Transparent -Amazon Prime TV series

I just finished watching the 10 episodes of this Amazon Prime TV series. ...a great cast, well written...perhaps the best show thus season. It follows an affluent , Jewish family in L.A.
The father has come out a transgendered.

 

I wish Amazon would take down the ads. Seeing Hey Now Hank Kingsley looking that way creeps me out.

 

Was this you way of celebrating Yom Kippur Mr. Bacon?

 

I thought the pilot was just ok. Episode 2 is worse. Does this get better?

 

Already renewed for a second season.

 

All I could think of when I saw the ad was Oscar from Arrested Development.

 

I really enjoyed it. Best drama I've seen in a long time.

 

I think this is an excellent show, and can't wait till the next season. As great as Tambor was in Larry Sanders and Arrested Development, this is his career achievement, IMO. Incredibly nuanced performance.

I hate all the kids, though.

 

I'm curious about that, too, since I stopped watching after two episodes because I just wasn't enjoying it.

 

Yeah, they're pretty awful. I had started to warm to the male one a little bit, and the final episode revelation that he has a kid might make him more tolerable next season.

 

I avoided this for a long time, despite a lot of good reviews, based on the ads/marketing, which basically feature cross dressed dad and somehow suggest it's going to be played for laughs.

Then I started to watch it on a slow night.

While there are dramedy tones, it's not done any favors by those ads. It's well written and interesting.

I am not thrilled by the need to push every available envelope of unrated programming--I think a lot of it plays more to prurient interest than an attempt to better present the story. But there's a nuanced and complex story being told and that's what's interesting...

 

I love the relationship between Mort/Maura and his ex-wife. Judith Light is also excellent here. The scene with the big tub of mustard and the Sweet and Low...that's every neurotic, Jewish mother, my own included!

 

All ten episodes are free to the public for today only.

Finally watched the pilot. Better than I expected. I agree with the earlier sentiment about hating all the kids. The characters seem well developed, though. I think I've met all of these people at one time or another.

 

I guess this is the only thread about this fantastic series? Just finished Season 2 which was even better than Season 1. Folks should get on this awesome roller coaster of a show!

 

I watched the whole series over about 3-4 days, and I think it is great. I agree to some extent that the kids' stories are extraneous, but they provide context for Maura's story, which is incredible.

I've always liked Jeffrey Tambor as an actor, but this is on a completely different plane.

Of all the non-Maura characters, I most liked Shelly, Maura/Mort's ex-wife. After being played mainly for laughs the first season, she became a full character in the second season (with some very funny moments too).

I certainly agree that the kids were largely unlikeable, but this is not the same thing as thinking they were badly acted. I think the younger daughter's coming out story was superfluous, since Maura's was the central event that drove all of the future and past stories.

[Spoiler Alert] I will say that as painful as some of the scenes were, the hardest moment for me to watch was when Colton realized that Josh wasn't going to ask him to stay, then turned and slowly got into the RV.

 

The past family history is such a great addition to the overall story. Really well done. The "kids" are getting a less less abrasive and you see them growth there a bit in some ways. Nice to see Josh be a more human this season. I hope his son comes back as he is really the most unselfish person in that whole family.

I loved Jeffery Tambor since he was on the Ropers/Three's Company! He really can do it all!

 

[More spoiler alerts] The family's history comes to the front of the stage the last few episodes. It took me a while to make the connection between the grandmother, seen in earlier episodes as she is today with dementia and nearly forgotten in a nursing home, and the grandmother-to-be, seen as a teenager caught between the stultifying but practical world of her mother, and the exhilarating but obviously doomed world of her older sister/brother.

When we learn who Gershon was, I had to catch my breath.

The huge pearl ring brilliantly uses a physical object to tell a tale. It goes from being a timeworn sitcom premise (the hopelessly out of style hand-me-down engagement ring), to a symbol of Rabbi Raquel's acceptance and then rejection of Josh, to something profound as we see the great-grandmother putting her jewelry in a candy mold and pouring molten chocolate over it before they flee Germany in 1933.

 

See, I didn't dig Season 2 as much. The only character I didn't want to slap was Richard Masur's.

Glad the Gershon reveal paid off, at least.

 

I've seen episodes 1-7 of the second season. Great show. It is so well written and acted that sometimes I forget I am watching a television show and instead am fully immersed and experiencing the characters' lives. It's kind of like reading a book in that way. If you've grown up Jewish in America, you know someone like each one of these characters--no matter what their gender.

 

I didn't catch a moment when we learned who Getshon was? I thought we knew who he was all along? I didn't see any big reveal scene, nor was one necessary. However, I could be missing something here. Could you let me know?

 

What Gershon reveal? We know he didn't come to the U.S., so we know he isn't a character in the present day. What am I missing here?

 

Nobody watching Season 4? Just finishing up myself.

 

It dropped? Zero promotion.

 

I know. I only found out about it from the weekly What To Watch NY Times email.

 

One reason why Amazon will never be Netflix.