So last night, "Colonial House" ended. It was intriquing. More so than stuff like "1900 House". Re-creating the conditions of a 17th Century British colony in America, I think, is intrinsically more profound than re-creating living conditions in urban England in 1900 because of the historical crux involved. And I'm glad that the show addressed that.

First there was the African American participant in the project, a descendant of African slaves in America, who decided to leave the project when the historicity of what he was re-enacting got the better of him like a devil in his soul. I really had to get into his shoes to understand why he left. It was just a project, an experiment, not reality; so abstract reasons for leaving the project seemed a bit of a cop-out.

But I think to him there may have been an impending horror to it all. The project allowed him to step into the colonists' shoes and the hardships they endured, and he started to make sense of the mentality, and the economic desperation, that allowed slavery to begin in America within 50 years. Not an easy thing to stomach, even though your existence is owed to what is arguably one of the most horrific events in human history - the trans-Atlantic African slave trade.

My number one most horrific event in human history would be the European arrival in North America, and that was also covered in the show. Unbeknownst to the project participants, a simultaneous project was going on, whereby descendants of Native American tribes were doing the same thing, re-creating the conditions of their ancestors in the 17th Century. When the two projects clashed, the colonists got a dose and an earful of what their project meant to the native peoples.

What seemed like a benign experiential experiment ended up carrying the weight of what happened to the Native Americans as a result of the European incursion they were re-creating. One of the colonists voiced it well when she said that she joined the project because she was unhappy with the recent direction our country is headed in, and the project allowed her to get back to a simpler, purer time in our nation's history. After meeting the "ideologically hostile" Native Americans (they had already encountered friendly Native Americans), she realized from the start there were no pure moments in our history. Even back then it was about greed and economics and subjugation. The fact that it was diseases, over which there is no control, that the Europeans brought over that were instrumental in effectively wiping out an entire civilization and way of life is cold comfort.

It was a moving series; the experiment was an emotional, potentially life-changing experience for many of the participants. Major kudos to the producers for saving the last 20-25 minutes of the show to follow some of the participants' return to their 21st Century lives. I would have liked to have known what happened to the site of the experiment, though.

I'm not sure what to make of the one Asian participant in the project. I presume his presence was just a matter of 21st Century concepts of inclusion in a 21st Century project, and not meant to make any statement about history or race. Alls I can figure is that they needed a friggin' violin player!! Doh!!