What I’m Watching: Transparent

Transparent: Season 3, Episode 4 “Just the Facts” (B+)

In watching a few shows in succession, I described this as the series that would balance drama and comedy, but this was an exceptionally brutal episode, at least as it related to a few plotlines. It was clear at the end of the episode that Rita wasn’t headed anywhere good as she ascended the escalators at the mall, and hearing her hit the ground was almost worse than seeing her jump would have been. Josh is sinking into loneliness despite his positive relationship with Ali, and hearing him play his sweet song all by himself in the house showed just how solitary he’s keeping his emotions. Ali, on the other hand, is trying to share every moment with Leslie, in a relationship that’s not just age-inappropriate but also not fated to work out given their extremely different expectations of what their connection is supposed to be. Sarah seemed to be trying something fun and different by assuming the “top” position, but she ended up really scaring Pony by going too far and unleashing an anger that I don’t think she knew she had inside her. Somehow, that led her to think about creating a new synagogue space that the cantor is excited about, an awfully strange transition. Vicki is raising some solid concerns about Maura going all the way in her path to becoming a woman, though I was honestly thinking more about the unreliability of her doctor since he was played by Matt McCoy, who was the truly unstable and unhelpful lawyer on “Silicon Valley.”