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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
85
Mixed:
8
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
TV Guide MagazineSep 29, 2016
Season 3 Review:
Spiritual and emotional epiphanies abound in these 10 episodes, about as close as TV comes to living art. [3-9 Oct 2016, p.23]
Sep 23, 2016
Season 1 Review:
The show creator Jill Soloway’s deeply empathetic filmmaking style and her writers’ penchant for fine, funny details give the series soul and prevent the characters from tipping over into full monstrousness. The performances are more precise than ever, naturalistically portraying people who are neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Most impressive is how Soloway’s team keeps finding fresh angles on the same characters navigating the same big existential questions.
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Sep 19, 2016
Season 3 Review:
Transparent’s status as a revolutionary show would not be as compelling (still compelling, but not in the same way) if it wasn’t bolstered by strong and innovative formal work. Its musical cues are as good as they come, and the realness of its scenes between actors doing exceptional work is accentuated by the fact that it feels like the camera is equally involved in the scene, making us feel present.
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Sep 12, 2016
Season 3 Review:
Season three of Jill Soloway's groundbreaking Transparent may turn out to be its funniest and most soulful yet. The head-on collision of self-absorbed entitlement with yearning solitude that has defined the fractious Pfeffermen clan from the start still sets off sparks of merciless hilarity, but it's the poignancy of their interconnected dysfunction that makes the show so compelling.
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Dec 14, 2015
Dec 11, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Everything that was a big part of the first season is back, but more: The show's loose fantasy boundaries are even more permeable, the Judaism is more present, everyone's worst trait is more squarely front-and-center, the primacy of the sibling bonds more exclusionary. The winky pokes at academia poke harder. The flashbacks flash farther back.
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IndieWireDec 11, 2015
Season 2 Review:
As striking as some of the scenes are individually--the premiere episode alone features a pair of long takes that are like sisters to one another, with the first being entirely still and the latter in constant motion--it's not until you see the whole season that you can truly appreciate the depth of what's being depicted.
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Dec 1, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Just a few of the series’ many charms are its nimble energy and its ability to hopscotch between sadness and silliness without missing a beat; there are also scenes of pure joy, like a road-trip sing-along to the Indigo Girls classic “Closer to Fine.” Transparent is also ridiculously funny at times, and quite willing to send up the self-absorption of its characters while never losing sight of their pain and aspirations.
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Nov 30, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The ability of this amazing collection of actors to take Soloway’s plots and dialogue and keep it all grounded in a realism that seems plausible, harrowing, funny and touching is at least one element of the magical recipe that makes Transparent work, that sets the series apart. In season two, Transparent is impressively still in command of that volatile mix.
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Sep 26, 2014
Season 1 Review:
What follows is a rich, funny, touching exploration not just of transgender life, but of family, identity and sexuality in general. Tambor's genius in the role is in creating a very particular female character well beyond makeup and wardrobe, seemingly on the cellular level.
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Sep 23, 2016
Dec 11, 2015
Season 2 Review:
The show is just as strong as it was at the end of its first season. To be sure, Transparent isn't for everyone, and not because of its central transgender character, who’s actually one of the most likable of the bunch. Viewers are more likely to have a problem with the rarefied, tony Los Angeles setting, and the self-absorbed characters who populate the series.
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Dec 11, 2015
Dec 11, 2015
Season 2 Review:
These scenes [flashbacks to Weimar Germany], which feature Michaela Watkins doing the best with a tritely anxious, angry character, are the weakest elements of the new season, at once too pat and too melodramatic. But the show benefits from terrific casting in its supporting roles this season, with great turns by Cherry Jones, Richard Masur, Anjelica Huston, and the poet Eileen Myles.
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RogerEbert.comDec 10, 2015
Season 1 Review:
There are times when “Transparent” will run into a narrative convenience that it often seems too good for--someone stopping by a party at just the right time, someone running into someone in public, etc. Or a character will express something that seems just a bit too self-aware in an argument. I like these characters so much that I really just want to sit around and listen to them talk naturally to each other, examining the dynamics between one of the most fascinating families on TV.
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TV Guide MagazineDec 9, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Tambor's revelatory, Emmy-winning performance as Maura has only deepened in its doleful and wry dignity, and if there's any complaint about the 10-episode sophomore season, it's that quite often there's just not enough Maura. [7-20 Dec 2015, p.16]
Sep 26, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Right in the first episode, the relationships are well lived-in, the writing is honest and bound up with the actors, the tone effortlessly embodies drama, comedy, and life’s absurdities, the contemporary homes and locations click, and the ensemble acting is filled with little moments and jewels.
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IndieWireSep 23, 2016
Sep 22, 2017
Season 4 Review:
Transparent is as beautiful television as ever. ... The characters’ shaggy-dog awkwardness, it must be said, is sometimes shared by the show itself to its detriment. ... But even such missteps are admirable signs of the show insisting on the full humanity of marginalized people, regardless of which side of any given border they’re on.
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Sep 22, 2016
Season 3 Review:
Transparent has expanded from its first season’s examination of gender identity, and with that enlarged view come some growing pains. ... But the newest episodes of Transparent also display the perils of a producer reveling a tad too much in a show’s baroque period, particularly in the self-referential first episode, “Elizah.”
