YOU MAY RECALL that we were high last year on the debut of the Amazon original series Transparent. The second season made its debut in December and proved this is not so much addictive TV as it is healing TV. After rightfully earning Emmys and Golden Globe awards, this prickly, tricky and sometimes difficult-to-love series is clearly the answer to the “What will be the next great TV series after Breaking Bad?” question. It really is that good.
Season one focused more on the transformation (in all senses) of Mort, who at the age of retirement has decided to transition into being what he has hidden all his life – a woman. Jeffrey Tambor plays this role so delicately and yet so fiercely that it’s little wonder he’s been showered with practically every acting accolade. The new 10-part season now expands to give more screen time to the Pfefferman clan of three difficult children, plus an ex-wife, a new friend circle that Maura (formerly Mort) now moves in, and a rather ingenious flashback, too.
When youngest daughter Ali (Gaby Hoffmann) decides to investigate the family’s Jewish past to understand their “chasm of grief”, we are thrown back in time to Weimar Germany, just before the Nazis came to power. We arrive at Magnus Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Research where we find the brother of the Pfefferman clan’s matriarch, Grandma Rose, gaily living as a transvestite while their mother works to get exit visits and flee a Germany she fears is increasingly hostile to Jews. This step-back-in-time device could easily have spoiled the entire show, but instead it adds a whole new depth. We get to see that this family has had a long and fascinating connection to the trans world. The only criticism of the “Berlin years” section is that once again everyone is speaking English. Would it be too much to ask for a touch of authenticity and have actors speak German since they are living in Germany? Smart people can actually read subtitles and Transparent is a series aimed at smart people.