TV’s best comedy/drama/tragedy, Transparent, is back for Season 3 in all of its sexual/pansexual/transsexual glory as creator Jill Soloway brings us back into the tumultuous lives of the fallible Pfefferman family. Here’s a look at Episodes 1-3…
Episode One: Elizah
It’s a bummer that the first show out of the gate is probably the weakest episode of Transparent we’ve seen. While the show starts promisingly with Rabbi Raquel (the magical Kathryn Hahn, promoted to full-time cast member this season) jogging through misty woods to a soundtrack of Jacques Brel’s “Ne Me Quitte Pas”…this episode is devoted almost entirely to one storyline. While Maura (Jeffrey Tambor) works one of her first shifts at the LGBT community center hotline, she receives a call from a confused young trans girl named Elizah. When Elizah hangs up on her, Maura is so moved and involved that she spends the day tracking her down...
Even this weakest episode of Transparent is full of taste, style, edge, and intelligence from start to finish. But this tale plays out like a very sophisticated after-school special from the 80s, had we been more enlightened then. The Elizah character feels contrived, and this is the only episode of Transparent that feels forced. One of the show’s many revolutionary elements is not just in the casting of trans actors for trans roles, but how remarkable those actors are, and how fully integrated they are into the storylines. Episode One is like “A Very Special Episode” that feels beneath the extraordinarily high level of artistry the show achieves week after week. Plus, one of the ways in which the show soars is the balancing of all of the family members’ stories. When The Leftovers did single-cast-member episodes, they deepened the texture and widened the context of the narrative and the characters. Here, we just miss our other beloved Pfeffermans.
Episode Two: When the Battle Is Over
We’re now back in full-family mode in this episode, as we see Sarah (Amy Landecker) back with her husband (Rob Huebel); Ali (Gaby Hoffman) still with professor Leslie (Cherry Jones); Shelly (Judith Light) still with Buzz (Richard Masur); and Josh (Jay Duplass) still lost.
This episode gets back to a special and compelling element to the show: watching our protagonists make “bad” decisions, often based on sex and sexuality (you know, like people do in real life). Transparent is wildly and wonderfully uncomfortable to watch…we see events and decisions colliding, and see the dangers ahead for the characters, but we’re always 100% aware of why they’re doing what they’re doing. Rabbi Raquel is such a powerful counterpoint in the show, because she’s the most sure-headed: the Pfeffermans are all “unlikable” in that they are incredibly selfish, sometimes disgusting, and always unflappably human.
Episode Three: To Sardine and Back
It’s amazing that Transparent can go to one of its weakest episodes ever to one of its all-time strongest so quickly. In this episode, Sarah doesn’t get on the synagogue board; Maura gets a new hairstyle; and Rabbi Raquel reunites with an old schoolmate. And in the big set piece, the entire cast unites to celebrate Maura’s birthday, in which she makes some startling revelations.
The birthday dinner scene, which employs almost every major character in the show, plays to all of Transparent’s strengths. The writing, directing, and acting in this sequence is stunning: not only does this creative team keep multiple plates spinning in the air simultaneously, it seems to effortlessly keep the family dynamics in constant turmoil and upheaval. In front of everyone, Maura announces that she’ll be having gender reassignment surgery without first telling girlfriend Vicki (Anjelica Huston); and says she’d like to be called “Mom” from here on in, without a thought to Mom/Shelly’s feelings.
It’s these moments where the show is peerless: not only does this scene refuse to turn Maura into a martyr for easy audience digestion, but it gets to one of the most provocative ideas in the show: Maura may think she’s transitioning, but she still thinks like Mort in terms of his patriarchal privilege. Maura does and says whatever she wants in the moment, with little regard to others’ feelings. She’s still “the father” in terms of cultural gender family roles. When she refers to being at the dinner with “family" and "chosen family,” we hear Shelly say “I guess we’re not the chosen family.” This is a show concerned about words and the effect of words, not just in regards to sexual identity issues, but across the board.
Look for Chris to survey episodes 4-6 soon. Have you started watching Season 3 yet?