Transparent - Jill Solloway television series on Amazon

four episodes in and this is A+ fanfuckingtastic. never really rated solloway much and dislike six feet under but hooboy, the acting is awesome, the writing is awesome, the casting is awesome and this is awesome.

it is free to watch with amazon prime which i think xbox and playstation and ios have apps for to put on your teevee
there's about a gazillion think pieces out there, would be curious to see any that are recommended

what's the deal w/ these amazon shows? is this one getting a full series? is the stillman one?

and wasn't chris carter doing something w/ them? whatever happened w/ that?

was not curious abt this but didnt know soloway was involved

most otm thing QT has said in abt a decade is that her film afternoon delight was one of the best of 2013

is there a way to watch it w/o amazon prime

this is an ongoing series, ten episodes live now
i think you can just buy individual episodes or the whole series from amazon but it's exclusive to them. amazon produced it.
it's not the stillman show, it's the other one.
predominantly about gender/self identity, family, sex, selfishness but manages to not get preachy or shameful about any of them
killer cast: jeffrey tambor in the lead, gaby hoffman, amy landecker, rob huebel, judith light, jay duplass (the baghead guy, playing to type)
am avoiding talking about the show's central conceit until a few more people chime in.
but again: HIGHLY recommended.

it's a half hour comedy with some intense drama and real emotional impact
and the theme song was driving me CRAZY with "why am I getting a little teary here?" when i finally figured out that the music sounded creepily like the always-effective opening theme from UP. same little tinkly french piano bit. the show's charged subject matter did the rest.

super hyped for this, the pilot was really interesting

landecker rules

Carrie Brownstein is on this too.

she's gaby hoffman's pal/drug hookup

landecker is A+ good in this and super hawt

The pilot was great. Looking forward to watching more.

yea i watched the pilot too, a++

okay, i just power watched the whole show. really fucking great. will rewatch when the next season starts. everybody should do their best to give this a go.

this is not as good as i was hoping yet but it is very appealing

otm

I don't find it funny at all really but it has a pretty cool vibe. The credits help

the pilot was so long ago that i can't remember what the thing about it was that was so promising, i think maybe some of the kind of fluidity & digressive sort of structure? like this languorous pace. & now this is slightly more trad in following like, a couple, &c. really getting a kick out of the performances though; in some other gaby hoffman stuff i saw lately it seemed like her type & casting was the point, but she has a depth in this.

this show is really good. i'm sorta surprised there's not more chatter here (maybe that's due to the distribution method).

i'm 6 episodes in. any scene with Jeffrey Tambor is really good, and i'm warming up to some of the other plot lines. the scenes with his 2 daughters and son kind of remind me of High Maintenance in that their conversations feel contemporary and, for the most part, natural. however, as the season progresses i realize that i find myself thinking more and more that Amy and Jay are complete fucking assholes (especially the episode where their stepdad with dementia goes missing and they don't give a shit). but that seems like a common feature of most tv shows these days - the airwaves are full of complete psychopaths.

but really this show is all about Maura. those are the scenes that stick with you the next day. the part where he chooses his name. when he runs into an old friend seeing him as maura for the first time. when he says he's been dressing up as a man all of his life. it's good stuff. it's a bummer that they couldn't have gotten a transgender actor to perform the role, but Tambor definitely pulls his weight. he's excellent in every scene.

(PS one of the daughters (Ali/Gaby Hoffmann) was the little girl on Field of Dreams! kinda blew my mind when i realized that)

i kind of want to see this but every time i log into Amazon i see them gloating over this series and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth

the previews make it seem very self-congratulatory and feel-good-PC but i also get the feeling that it isn't actually like that

yeah it really isn't.
my takeaway was that it's primarily about how horrible we are to our own family but maybe i'm coming with baggage.

maura is also a self-centered asshole! everyone on this show is a self-centered asshole! but likeable and human all the same.

(PS one of the daughters (Ali/Gaby Hoffmann) was the little girl on Field of Dreams! kinda blew my mind when i realized that)

Not only that, but her IRL mom is Warhol Superstar/Actress (Midnight Cowboy, Play It Again, Sam) Viva!

I plowed through all of the episodes last week. Love it. Judith Light! Much Jewish!

I watched the pilot and I felt like it was well-written and acted but I didn't want to spend any more time with the characters, especially the kids.

otm

Yeah, I can only stand Ali, and even she gets on my nerves sometimes too. I think the assholeishness of the other two siblings is supposed to be balanced by their wisecracks, but I don't share their sense of humor so that their attempted jokes just add to their crappiness.

