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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Exhuming Hitchcock's Grave... Again

Alfred Hitchcock was not above a remake. Or adaptations. Or self referencing. But this latest news is taking things too far in posthumous Hitchcock mania. A new show called Welcome to Hitchcock is going to "reimagine" Hitchcock stories one season-long mystery/crime at a time. The news gets worse: Chris Columbus will direct the pilot. Because, you know, Columbus has always excelled at taut psychologically provocative suspense (wtf?).

Sigh. After all the Hitchcock rip-offs and "sequels" and homages and "recreations" over the years, we do not need a ten episode reimagining of Psycho or Rear Window or Notorious; they're perfect the way they are. With the TV-making community scrambling to jump on the hot hot hot anthology train we all should have assumed that remakes were next. But if they must do this, let's hope they find a young director with an actual voice and gift for suspense to flesh out some of Hitchcock's less successful efforts instead. Any suggestions? 

Some Brain Vomiting About "Finding Prince Charming"

By Nathaniel R

Outside of talent-based competitions like Project Runway and RuPaul's Drag Race, I rarely watch reality television. Sure, I've seen an episode here and there of some of the big ones (mostly due to Emmy races or being around friends who were watching them) but I've never seen an episode of anything from the Housewives subgenre or Kardashians anything and never will. I've also never seen an episode of The Bachelor or Bachelorette.

This avoidance is less about artistic judgement than a lifelong aversion to famous people who are famous for no good reason. Celebrity that comes from talent or a contribution to society is easy to respect even if you don't personally admire that particular celebrity. Nevertheless after becoming obsessed with UNReal last season (have you finished S2?) its brilliant acting, disturbing psychology, and its evisceration of The Bachelor I suddenly had all these curiousities about this particular subgenre. 

Enter Finding Prince Charming on Logo which bills itself as the 'first' all gay dating show and is basically The Bachelor with old school Shakespearean casting; men play all the roles...

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Issa Rae: A Star is Born

by Kieran Scarlett

It’s an incredibly exciting thing to watch the emergence of new on-screen talent whose charisma and star quality cannot be denied.  It’s difficult to describe clearly, but it’s clear to a watchful viewer when it happens.  Such is the case with Issa Rae, star and co-creator of the new HBO comedy “Insecure” set to debut next month (the pilot episode is already available online via HBO Now). The series, which is co-created by Larry Wilmore (formerly of “The Daily Show”) announces Rae as a force to be reckoned with, both in front of and behind the camera.

The show is, in some ways, an extension of Rae’s 2011 web series “The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl”...

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Tig Rising in "One Mississippi" (Episode 1)

by Steven Fenton

If you’re a comedy fan, or if you’ve listened to any NPR show in the last four years, you know Tig Notaro. For the uninitiated, the comedian rocketed to fame when she turned her lowest point in life into comedy gold. In 2012, Tig Notaro had a pretty shitty year. Her mother passed away, she ended a relationship, and she was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer. Mere days after her diagnosis, Tig delivered an instantly iconic comedy routine where she mined her personal miserie; spoke frankly about the unbelievable circumstances she’d found herself in; and somehow transformed all that profound pain into poignant hilarity.

Notaro’s brilliance and signature laidback charm have launched her into stardom with albums, HBO specials, cameos on Inside Amy Schumer and Transparent, the Netflix documentary Tig, and now her very own Amazon show. In One Mississippi, Notaro channels her dark, deeply felt humor into a beautifully made, sensitive, and rollicking portrait of a grieving family with a talent roster full of Film Experience favorites...

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