Transparent

Its characters use politics as a pretext for making ungenerous choices, and thereby risk undermining the credibility of those politics in general. This allows Transparent to be more bracing, more challenging, and more compelling than most any other show on TV.

Transparent's second season is the best television of the year.... Season two was an improvement in every way, small and lovely and achingly resonant.

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.

Clearly rooted in life experience, Transparent continues to be a series that understands both love and pain.

The Pfeffermans, the dysfunctional family at the center of Jill Soloway’s Transparent, return for a second season more poisonous and captivating than ever.

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.

Transparent feels more than ever like a drama this season. There are amusing moments and asides, because life is seldom just one thing or one tone, but they evolve naturally out of the dramatic arc of a family nearing crisis.

Season two broadens its focus to the vast extended Pfefferman mishpocheh: children, in-laws, exes and long-gone ancestors. And it’s all the richer for it.

It is every bit as powerful, moving and surprising as the first season, and just as transformative in its own way, as it belies the notion that second seasons of great high-concept shows are rarely as good as first seasons.

Impossibly, the show’s second 10-episode batch surpasses its first, and it does so by widening its focus on the Pfefferman family while keeping Maura’s journey central to the story.

Transparent is still in a class of its own.

Transparent's second season is even more visceral, real, and funny than the first.

Season 2 is bolder, stronger, and more audacious because now, actions have consequences.... For a TV show, the stakes don’t get much higher and Soloway nails it all with ease.

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.

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.

It’s a smart twist that Maura, the Pfefferman who’s changed the most on the outside, is the only one who’s certain about who she is on the inside. The kids are still figuring that out.... But not everything here feels as natural as the relationships.

A dazzling and fascinating season two.

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.

What makes Transparent season two different from last season--which was itself technically and thematically brilliant--is that creator, writer, and director Jill Soloway introduces a thread of historicity to the story, with flashbacks, of a sort, to 1933 Berlin.

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.

A little wilder but just as wonderful as ever, season 2 finds Transparent caught up in the past and looking forward to the future.

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]

Transparent returns for a second season with the Pfefferman family digging deeper into their pasts and struggling to make sense of their futures.... The dialogue can slash like a knife.

Scenes set in 1920s Berlin, apparent flashbacks that seem like they're aching to be their own show, but don't quite work in this one.... The further adventures of that family, in all their flawed glory, make Season 2 of Transparent a smart, sensual treat.

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.

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.