaks to her last husband (she'd had four, but spent the last 12 years with this one) without saying who he is. Then Mary notices a picture of the dead woman and the husband at a very young age and says, Who is this?

Husband: That's me--we were together when we were seventeen.

Mary Shannon: What happened to the son she had?

Husband: How did you know? Etc. There was never a day gone by that she did not think of our son. Our parents went crazy and there was no way we could have kept him. We drifted apart after that....

So by now I'm frigging weeping as father and son reconnect.

At the end, the man in the witness protection program will be transferred to the same city where his father is, and the last scene is of them going off on a camping trip. Blown away, I was. A really warm ending to the horror of Google Baby. Sometimes the media gets it right. Yeah, I know reunions are hard, but some of them do work out as we'd like all of them too.

In Plain Sight is one of the best dramas on cable, 10 p.m. EST, 9 CST Wednesday evenings. I think there is only one left in the current season--reruns over the summer? You can watch full episodes here, but as of this morning, The Born Identity from last night was not up. It should be #311.--lorraine
__________________
I've been under the weather lately, my eyes have been killing me from too much time at the computer, trying to keep the blog fresh and work on my book. Our house is being reshingled, we are looking for new deck furniture as yard sales are not coughing it up (so we are looking on line), the episode of my once-close friend, Yvonne, appears not to be over...now she's in the hospital and I got a call last night from a friend who apparently knew nothing of our current contretemps and how Yvonne wants to get together and celebrate my birthday. Life is strange as the Moody Blues sang. It was The Moody Blues, right? And yes, I promise everyone the ending to the story of my missing granddaughter is coming soon.