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.

E1 - "Standing Order"

The season begins mostly as a reintroduction to the Pfeffermans, and they seem to be more stable than we found them in season three - or is it just another plateau? We get to see Maura in her element, joyfully teaching and announcing she will be traveling to Israel to give a keynote speech at a conference on Judaism and gender. Sarah has found a cozy new normal back with her husband. Allie is using the house as an Airbnb, and doing so as haphazardly as you would expect her to. Josh, however, is as silently remote as usual - but that can’t last for long since Shelly is moving in with him.

But the richest reintroduction to the Pfeffermans is when they are brought together. One by one they arrive for family dinner, flowing into Josh’s kitchen in a tumult of overlapping conversation, jabs, and affection. It’s a logjam that’s all too familiar to those of us with large batshit families, but no other show on television captures this type of familial communication as authentically or with as much snappy idiosyncracy. That is part of the wonder of Transparent: it’s a show that can give us both a nuanced examination of memory, legacy, and shared trauma and Judith Light picking at her teeth with a fish bone.

Up on the roof, the Pfefferman children take a BuzzFeed quiz that tells confirms they are each sex addicts (and does so without making them build a pizza, who knew?). In an effort of half-seriousness, they attend a Sex Addicts Anonymous class where Sarah reconnects with her daughter’s preschool teacher Lila (played by the delightful Alia Skawkat). Meanwhile Maura might be making her own sexual compromise with her new shifty boyfriend Donald, whose affections seem increasingly limited to her trans identity. Okay, maybe the Pfeffermans aren’t all that much more stable.

E2 - "Groin Anomaly"

Allie has been, like, totally fine with how things went down with poet Leslie but that relationship is going down in more flames than she expected: several students have lodged complaints about Leslie’s sexual conduct and Leslie published a poem in the New Yorker that is rather creative with Allie’s anatomy. Of course, avoidance is the name of the game and Allie manages to hop onto Maura’s plans for Israel.

Meanwhile Josh struggles to continue his Anonymous sessions with the literal ghost of his baggage haunting him and Shelly adorably discovers the Upright Citizens Brigade improv. Sarah begins to tempt her monogamy aims by seeking parenting advice from Lila. She proposes a whole submissive top scenario to get kids to follow your instructions, but it’s the distinction between secrets and lying in an open family that feel like Sarah’s real temptation: “secrets are stand-ins for boundaries.”

Jesus Christ Superstar appears to be a major (and inventive, gorgeous!) motif for the season. This episode opens with a flashback to Maura fantasizing about her female presentation while singing along to “Everything’s Alright” and ends with a nightmare. As she trips on pot gummies, “The Temple” comes in as an increasingly poisoned groove that leads to her humiliating experience at the hands of unfeeling TSA agents. In one musical entity, they captured the beauty and the horror of Maura’s experience in her own body with the family on the outside. Heartbreaking storytelling magic.

E3 - "Pinkwashing Machine"

Allie posted all of the TSA fuckery online, and it went viral as mother and daughter were mid-flight. She gets an invitation to meet the activist Lyfe that helped boost the video’s impact, leading to a detour in the West Bank. It’s clear that Allie’s transient politicism might be in over her head with the struggles of the Palestinian people, perhaps swayed but the unexpected ease and sense of community in the people she meets. But will Allie just get used by yet another situation that she finds appealing?

Could you really expect Shelly moving in with Josh to go smoothly? She strikes out at her UCB classes but becomes as needy as usual, drowning her sorrows in rosé "pink" and ingratiating herself to Josh rather than simply stating her heartache. With Josh seeking wacko spiritual healing from his former pot dealer, mother and son are two peas in an avoidance pod. But after the two make up from Josh accusing her of OCD, there is a little more hope that they might be able to support eachother through their wounds. Certainly more hope than Sarah’s notions of turning Lila’s parenting tools into her own book - we know what you’re heading towards, Sarah.

Maura’s speech seems to go swimingly, if not for the repeated questioning if she is connected to a local salesman personality with a cutesy jingle. She ultimately looks the damn thing up and brings with it an avalanche: is it possible that this man is the father she always thought was dead? It’d be a stretch if it wasn’t for the grave certainty Jeffrey Tambor plays the realization. Looks like Israel will be more of a homecoming than expected.

Comments

[haajen]

Still very, very good but this season felt a little bit thin and stretched out, would´ve worked better if the stay in Israel were shorter.