Transparent S4 E7-10: Everything's Alright?

by Chris Feil

E7 - "Babar the Borible"
I haven’t been quite sure what to make of this season of Transparent. Whereas the two previous seasons were fairly bold in creating seismic arcs for all of the Pfeffermans, this season felt like a chamber piece full of half-steps towards global politics and religion. The journey to Israel was an intriguing way to continue expanding the family history and contextualizing the show’s themes. But by the end of the season, the religious elements of the seasons feel more tangential and underdeveloped. Odd that as Transparent’s literal world got bigger, the show got unsatisfyingly smaller...

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Transparent S4 E4-6: A Widening Family Circle

by Chris Feil

E4 - "Cool Guy"

Maura wasted no time in discovering her father still alive in Israel to actually meet him, even if Allie led most of the confrontation. Upon meeting Moshe, it’s doubly infuriating that Maura has to do the labored explanation of her gender before Moshe even begins to explain himself for abandoning her. It’s two kinds of very personal injustice intertwining for something almost unspeakably painful - the kind of moment that Jeffrey Tambor has aced from the very beginning of Transparent.

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Transparent S4 E1-3: Off to Israel

by Chris Feil

The opening theme music to Transparent by Dustin O’Halloran always chokes me up. Something about its evolving images and sound carry the weight of the shared histories - LGBTQ, Judaism, and family - speaks to both the known and still secreted past that makes the Pfefferman clan all too relatable. Like the rest of us, they’ve been somewhere and it hasn’t been easy. But from the opening emotive thrum, the theme now incorporating pilgrimage images and a traditional Jewish instrumentation, this season announces that it’s going somewhere too.

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Transparent Season 3. Part 2 - Heading for Disaster

by Chris Feil

Transparent thrives on impending personal cataclysm and the middle portion of its third season is no exception. Per usual, the Pfeffermans are on track for explosions big and small coming not soon enough for their own good or too fast that they can't see it as its happening. When Eric left us off, Maura (Jeffrey Tambor) had made the decision to fully transition, Sarah (Amy Landecker) was still struggling to get spiritually arrested, and Alli's (Gabby Hoffman) was continuing her relationship with the shifty Leslie (Cherry Jones). In this next section, Judith Light's Shelly takes a backseat, while Josh (Jay Duplass) begins a series of oncoming crises.

Episode 4 - "Just the Facts"

Maura opens the episode with a visit to her plastic surgeon to see the potential outcome from her planned facial reconstruction. She's beginning to see the belabored process of intrusive and endless therapy visits required to fully transition, but the projection of her future self staring back at her is all too promising to get discouraged...

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Transparent Season 3. Part One

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...  

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