Still pumped about another season though, it's a great show

Yeah I didn't find them all that funny. I think I'm just not in the mood right now for yet another show about a family of wisecracking assholes. I could totally see enjoying it at a different point in my life, and can see how someone else would enjoy it.

something about the way they seemed to luxuriate in their behavior too, I just felt like "yes, there are people like this in the world, and yes, this is a skilled portrayal of them, but I just don't need them in my life right now"

I'd encourage you to check out another episode or two, though, because I had a very similar reaction to the characters in the pilot and still ended up liking the show quite a bit.

yeah, woman alive likes the show a lot, is ahead of me, I'll probably give it more time

they're all assholes but i loved the season despite/because of that.

^

totally overrated show. good/great acting by most of the leads (though mom = terrible), but such hokey writing, from the lesbians to the "ho ho ho jews and their schmear", characters reduced to caricature except when saved by individual actors' performances.

^
xp

"ho ho ho jews and their schmear",

that was silly and too on-the-nose, but i appreciated the general Jew-yness.

I did find some of the loljews humor in the first ep to be kinda played out, think that was part of what turned me off.

as a ho ho jew, it felt fairly dead on to me

loving this to death. just watched ep 8, different from the rest so far [don't want to spoiler anyone], very very excellent.

but BRADLEY WHITFORD!!

On Saturday, for 24 hours only, Amazon is making all eps of this available to stream free to all customers.

Tom Leger is apt here about some of the reasons I feel extremely wary about this series and Solloway: https://storify.com/meauxdal/jill-soloway-and-bruce-jenner

discovering that solloway's dad is trans suggests a lot about the perspective and intent of the series to me

That may be true, but even leaving aside this last faux pas and my concerns about Solloway casting a cis man to play a trans woman, we're not exactly lacking for cis narratives about middle-class white people transitioning that mostly speak to cis concerns. That it sounds like Transparent adds to that glut is probably inevitable given the economics of producing a tv series, but it doesn't make me any more inclined to engage with the show, especially given the more challenging work by trans writers that's been coming out of small presses like Topside over the last few years (Katherine Cross has written about some of those developments here: http://bitchmagazine.org/article/know-tell-trans-women-literary-fiction-nonfiction-writing-publishing). Anyway, I can't fairly judge this series without watching it, and I don't begrudge you your enjoyment of it, so I'll stay out of this thread.

better yet: watch a few episodes and see what you think!
and yeah, i would also certainly welcome a non-cis perspective narrative series made for television; maybe the success of transparent will lead that direction in the next few years

Yeah, point taken: whatever my misgivings, I'll try to approach the series with an open mind when I eventually get around to watching a few episodes. (A non-ILX friend whose judgment I trust described it as decently written, despite her ambivalence about its casting and whiteness and class focus.)

the complints re: race/class stuff is understandable but the show goes into more depth re cultural/religious identity w/r/t Judaism than I was expecting, and I think it deserves some points for that

I watched the pilot and I felt like it was well-written and acted but I didn't want to spend any more time with the characters, especially the kids.

Yeah, otm. We're taking a break between seasons of "The Americans," so my wife suggested it, based on buzz/acclaim. As I watched it I was worried she might be into it, because I hated everyone, but thankfully at the end she turned to me and basically said she hated it and didn't like anyone and that she just couldn't relate to anyone or any of their problems and particularly their pervasive selfish unfunny assholery. I may make her watch another ep, to be fair, but frankly between this show and a general disinterest in revisiting "Orange is the New Black," I'm happy to be able to knock a few series off of our collective must-see list.

there's a new season? I didn't even realize, seems like people aren't talking about it as much

That happened with me last season as well - it just sort of appeared and I didn't see or hear anything about it before I noticed it on my Amazon video screen

started last night, watched first two episodes, enjoying it but it feels like the series has moved into a kind of rote era where nothing is very unexpected. Last season with ethe flash backs to the family history was amazing; maybe it peaked at that point. i did like the use of Jesus Christ Superstar though.

Enjoyed the first two seasons (the first a little more), then we just sort of stopped halfway through the third, even though we were enjoying it. It feels a bit like Six Feet Under - like overnight it lost a certain something to compel me to keep watching, even though the quality is more-or-less the same.

Also I've been put off by watching Soloway's movie, Afternoon Delight, which is drivel.

i stopped watching this at the beginning of last season. i enjoy a lot about the show but i just find the characters to unlikeable (I'm looking at you JOSH).

too even gah

I don't mind with Josh, since he's supposed to be likeable! And it's not an Entourage thing, where he's some douchebag "bad boy" who's constantly being rewarded by the narrative - instead he keeps fucking up.

is he supposed to be likable? i don't think so

Er, I mean the opposite

All of the characters are constantly rewarded by the narrative on account of their materially rich lives that are mostly free of real consequences. None of them seem to work particularly hard, none of them seem to have crises of the non-existential nature, all live a leisurely, meandery lifestyle in aesthetically beautiful surroundings.

basically curb your enthusiasm

yeah it's high quality but I don't know if I can take these people again

All of the characters are constantly rewarded by the narrative on account of their materially rich lives that are mostly free of real consequences.

