I finished the second season of Transparent yesterday, and I already miss it. Jeffrey Tambor’s Maura continues to be my favorite character, and I wish the show would devote more time to her. I found Maura’s situation especially poignant in episode 9. Maura tags along with her two daughters to a feminist retreat in the woods. Sarah and Ali quickly go their own way, and as Maura strolls around by herself looking at the crafts for sale, a woman asks her if she’s trans, informs her that trans women aren’t allowed at the retreat and that some feminists are hostile toward trans women. Maura immediately seeks out her daughters, but they’re nowhere to be found. The episode does a good job of demonstrating how alone and vulnerable Maura feels. I strongly related to her. I have PTSD and extreme social phobia, so I often feel like I’m in enemy territory.
I found Maura’s adult children more likable this season, but they still seem self-centered and self-indulgent. Sarah especially got on my nerves in the first few episodes.
Spoilers… In season one, Sarah divorces her husband so she can resume her relationship with her college girlfriend. Well, we all know marriages sometimes don’t work out. Then in the first episode of season 2, Sarah marries Tammy. It’s a big, expensive wedding, too. But after going through the ceremony, she decides she’s made a mistake and tells the rabbi not to file the paperwork. It would be easier to forgive Sarah if this were simply an isolated lapse in judgment, but she and her brother and sister have a way of being oblivious to the needs of others. It’s all about them, or it seems that way much of the time. The kids remind me of the Buchanans from The Great Gatsby. “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
No comments:
Post a Comment