Transparent Season 3

This past week, my girlfriend and I finished Transparent season 3 and I was left fairly disappointed with the season for a number of reasons.

For those of you who don’t know what Transparent is, it is the Emmy award winning series from Amazon starting Jeffrey Tambor as Maura who, in the first season, decides to transition from the male sex to the female sex. The show focuses on how her family, Ali (Gaby Hoffman), Sarah (Amy Landecker), Josh (Jay Duplass), and her wife Shelly (Judith Light), deal with this news and his or her own issues. As a Jewish family living in Los Angeles, the Pfefferman’s come to terms with their relationship to sexuality, religion, wealth, and a number of other issues.

Season 3 starts out incredibly strong and I was looking forward to where this show was going. It involved Maura working as a crisis counselor and connecting with a poor African American Trans youth who was struggling with suicidal ideation and depression. This is my wheelhouse and I was excited for Maura to understand how privileged she is to be able to have the money and healthcare to begin transitioning. Instead, Transparent veered back into familiar territory with the Pfefferman children, Ali, Josh, and Sarah being fairly awful people to themselves and others.

The show also included Caitlyn Jenner in an episode which was jaw dropping. Yes, Caitlyn Jenner did transition but Caitlyn is also incredibly privileged, an aspect of this show that I’ve begun to detest, and is also a registered Republican. Caitlyn Jenner just recently decided to come around on gay marriage and wanted to be a trans ambassador for Ted Cruz. Yep. That guy who would never in his life support gay marriage or the right for an individual to choose the bathroom of his or her choice. She recently has stated that she supported Hillary Clinton, yes, but she still has a long way to go. So Transparent decided to have her appear in an episode, instead of, let’s say, Laverene Cox? An individual who has supported LGBTQ rights from the beginning and would have been great on the show, especially with the direction that the show was going in. That however did not happen. Jill Soloway decided to, instead, feature a woman who just recently acknowledged marriage equality, in a show where two women get married.

And the show continued onward from there. The starts of these season were Judith Light and Kathryn Hahn who plays Raquel Fein because both individuals began to understand just how awful the Pfefferman children are and began separating themselves from them. Kathryn Hahn also has a phenominal scene in this season where she breaks down after listening to Sarah try to rationalize another mistake she would be making.

So, there you have it. I wasn’t such a big fan of this season but what did you think?