Transparent - Jill Solloway television series on Amazon

^^^ this

Second season pilot is up on Amazon and it's very very good.
Rest of the episodes go up on Dec 11 I think.

Kleinkunst references!

Thought that was an amazing episode. The scene with the wedding photographer. And the Berlin 1933 vignette. And that final scene taking in the windows of the hotel rooms.

i wouldn't have imagined that the hottest sex scene on film this year would be jeffrey tambor fingerbanging judith light and yet

i don't know about that, but season 2 is EXCELLENT.

love the way they gradually bring the 1933 stuff in and connect it to the present

especially in the episode with the forest gathering. that was just amazing.

four eps in and it's excellent. but so so sad.

like, i just ache for these characters, mostly, and all the unhappiness they suffer or bring into their worlds.

three eps in they continue to pretty much one and all be horrible people, except maybe for the rabbi.
i liked the bit where she had to confront the shitty behavior he engaged in at college.

Kolten is not a bad person!

and actually, i think the main characters are much more sympathetic this season. but i'll wait til you finish the rest to talk about it.

love this show

koulten worries me, like there's a well-shrouded, dangerous interior void that's gonna culminate with him trying to fuck the rabbi or burn the house down

lol i was thinking he might shoot up that school "ripped from the headlines"

three eps in they continue to pretty much one and all be horrible people, except maybe for the rabbi.

this is true, though it doesn't dim my sympathy for them. so many amazing scenes so far - the bathtub "sex" scene was just heart-breaking. sarah just floating through like a miserable ghostly wreck, perhaps the *worst* person of the bunch, but still tragic. won't say more because don't want to spoiler anything, but what a show.

Was just reading Steve Erickson on this and spluttered out my coffee in agreement:

<q>The show is less terrific when we’re subjected to Maura’s children, who—I swear on the lives of my own children—are the single most off-putting family in any history of television that stretches from the Ewings of Dallas to the Lyons of Empire... you’re also left figuring that maybe Maura has become a woman just so no one will know she fathered the almost supernaturally unlikable people around her. </q>

http://www.lamag.com/steveerickson/the-danish-girl-and-the-transgender-movement/

Ah fuck yes. I just watched s2 e1-3 and I wanted to punch the son so badly. They are the worst, all three of them.

s2 was pretty good. some of the execution of the 30s stuff felt wonky to me but it landed in the finale. the whole thing felt a bit slight compared to s1 for some reason, like it was half a story.

It's kind of a study in the tragic unhappiness of narcissists. But that's a really hard tragedy to find empathy for at times.

Me after the third ep: "This show is really well acted and written and directed, but I just don't like the people. I don't like them."
H: "Why are you yelling?"

I think I hate the son more than any character ever

We're 6 episodes into s2 and this is some pretty brilliant/brutal stuff.

The scene that got to me the most was where Josh is showing Colton around the high school and trying to be all cool about it, even with the guy registering him for classes. Ughhhhhh. Then the proposal scene, although I had a faint twinge of sympathy for how bad he bungled that somehow, because it seemed so much out of a wounded sense of himself.

I mean that's p much narcissism though, getting angry when anyone punctures your little bubble.

Somehow e4 and e5 really warmed me to this show. The characters actually are developing/progressing. Josh actually matures a little bit as he deals with Rita and with Colton's parents, and as he seems to face that he's soon going to be a dad in a much more *real* way than with Colton.

so I watched the first sode of season 2 and im not sure I can continue with this show. what an obnoxious half hour of tv that was.

otoh this was my reaction to watching the first couple episodes of season 1 but I ended up getting into it.

Keep going — push through the pain.

yeah i think i'm getting off the bus after about 4 episodes of the new season

I still haven't seen this series, but I thought this Jos Truitt essay on broader problems of representation was useful: http://feministing.com/2015/12/21/on-jill-soloway-caitlyn-jenner-and-the-trans-representation-the-media-wants/

It feels unfair that Alexandra Billings who I think is giving a great performance & probably one of maybe three genuinely likeable characters on the show is being ignored by these critiqueshttp://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/tvandradioblog/2014/oct/10/-sp-alexandra-billings-transgender-actor-transparent

this show is so great. season 2 was so great. most of these characters are horrid but i end up feeling for most of them, except the son, who sucks. i like that the rabbi was shown to be fallible too, in that she clearly did *not want colton in her life, and would not be the spine the son so clearly lacked but needed to save colton from his fundie foster parents.

bring on season 3.

When can we talk spoilers in this series? Because there's one plot element I want to bring up that would be super spoilery for people who haven't seen this yet.

http://www.geekwire.com/2015/zillow-uncovers-the-backstory-to/

season 2 did nothing to change my mind that it is primarily a show about Jews, rather than gender identity. really, really liked it.

would not be the spine the son so clearly lacked but needed to save colton from his fundie foster parents

Eh, I didn't exactly see it that way. Taking Colton in didn't necessarily strike me as the right thing to do, and I don't know that he needed "saving" given that he was nearly ready to leave home anyway.

I'm not sure the show is "more" about Jews than gender identity, and it's also about families, and it's also about narcissism, and also about Los Angeles affluent liberal culture. But it definitely is a lot about Jews.

i know, i know. Jewishness feels like the common thread, but then it's the most obvious point of connection for me (being Jewish).

it's as much about jews as it is about privilege as it is about gender identity imo

there is, as jordan points out, a lot of "only my real jews are gonna get this" jokes

Like when Josh told the fundie dad "Colton *is* Jewish" and then sort of muttered "according to the reform movement anyway"

I just came here and I was going to be all I REALLY NEED TO TALK ABOUT SEASON 2 but now I see you've been doing that for a while so I will catch up and brb.

especially in the episode with the forest gathering. that was just amazing.

― Karl Malone, Wednesday, December 16, 2015 11:26 AM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YES THIS WAS VERY GOOD

Like when Josh told the fundie dad "Colton *is* Jewish" and then sort of muttered "according to the reform movement anyway"

― on entre O.K. on sort K.O. (man alive), Wednesday, December 30, 2015 12:13 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Why cause normally you're considered Jewish if the mother is Jewish?

Everyone is horrible except for Sid and Colton and the rabbi but I even didn't like her very much at points. I think that I hate Gabby Hoffman the most but that could be because I just with my parents bankrolled me until I was 33 so that I could have been a perpetual student who got high all the time. But yeah they're all horrible and yet I still feel for them and want them to be ok and get through all their bullshit. Maybe I like it because they feel relatably fucked up.

They're very cuddly for siblings though. Maybe that's not a big thing and it just seems weird to me because I'm an only child but do most adults get naked and cuddle with their sibs as much as these three seem to?

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It seemed heavily implied to me that the fundie family, in their "not even the USPS can be trusted, we have to do this in person" paranoia, were anti-vaxxers who killed the rabbi's baby by hugging a bunch of measles onto her. She broke out in pox right after they left. Was there anything explicit said to support this? Am I just pulling it out of thin air? Was it so obvious that they didn't have to say anything about it?

woah

stop blowing my mind crump

i don't think it was obvious at all but now that you say it . . .

i didn't think about it, but maybe? it seems like if it was supposed to be something to be noticed that they'd make it more obvious. maybe it'll come up next season?