The American Life

The episode of The American Life that I watched was episode number 485, entitled Surrogates originally aired on January 23, 2013.
The overall theme of the episode had to do with the way people project themselves onto others. Whether it be the connection that twins held, sympathy for a socially mistreated person, or a common ground between actions of two different people.
The prologue of the episode began with the connection that twins share and how, in two principals it was strong and binding, being used as a united force to mold and educate young children but also on the opposite spectrum in two sisters who wanted nothing to do with each other as they went through the difficult process of growing up and dealing with their pier groups.
The first act was about the first political scandal entitled the Petticoat Affair. Surrounding Peggy Eaton and her marriage to John Eaton. The reason for the scandal was when her husband died she only waited about eight months before she married John which contributed to the rumors that she had sex with him before her husband had died.
The third act was about a girl named Amity and her account of her life growing up with an abusive father and her parents adoption of Larry, a 27 year old who had been sent to jail for murdering his previous and abusive adoptive parents. Recounting the story Amity said that she believed that her father adopted Larry due to a connection he felt with him having also grown up in an abusive home. The saddest part of the story was when the father was interviewed he completely denied ever having been physically abusive to his daughter.

The most interesting segment was the third act. It started out by just discussing who her family adopted Larry and then slowly segwayed into how he murdered his family and then revealing that Amity's father was indeed abusive to her. It was all in the shock value of the delivery and how the more information you found out the more the you were able to realize about the previous information that was told to you. The father was even interviewed and the conflicting information that he gave somehow held Amity's story even more true then debunking it entirely.