Transparent: A Show Where Transition Is the Default State
Transparent is a show you need to be watching if you’re not already. The premise is pretty straightforward: it follows the Pfeffermans, an L.A. family whose patriarch becomes their matriarch. The series, available on Amazon Instant Video, chronicles how everyone copes with the news, supports one another, and lets each other down. There are plenty of things—the number of “WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?!” real-and-raw comedies that this era’s already churned out, not to mention a subject matter that could have been easily mishandled by this particular industry—that might’ve made this show trite, or simply bad. The fact that it is neither is already a commendable achievement. But beyond that, Transparent is slam-dunking, across the board, in a way that reaffirms your belief in modern storytelling and TV as a vehicle for it. Or at least mine.
For one thing, the script treats the series’ central character (Maura) with tremendous respect, and as much as the show is a coming-out story, it’s also a very belated coming of age story. The most powerful scenes in Transparent are those in which Maura experiences “firsts” as a woman: she sits down at a restaurant with Marcy and the waitress calls them “ladies,” she drives onto a campground for a retreat weekend and sees everyone, everywhere, wearing dresses. In these moments, we see her undergo the kind of thrilled vulnerability and wonder reserved in art for jittery teens on their way to a concert or first date.
For all intents and purposes, these little achievements are on par with those formative teenage milestones. This is Maura’s first time really getting to sit and feel the inertia of being a woman. This is her first time getting to do what feels best without thinking about it, without filtering herself through the sieve of Mort and without watering down and reinterpreting her impulses with a conservative men’s ponytail or gold pinkie ring. The smallest acts of femininity are suddenly decadent as hell because they’re finally hers. Watching this late-in-life adolescence—and how sweetly and sensitively Jeffrey Tambor plays it—had me shouting, “Mauuuuuraaaa!” at my TV whenever I saw it happening: Maura lightly touching a vase on Davina’s countertop, Maura fiddling with her Berkley desert queen purse while sitting in a chair, Maura riding a bicycle in a pale pink cardigan. Yes. There she is.