Ehh I don't really care about this. Would dispute the "constantly rewarded" part too. It's the correct critique for Soloway's movie, Afternoon Delight, but I don't think it applies to the show.

Plus, even in a wealthy milieu it's still a big deal for female/trans actors and filmmakers. And there's the novelty of seeing reform Jewish lives that vaguely resemble mine, or at least share reference points.

(It's not a perfect show by an means obvs.)

Just finished S4 this afternoon and I think it's my favorite season of the series. This one felt less driven by crisis, so the whole family could take some time and do the work of figuring out their own shit and how to go forward, and it's interesting work.

yea I only have ep 10 left ~ its an interesting/smart conceit, I always feel like once shows are a few seasons in you just need to find fresh/new ways to get your characters in one place...a season in Israel was really the perfect way for this particular show to do that imo

I loved this season.

http://deadline.com/2017/11/jeffrey-tambor-leaving-transparent-sexual-harassment-allegations-amazon-jill-soloway-1202211711/

wow. this terrible but I feel like the show ended on a high note if it's over after this past season, which I adored.

i would imagine they're gonna pivot to have the trans actors on the show all be real trans actors which might be the best thing when everything's said and done. I loved tambor in the role but it was hard to justify having him do it except that the show wouldn't have been made without a lead name. Now the show is the name and I think they can make it work.

yeah direction of the show will have to really change. to the point where maybe they need to completely shift it to another family.

I mean, they could literally just recast the role. there is plenty of precedent.

five years in, recasting the primary character would be jarring; but the show is about identity and has played with plenty of things (having Gabby HOffman play her ancestor etc); it could be an interesting creative challenge.

huh so now tambor is saying he's not leaving?
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/arts/television/jeffrey-tambor-transparent.html

Jeffrey Tambor has been fired from #Transparent following sexual harassment claims https://t.co/PMFr5TE8UB pic.twitter.com/gKZjzLebAP

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) February 15, 2018

I feel like this show has an eerie resonance in the Trump era, the flashbacks to Nazi germany subtly warning "Watch out, society may not react as well as you think to this." No idea if that was the intent, but thought of it when I saw this.

https://scontent-lga3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15894729_351162891933205_724570151774816065_n.jpg?_nc_cat=1&_nc_ht=scontent-lga3-1.xx&oh=16d31eac3026c14c1789a49ec04165e4&oe=5C48EC3F

Han Koehle
January 4, 2017
This photo is usually divorced from its specific content. It is the most famous image of Nazi book burning. Most people assume the specific books don't matter. The horror is at the notion of destroying books, any books, which I can certainly understand. But let's talk about what was in them anyway.

This image shows Nazi-aligned vigilantes (not just government agents) destroying the library of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute for Sexual Science. Hirschfeld was the founder of modern transgender theory, and it is his displaced students who founded transgender advocacy in the US. Destroying this library destroyed the first central hub of transgender advocacy in the world. This loss is not an inconvenience. Parts of that library can never be replaced.

In the 1910s Earl Lind read one of the books from that library and wrote for a feminist magazine that mothers ought to raise their trans children according to their endorsed gender (as Lind said, their "mental sex"). One hundred years ago there was a movement to normalize trans people. It was based on scientific study and the assertion that the policies of a just society should be based on sound evidence, and sound evidence showed that gender variance was perfectly natural and perfectly healthy. That movement is what was displaced when Nazis stormed the library and burned all the books they found.

We recovered from the loss of Hirschfeld's collection, eventually. We are once again at a place where people write to feminist journals extolling parents (no longer mothers!) to raise their trans children according to the genders of their hearts. But suppressing trans existence is so visible at the heart of the party that just came to power in this country. We'll see what happens next.

Source:
Stryker, Susan (2008). Transgender History. Berkeley: Seal Press.

Edit (10/22/18): over the last 24 hours this post has been attracting attention again. I'm so saddened that this feels so relevant as the administration seeks to legislate trans people out existence. We remember. We #WontBeErased.

where was that posted?

facebook

absolutely brutal review of Soloway's memoir

The truth is, Soloway appears to know little more about trans people now than when she began production on Transparent. She Wants It suggests that when she wrote the show’s pilot, Soloway thought of trans women like her parent as little more than crossdressing men, and the lessons conducted by writer and series consultant Jennifer Finney Boylan (and subsequently trotted out by Soloway on her book tour) are appallingly basic:

The word “trans” is Latin for “bridge,” she taught us next. Then she wrote the word “transbrella” on the whiteboard. “Not everyone is at one end of the spectrum or the other,” she explained. “People use the word trans to refer to all kinds of people, including drag queens, butch lesbians, and genderqueer folks, who metaphorically stand on the bridge, in the middle, rather than using it to cross from one side to the other.

