Episode
Frontline: Two American Families
Overview
Since 1992, Bill Moyers has been following the story of two ordinary, hard-working families in Milwaukee — one black, one white — as they battle to keep from sliding into poverty. A remarkable portrait of perseverance, Two American Families raises unsettling questions about the changing nature of the U.S. economy and the fate of a declining middle class.
Details
- Series
- Frontline
- Season
- Season 31
- Episode
- Episode 12
- Air date
- 2013-07-09
Episode context
Two American Families is Episode 12 in Season 31 of Frontline. It aired on 2013-07-09.
Previous / Next
Episode 11: Rape in the Fields
FRONTLINE and Univision partner to tell the story of the hidden price many migrant women working in America’s fields and packing plants pay to stay employed and provide for their families. This investigation is the result of a yearlong reporting effort by veteran FRONTLINE correspondent Lowell Bergman, the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley, and the Center for Investigative Reporting.
Episode 13: Life and Death in Assisted Living
More and more elderly Americans are choosing to spend their later years in assisted living facilities, which have sprung up as an alternative to nursing homes. But is this loosely regulated, multi-billion dollar industry putting seniors at risk? In a major investigation with ProPublica, FRONTLINE examines the operations of the nation’s largest assisted living company, raising questions about the drive for profits and fatal lapses in care.
More episodes from this season
Episode 10: Outlawed in Pakistan
In Pakistan, women and girls who allege rape are often more strongly condemned than their alleged rapists. Some are even killed by their own families. For this unforgettable documentary, filmmakers Habiba Nosheen and Hilke Schellmann spent years tracing one alleged rape victim’s odyssey through Pakistan’s flawed justice system—as well as her alleged rapists’ quest to clear their names.
Episode 14: Egypt in Crisis
FRONTLINE and GlobalPost’s Charles M. Sennott go inside the Egyptian revolution, tracing how what began as a youth movement to topple a dictator evolved into an opportunity for the Muslim Brotherhood to seemingly find the political foothold it had sought for decades — and then why it all fell apart. Were the Brothers ever really in charge? Or was the Egyptian “deep state” in control all along?
Episode 9: Never Forget to Lie
In the most recent of his critically-lauded autobiographical films, Marian Marzynski explores, for the first time, his own wartime childhood and the experiences of other child survivors, teasing out their feelings about Poland, the Catholic Church, and the ramifications of identities forged under circumstances where survival began with the directive “never forget to lie.”
Episode 15: League of Denial: The NFL's Concussion Crisis
An investigation of the health crisis threatening NFL players and the long-term fortunes of football.
Episode 8: The Retirement Gamble
The Retirement Gamble raises troubling questions about how America’s financial institutions protect our retirement savings.
Episode 16: Hunting the Nightmare Bacteria
Has the age of antibiotics come to an end? From a young girl thrust onto life support in Arizona to an uncontrollable outbreak at one of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals, FRONTLINE investigates the alarming rise of a deadly type of bacteria that our modern antibiotics can’t stop.
Episode 7: Syria Behind the Lines
In Syria’s rural heartland, the bloody uprising against President Bashar Al Assad has taken a terrifying turn. The once-peaceful Orontes River valley is now a perilous sectarian front line where neighbor is fighting neighbor. Olly Lambert spent five weeks living on both sides, and his unprecedented film documents the everyday lives of rebels, government soldiers and the civilians who support them.
Episode 17: Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald?
FRONTLINE marks the 40th anniversary of President Kennedy’s assassination with an encore broadcast of Who Was Lee Harvey Oswald? — an investigative biography of the man at the center of the political crime of the century. The three-hour documentary special traces Oswald’s life from his boyhood to that fateful day in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, posing a number of questions: Was Oswald the emotionally disturbed “lone gunman”? Was he one of two gunmen that day in Dallas? Or was he an unwitting scapegoat for the real assassins?
Episode 6: Kind Hearted Woman
In a special two-part series, acclaimed filmmaker David Sutherland (The Farmer’s Wife, Country Boys) creates an unforgettable portrait of Robin Charboneau, a 32-year-old divorced single mother and Oglala Sioux woman living on North Dakota’s Spirit Lake Reservation. Sutherland follows Robin over three years as she struggles to raise her two children, further her education, and heal herself from the wounds of sexual abuse she suffered as a child. Kind Hearted Woman is a special co-presentation of FRONTLINE and Independent Lens.
Episode 18: A Death in St. Augustine
A report on domestic violence allegations within police departments focuses on the death of a young Florida woman whose boyfriend was a deputy sheriff.