By Logan Miller, staff reporter.
Amazon Prime released Season 3 of “Transparent” on Sept. 22. Despite walking on a very tight rope in most of its scenes, the show has always and continues to give off a realistic portrayal of someone struggling to identify to their birth-given body. This slightly frail, 70-year old transgender woman, Maura Pfefferman, is played by Jeffrey Tambor, recognizable from the popular t.v. show, “Arrested Development.”
I remember watching the first episode of the series with curious hesitation. It’s not easy or necessarily attractive to go through the gender transition process at the ripe old age of 70. It’s considered very late, too late to physically alter the body effectively. It’s both a struggle for the physician and for the family of the trans person. Seeing Jeffrey Tambor walking through a dimly lit hallway in a long dress is a pretty jarring visual, but that’s the point.
Maura and her ex-wife had three kids during their marriage: Joshua, a music producer with a history of slightly off-putting relationships, Alexandra, the youngest of the siblings and an ardent feminist scholar and Sarah, the eldest sibling and a mother of two children. Originally, Sarah seemed like the prototypical american woman of the family with marble kitchen counters, beautiful backyard, a wealthy, suit-wearing husband. But her life flips upside down after discovering a new side of herself and falling into a lesbian love affair with an architect.
A web of sexual confusion cast over all the members of the Pfefferman family, as each of the siblings have their own oddities and kinks Their personality changes seem to coincide with Maura’s trans admission, but we learn throughout the course of the show that their obsessions have been rooted in their past long before these recent events.
There isn’t anything in the show that seems blatantly insulting to the trans community, but the writers don’t make any safe creative decisions, either. It takes the concept of gender and uses it as a stepping stone to explore unique, modern family dynamics. Each character is confused by their unsolvable sexual hangups, but unwilling to relent in their quest to find an answer.
Season 3 seamlessly continues the drama surrounding the characters in a subtle, slow-burn sort of way. The third season isn’t as focused on the most obvious points of emphasis– the uncomfortable scenarios and circumstances that pop up when a man reveals that he’s actually a woman. The cast of characters are still just as self-deprecating and desperate as they previously were, but now the show can direct it’s microscope more towards the peripheral characters. It isn’t all about Maura anymore and she doesn’t seem very thrilled about that.