The Pfeffermans are out of their minds. They literally shed themselves, heaps of souls on the floor, and out stepped the carefree, fun-seeking, trans-formed Pfeffermans. We can now binge-watch how they live their crazy to the fullest in Amazon original series, Transparent, thanks to the wonderful Jill Soloway.First, it was crazy of a natural, familiar dose, like bickering over dinner while chewing Canter’s Deli barbecue ribs, but as the show spirals, it keeps bringing the game to new jaw-dropping levels. Former “poppa” of the family, Morton came out as a transgender, and has been reborn as “moppa” Maura; Sarah, the eldest sibling, divorced her husband for a dalliance with her college girlfriend; Josh, her younger brother, kept on impregnating women and losing his jobs thanks to numerous panic attacks; and Ali, the youngest and the craziest, dabbled and dived in drugs and lesbianism. The off-the-charts crazy detailed in sometimes too sexually graphic ways can be startling, but their crazy never rang hollow. It usually precedes irredeemable screw-ups in parenting, break-ups, sobbing in the restroom stall, or outbursts of road rage, and lives on a dangerous amount of egocentrism until there isn’t any.I recognize some of their crazy. I live some versions of their crazy. I shivered when Maura acquiesced that she blackballed female applicants in grad school, and despite her gender identity, still refused to let go of the entitled, sexist Morty she was born as, or when Ali tried to talk her girlfriend into polyamory just to act on her infatuation towards her teacher (“What is being queer if not questioning everything?” she said, and by “everything” she meant, and I quote, “knee-jerk hetero-normative”), for I react just as badly towards ugly revelations, and bear the same lingering inconsistency. Even more frequently do I stumble to discover that I often feel lonely, from either getting my heart broken more than it should, or a lack of companion to help me stride forward, as do the characters, chugging tumblers of vodka, exchanging static eye contact with Chinese takeout in the microwave. Jill paints the life of a daring family where the audience could cull out and contemplate over their worst nightmares, but feel safe getting vulnerable along with the Pfeffermans. I, apart from all that, find her works rather intimate from where I stand. She’s trying to explore life’s infinite mutability through her feminine gaze. So am I.
