From the promising, but not altogether revelatory pilot, anyone familiar with films about screwed up family dynamics will be able to guess the general trajectory the characters will go on – were they in a film. What Soloway and company have been gifted by making Transparent a series (and the lengthy development gap between shooting the original pilot and the rest of the season), is the time to create characters that are deeper, richer, and seriously more messed up than any traditional film would ever allow. From the highly specific set of circumstances that form this broken family of non-practicing Jews develops a universal look at how we define intimacy.
Transparent is not Maura’s story any more than it is Ali’s, Josh’s, Sarah’s, or the Pfeffermans’ in general: if you’ve ever loved someone while also wanting to strangle them, or used the phrase “I love you” like a mantra instead of a declaration of affection, there’s something to relate to here. Even if the show’s dramatic chops weren’t so well honed, it would still have its hysterically filthy mind and mouth to fall back on. Though many of Transparent’s best bits aren’t even read like punchlines, the prurient impulses enabled by online benefactors allow the show to be frank about sexuality, but without sacrificing the fun and confusion that come in all its many forms. With the help of a peerless cast of supporting players – including Bradley Whitford, Carrie Brownstein, and a terrific Kathryn Hahn, to name but a few – it’s hard to think of another show in recent memory that builds out such a well-developed roster of characters, and small, but densely layered world, in only ten episodes.
The stealth precision of Transparent is the most important gene it shares with Arrested Development. Again, Transparent’s subject matter and early visual style belie some of the most surgically exact writing and directing you’ll see all year. Languid it is not: from the very first shot of the series, Soloway and company knew exactly what they were doing, and where they wanted this show to go. Though freeform about their approach to plot, or even what constitutes an episode, Soloway’s assembled team of writers are quiet killers, strategically embedding conversations with jokes and details that can take on huge importance hours later. Aesthetically, the show takes a few episodes to tamp down its shooting style, but by midseason, the economy with which various helmers (in particular, Nisha Ganatra) are telling these stories makes Transparent one of the best directed programs out there.
Even the show’s occasional stumbling points are somehow encouraging. The initially and intentionally off-putting characteristics of some the Pfeffermans only makes understanding how they became that way later on that much more engaging. And if the finale, arguably the weakest installment, is at fault for anything, it’s for overburdening itself with new ideas of where to go in the (still unannounced) second season.
Transparent is a challenging show, but not simply for asking you to relate to abrasive, self-absorbed people with alternative lifestyles; TV’s been doing that for ages. What makes Transparent difficult, but also so rewarding, is how it rebukes the notion that transformation has to be dramatic, or even all that transformative. You can change your clothes, your partner, and even your family, but that doesn’t mean you can change who you are. Most swans are still ugly ducklings beneath the plumage, and that’s okay. What Transparent advocates, if anything, is letting yourself be seen for who you are, while looking for the extraordinary hiding beneath the ordinary in others. It’s a message worth heeding from a show that’s worth seeing.