As far as I can tell, the hideous portmanteau transbrella is of Soloway’s own inventing. (Boylan likely used the usual term trans umbrella.) “Bridge,” meanwhile, is a spurious translation of the Latin word trans, which is a common preposition meaning “across.” Evidently no one at Random House could be bothered to crack open the old Wheelock. Do bridges go across things? They do. May one go across a bridge? Reader, this cannot be denied. But I hope, for Boylan’s sake at least, that the Transparent team was told that trans may be thought of as being like a bridge, for pedagogical purposes. This would have been a metaphor, a word which comes from the Greek metaphero, meaning “I carry across”—for instance, across a bridge.

https://www.affidavit.art/articles/no-one-wants-it?fbclid=IwAR3WSqSdCd5uIgAULkBz9ZzkkkA63OtZ-d_aYivujo-VzCOQK9THP8626O0

any word on whether the show is ever coming back? I heard soloway is doing a stage musical based on the mother and Jesus Christ Superstar.

no idea. tbh I never caught the last season and I wasn't that tempted to, even though I actually liked the previous one a fair bit

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/10/amazons-transparent-will-finally-return-as-a-musical

sounds bad

I really liked this show, and it had some wonderful moments, but I am fine if the last season was the last season

From that review Simon posted:

If a Mafia analogy seems crude to you, hold that thought. “I needed to find out why she was going straight to the press with her story, to understand why she hadn’t come to us,” Soloway writes of Lysette. “We could handle this, I wanted to tell her, but let us do it internally, inside the family.” Soloway is never so sulky as in these pages, pouting about her “legacy” and losing any lingering ability to complete sentences: “If Trace released a statement, it would be over for Jeffrey. And that meant Maura. The show. Our TV family. Everything.” In a climactic, chapter-ending scene, Soloway parlays with Lysette at a Coffee Bean picnic table. “I can’t believe you’re doing this,” she tells the actress. “Well, it happened to me,” Lysette coolly replies. What happens next is so incredible that I must quote it at length:

“I had to tell my story,” she said. “But I said in my statement that I wanted the show to continue.”
“But the idea of the show will be tarnished now in everyone’s minds,” I said. “In Middle America when people think of trans people there’s still so much suspicion, and Maura became this beautiful symbol of transness and now you’re laying this imagery out there of her being a predator.”
Suddenly, I started crying.
She was horrified.
“I’m the victim here and YOU’RE crying?” she demanded.
She was right. I was sitting across from her, frozen with fear. I tried to stop myself from crying. Like Michael in The Godfather, I tried to play it stoic and cool. I didn’t say, Fredo, after all I’ve done for you. I said, “I wish you luck.”
And then I walked away.
An hour later the article came out.

I dunno much about this show or them but I gotta say comparing a woman who's been sexually harassed to Fredo is...wow.

Maura became this beautiful symbol of transness

Pretty much every character in the show is an awful terrible selfish person so I take issue with this

Yeah Maura is horrible! They all are, maybe the son is the worst I don't know

i thought the horrible selfishness of all the characters was part of the point of the show.

but a lot of these interviews with Soloway are making me think again

I thought so, but apparently it's about beautiful symbols. xp

tbh though a lot of showrunners have weird ideas about what their shows are about / what makes them good, Soloway is hardly unique in this respect

the last season was very good, people should watch it.

https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/transparent-finale-photos.html

wow that's great, I didn't realize they were going to do a filmed version of this and it seemed a sad way for the series to go out without closure.

well i certainly didn't see this coming
https://www.vulture.com/2019/06/jill-soloway-replaces-bryan-singer-as-red-sonja-director.html

hahaha

so the finale for this debuted and seems to have gotten zero attention. I just stumbled on it the other night and, while I was fucking stoned as I am always when watching TV at 10pm, I thought it was exceptional. searched up reviews and it looks like that's a minority opinion but I thought this was a good way to go out.

i watched this just the other day. i liked it overall, but didn't like the musical portions, which was too bad, because it's a musical! i think it was well done, it's just not my thing (note: i do not like glee).

it was interesting as a structure, though, because it allowed the show to hit a bunch of final season/closure kind of points all in one episode, in a way that made sense within the framework of a musical.

it was actually less of a musical than I was expecting. i thought there'd be no dialogue at all.