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Dec 7, 2015
Dec 3, 2015
Season 2 Review:
It's a bit of a mess, this first half hour, what with Sarah having a breakdown and quick jaunts to the Weimar Republic, but it gives Transparent more elbow room and the episodes that follow take full advantage. Though still heroic in her decision, Maura is more fully realized.
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Sep 26, 2014
Season 1 Review:
Fans of “Six Feet Under” are likely to enjoy Transparent while those who find characters who make consistently poor choices frustrating and may be less enamored. “Transparent” isn’t funny all that often, but at its heart it does tell a relatively new, original story in a way that’s grounded and heartfelt without being at all saccharine.
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Sep 19, 2017
Season 4 Review:
As usual, one’s tolerance for Transparent depends on one’s tolerance for the overbearing, over-sharing, boundary-blasting Pfeffermans. But here’s a guarantee: One won’t be bored and one will end this ride with an affirmation, once again, that love may come in all shapes and sizes, but love is still love.
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Dec 10, 2015
Season 2 Review:
Transparent is no longer as interested in trying to locate the comedy in these lives as the tragedy. The tonal shift is a huge one, and not necessarily a welcome one either.... Transparent is still sharply observed, and it’s still easy to admire the actors, especially Hoffmann and Tambor. Just harder to love the show.
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Sep 27, 2019
Season 5 Review:
A lot of song and dance, some of which is drenched in self-absorbed sap and some of which is wildly and satisfyingly jubilant, with thoughtful and often clever music written by Soloway’s composer sister, Faith Soloway. ... The show struggles to find a way to meaningfully wrap up the Pfefferman siblings’ stories, whether sung or spoken, but the actors put considerable effort into bringing “Musicale Finale” to its fullest vision.
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Sep 26, 2019
Season 5 Review:
[Transparent] finishes not with a whimper but a choreographed musical number titled “Joyocaust.” It’s the climax of a movie-length “Musicale Finale” that works its way through various stages of OK-ness to crescendo with something so enthusiastically, earnestly nuts it achieves a kind of transcendence.
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Sep 26, 2019
Season 5 Review:
Transparent has always been about surviving cataclysms and leaning into change. “Musicale Finale” makes a bighearted attempt along those lines, if not an entirely successful one. Songs written by Soloway’s sister Faith pleasantly sing-rather-than-show a series of final transformations for the characters. The lyrics get so hyperbolic as to seem trolling, but there’s just not much drama. Fine actors who once expressed complex emotions in charmingly messy cross talk now spend too much time shouting out slogans as if they were Elsa of Arendelle. The ideas powering the show remain interesting, though.
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Sep 25, 2019
Season 5 Review:
It’s all over the map narratively and tonally, and fans of characters like Sarah or Josh or Shea will feel frustrated with how little they get to do in the allotted time. But what would a farewell to Transparent be if it wasn’t equal parts clever and exasperating, delightful and baffling? ... It’s a valiant, well-meaning effort.
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Oct 8, 2019
Season 5 Review:
As it turns out, an hour and 40 minutes is at once plenty of time to cram in a season’s worth of family drama—starting with Maura’s will and the realization that Shelly and her kids never really knew Maura’s wishes, certainly not in life—and not quite enough to keep some characters from getting the narrative short shrift.
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UPROXXSep 21, 2017
Season 4 Review:
One of TV’s boldest, and most focused series has become shaggy around the edges in its more recent two. At its very best, it’s capable of moments of such beauty and emotional truth that very little of Peak TV can even glance at, let alone touch. But getting there requires more effort, and patience, than before.
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IndieWireSep 30, 2019
Season 5 Review:
It just doesn’t add up, whether you look at it from a practical standpoint or a broader figurative assessment. The “Transparent” finale feels like a desperate flailing for attention that betrays what the show did best and, worse still, such contradictory pomp comes from a series that knows it should’ve gone quietly into the night, rather than clawing tooth and nail for another day of sun.
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Sep 16, 2019
Season 5 Review:
A self-indulgent experiment egregious even for the most self-indulgent characters on television, Musicale Finale feels hastily composed, a tacked-on coda from a visionary who has already moved onto brighter horizons, such as the underrated I Love Dick. Truthfully, few of the actors seem prepared for their big numbers.
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Sep 16, 2019
Season 5 Review:
There is a lot about it that doesn’t quite work, specifically pretty much the entire first half of it. But the fact that it doesn’t all work is part of what makes this an appropriate farewell. The Musicale Finale takes what can be frustrating about Transparent and what’s also so sublime and lovely about it, then distills all of that into a single song-and-dance-filled curtain call.
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Sep 16, 2019
Season 5 Review:
There’s a pointlessness to the whole enterprise here, a sense that one’s last looks at characters who were uniquely well-drawn and carefully wrought are being dithered away on a theatrical framework that requires so much jerry-rigging to make sense that moments and interactions are slipping away.
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Sep 26, 2019
Season 5 Review:
Excruciating 100-minute coda. ... In Musicale Finale, songs that issue straight from characters’ psyches destroy all perspective. Nothing ever cuts through the preciousness. Worse are the musical numbers themselves, which are clearly meant to be silly and self-aware but often land as unintentional self-parody anyway.
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