This week Sarah Palin’s Alaska is all about family and fish. The Palins visit Todd’s family in Dillingham and at a fish camp in Ekuk. And they do a lot of fishing. Sarah and Todd’s son Track is back from Iraq and eager to make money following in his father’s fishing footsteps. But first he has to prove to his father that he can be the next of the great Palin fishermen.
In addition to watching Track catch fish (or not catch fish), Todd’s Eskimo grandmother, Lena, teaches Willow and the other girls in the family how to process the fish properly. Willow describes the scene as being covered in blood (and fish guts) and says she doesn’t think any of her friends do this. She is a good sport though and pretty good at it.
Later at the fish camp in Ekuk, after learning to process salmon for smoking, Piper says “I think I’m the best fish fileter in the whole third grade.”
The episode shows the Palin side of the family (5 generations) and what a big part of their lives fishing is. Willow celebrates her sweet sixteen birthday with a family party at her great grandmother’s house. The most powerful moments in the episode though focus on Trig and his teenage cousin Matthew who both have Down syndrome.
Sarah chokes up and tears up (and so did I) when talking about her visit with Matthew because it gives her a look at Trig in ten years. She says she hopes that Trig will be embraced by others and treated just like the other kids and talks about how Trig is the heart of her family and how much he teaches them all. This is an emotional side of Sarah Palin that her fans have not seen — at least not to this extent.
This is the most “real” of the episodes so far. The family is not fishing with brown bears or climbing mountains or visiting a commercial fishing operation. They are hanging out with family, fishing on their own boat with their own nets the way they supported their family for many years. They are visiting cousins and working alongside them in the fish camp. This shows the background of hard work and family that shapes Todd and Sarah Palin’s world view.
The episode airs tomorrow night, Sunday, at 9 p.m. ET on TLC.
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