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“Generation Cryo” recap (1.3): Boston Discoveries

Last week on Generation Cryo, Bree made her way from Reno to California to Boston. She met three more half-siblings along the way, including the amazing Jesse Bogdan. This week, Bree stays in the Beantown area, meeting three more half-siblings she has there: a super geektastic brother Will and two sassy older sisters, Paige and Molly. While I’ve loved all of the half-sibs we’ve met so far, Paige and Molly are clearly the best, full of a lot of anger and spunk and love. They are also immediately and fiercely loyal to Bree.

We also get to hear more of Bree’s history with her moms in this episode, and warning: it is not good.

We begin with Jesse driving Bree over to Paige and Molly’s house. Jesse soon leaves-aw, bye, Jesse-and the rest of the fam has a bonding session around the dinner table. This is another hetero family who couldn’t have biological kids because of medical reasons of the father, although we don’t see the dad here at all. It’s unclear whether they’re separated, or if he just didn’t want to be on the show. In any case, Paige and Molly are some of the first half-sibs to openly express anger they’d held in the past: towards the donor for being able to just jerk off and walk away; at people in their high school who called sperm donor babies freaks; even at their mom for making them “science experiments.”

The mom, Laura, also shares that until the Donor Sibling Registry happened, she had thought they bought all of Donor #1609’s sperm. Meaning, the idea of half-siblings was a big surprise. Paige also has the best quote of the episode: “They’re like, oh, you’re a freak, you were stored on a shelf for a while. It’s like, we would’ve been stored in a dick. It’s the same exact thing.” Paige, do you go to Emerson College? You strike me as an Emerson girl.

The big news, though, is that they also have a donor profile, but it’s different than Bree’s, filled out a few years earlier. Even though Will, Paige, and Molly have no interest in meeting the donor, they all find comparing the two profiles interesting. Bree thinks he sounds funny, although I think he sounds kind of like a douche, considering he listed “sex” as one of his “skills.”

Bree also has an adorable Skype session with her mom Sherry, in which Sherry emphasizes “teamwork” in her mission and reminds Bree to “have fun, too” which are both totally mom things to say. She also apparently has never used Skype before and has trouble locating the red phone to end the call. MOMS.

Bree and her new older sisters take a tour of Boston, including the obligatory duck tour, and then the whole fam heads to a family lobster bake, a new thing to Nevadan Bree. They dig for clams; Bree is welcomed to the family by great-grandma; and then Bree and Momma Laura have a heart to heart. Laura is one of the most emotional mothers we’ve seen so far, either just because that’s her personality or because she’s maybe had a wee bit of alcohol at this lobster bake. She feels like even the idea of the donor being a real person they could meet feels surreal, but also mentions that Bree being around has made them talk about the whole issue a lot more than they normally ever do. She then tearily says that she’ll support Bree and the kids in whatever they want to do, because it’s about them, not her, and she loves them. They pinky swear on it, and Laura kisses Bree’s cheek. Maybe it’s alcohol; maybe Laura is just ridiculously sweet.

Laura also makes this really important point, that both she and the dad have talked about, that even if they could go back and have their own biological children, they wouldn’t. Because then they wouldn’t have the kids they have. And the kids they have are perfect. This really sums up the whole point of this show to me, better than anything else anyone has said, although a lot of people have said a lot of good things. Bree later tells the camera: “It may be a little unconventional, but it’s my family. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

While the information about the donor that they’ve learned from comparing the two profiles is just interesting to the half-sibs, it’s seriously exciting to Bree, because their profile includes the donor’s birth date, which she never had before. But she did have the birth place, Oakland, on her profile. So later at Paige’s apartment, in a matter of minutes, they are able to log onto a genealogy site and print off males who were born on that date in 1965 in Oakland, California. They end up with a list of 23 names, closer than Bree has ever been before. Bree is “stoked,” her favorite word, but Paige and Molly are clearly more hesitant. Bree is so consistently positive and persistent in her quest to find the donor, in fact, that Paige says to the camera what we’re all maybe thinking at this point: that she just hopes Bree doesn’t think this person is going to fill some void in her life.

Yet, when Paige and Molly then ask Bree if she’s expecting the donor to be some type of dad, Bree immediately and clearly states no, not at all, that he will never be part of her family. And to explain her family a little more, she shares more history about her two moms than we’ve seen before. Prior to this, we knew that her biological mom, Debbie, had returned to the men, but when they all met in the first episode of this series, she and Sherry seemed pretty amicable. But apparently it wasn’t always that way. When her moms split up, Bree was four years old. Debbie took her to Vegas with her new husband, and whether through the husband’s or Debbie’s choosing, cut off all contact with Sherry completely.

Sherry fought like hell legally to get her back, but until then, Bree recalls her two moms fighting and shouting anytime Sherry tried to use her visitation rights. She remembers one instance in particular of kicking and crying while Sherry told her in the hall, regretfully, “I have to go.” Bree has a crying jaunt remembering this, the first time we’ve really seen her break down. Boo. Boo! What a lesbian nightmare.

Paige and Molly are very comforting and everyone hugs because SISTERS! But back to this issue of the list of 23 names: now that Bree feels like she’s thisclose to finding him, she wants to head to Oakland to find out more. And she wants the half-sibs that have supported her most to go with her to help.

The next day she asks Paige and Molly in front of Laura, and everyone gets really emotional without being able to accurately describe why, other than it feels real now. They think about it for a while, but later tell Bree they’ll both go to support her, even though neither of them want to meet him. Bree assures them they’re open to back away at any point if they become uncomfortable.

Bree has one more person she wants to ask, the other half-sib she feels has been most supportive: Jonah. He hesitates when she asks him over Skype, saying that he’ll have to talk to his dad about it. When we witness this conversation, his dad, as he was in the first episode, is reasonable and caring while also being honest about his own reservations. He points out the qualities that he sees in Jonah that are very similar to Bree: a happy-go-lucky personality that doesn’t necessarily focus on possible negative consequences. For instance, while Jonah and Paige and Molly keep saying they’re not going to meet the donor, what if they accidentally do if Bree stumbles upon him in Oakland? What if they find the donor and he actually wants to be a part of their life, in a way the parents’ might not be comfortable with? Sure, it seems unlikely, given that he hasn’t responded to the cryo bank’s inquiries, but when it comes to your family, you have to think about every possibility.

In the end, of course, his dad allows him to go to support Bree. The three girls leave from Boston and he leaves from Atlanta and they all meet up in Oakland, and we end off the episode with Bree feeling confident that, as she tells her video diary, “We’re going to find you.”

While I have been completely supportive of Bree so far in this series, as we come closer to a resolution where they may, in fact, find the donor, I feel myself feeling slightly more anxious about it all. Not because I feel that the donor’s privacy is going to be violated, because MTV is a big player who knows how to not get sued. They’re not going to smoke out someone who doesn’t want to be smoked out. But I do worry about Bree’s vulnerable, ever optimistic emotions.

How do you feel as Bree inches closer to her goal? Also, Paige, can we hang out? Call me.

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