Transparent Season 2 (Review): Nothing short of a masterpiece
Though Amazon Prime kept audiences waiting more than a year for the return of Transparent and the volatile and captivating Pfefferman clan, the wait was truly worth it.
Though Amazon Prime kept audiences waiting more than a year for the return of Transparent and the volatile and captivating Pfefferman clan, the wait was truly worth it.
If the first episode of Transparent’s second season is any indication, any critic making a Top 10 list needs to wait until the full season premieres on December 11th.
That’s great if you’re stoked for those Adam Sandler Netflix movies, but the real intriguing development of Netflix and Amazon and increasingly bizarre players like Overstock.com getting into the original content game is what it means for independent filmmakers. Ask HBO, and they know how to market a high level program to a specific, tailored …
If Togetherness was only about Amanda Peet’s Tina being dishonest with herself about how her behavior around men and friends affects the rest of her life, it could be a great show. Peet is performing far out of her normal lane with this zany, insecure women who either cannot or refuses to acknowledge social cues from men she dates. Long the straight woman in her television and film roles (except for Bent- RIP Bent!), Peet is impossible to look away from here, constantly the most entertaining yet cringe-worthy of the four main characters introduced in the pilot. Her misguided attempts to force a relationship out of what is so obviously a brief hookup with a perfectly cast Ken Marino is only the tip of the iceberg for Tina, as she sets all her hopes on one guy only to see them dashed when he “breaks up with her” via text message.
I imagine my feelings after finishing Transparent’s incredible first season were much like many people’s feelings after Orange is the New Black premiered. It is wholly original and seems to exist as a result of the ways online streaming has opened up the medium of television to previously unrepresented characters. I was enamored both with the show’s characters and the way it approached issues of gender identity and sexuality. I needed to keep binge watching.
Transparent follows the Pfefferman clan, a tightly knit Jewish family living in Los Angeles, as their lives are changed by one member’s brave announcement. Maura (Jeffrey Tambor) comes out to her family as a woman, despite being their father and going by the name Mort for all of their lives. Pfefferman matriarch Shelly (Judith Light) confronts this new knowledge as well as her new husband’s mortality. Eldest daughter Sarah (Amy Landecker) reignites a flame with a college ex-girlfriend after realizing how unhappy she is with her husband. Middle child Josh (Jay Duplass) seems to be on the verge of a midlife crisis as more and more romances fail in spectacular fashions. Youngest daughter Ali (Gaby Hoffman) is adrift in both her professional and personal life.
One of the breakout stars of NBC’s long-running sitcom The Office was Mindy Kaling, whose Kelly Kapoor had been a mainstay at Dunder-Mifflin since the show’s inception. Following the publication of a hit nonfiction book, Kaling received a development deal for her own sitcom at Fox, which made its debut in the fall of 2012 …
Jeff, Who Lives at Home Written and directed by Jay Duplass and Mark Duplass USA, 2011 The Duplass brothers’ fourth feature length effort opens with its protagonist Jeff (Jason Segel), wielding a voice recorder, discussing how rewarding he finds M. Night Shyamalan’s Signs. Heavily relating to that film’s themes of fate and purpose, Jeff also …
Mark and Jay Duplass, considered to be one of the founders of the mumblecore aesthetic are moving forward with their next feature, a script that has been making the rounds in the past few days to Hollywood studios. According to the LA Times, the script titled Pitchfork is a dramatic thriller about the middle-aged mother …
Cyrus Directed by Jay and Mark Duplass The Austin based Duplass brothers made a name for themselves as vanguards of the mumblecore movement–a movement in film which emphasized uber-tiny budgets and naturalistic acting. Their first two features, The Puffy Chair and Baghead, drew immense, if hesitant, praise from festivals like SXSW, and skyrocketed them to …