Washington Post: In ways that are both blunt and subtle, attentive viewers of the show now understand “Transparent” as a broader, epic story about the American Jewish experience — particularly as it is lived by a family with an on-again, off-again dependence on faith. Thanks to Ali’s barely formed thesis proposal, “Transparent” has provided profound but easily connected dots along the notion of Jewish escape, flashing back to scenes of the previous generation’s tumultuous yet fortuitous flight from Berlin in the 1930s and the capture of Maura’s uncle, Tante Gittel (born Gershon), a young trans woman.
These scenes were not presented in the name of narrative tidiness or obligations to Holocaust references; they all but announced that “Transparent” is now working less like a dramedy (that word becomes increasingly useless here) and more like an 800-page novel about something bigger than all of us. Season 3 continues to reveal key moments from the past, particularly from Maura’s childhood, but also that of Maura’s ex-wife, Shelly (Judith Light)…
It’s no secret that a lot of these premium-cable and streaming shows are in some way about characters who are Jewish, or at least Jewish-ish, often because these shows are produced and written by people who are simply following the best advice, producing and writing what they know. To have watched some the best half-hour shows of the past 15 or 20 years — anything since “Seinfeld” — is to have become at least conversant in Jewish upbringing, culture and kvetching. We don’t discuss it much in TV criticism, mainly because it sends the worst of our anonymous commenters into the rush-hour lane of anti-Semitism, where the only off-ramp is marked “Hollywood — Controlled by Jews.”
First of all, so what if it is? And secondly, from this goyish, Catholic-schooled viewer’s estimation, “Transparent” is well on its way to becoming a definitive and classic work on the subject of Jewishness as “otherness.” When Maura, from memory, offers the kaddish for a recently departed character, “Transparent” once more reaches a state of sublimity, a feat it somehow accomplishes in just about every episode. There’s more to talk about here than the mystery of gender and relationships. “Transparent” is the best show we have right now about personal identity — of any and all human kinds.
