What I’m Watching: Transparent

Transparent: Season 4, Episode 4 “Cool Guy” (B)

It took just a few mentions of a familiar last name for Maura to learn that her father was alive and living in Israel, and it took even less time for Ali to locate him on the internet. I was surprised that he would still be alive given the fact that Jeffrey Tambor is, in real life, 73 years old. I didn’t realize that Jerry Adler is 88 years old, so I guess that makes a little more sense. As soon as they arrived, they went straight in, and it didn’t take much to convince Moshe that they were who they claimed to be. The fact that he wasn’t too confused about Maura having formerly been Mort, and that’s mainly because of the extremely crucial knowledge that he dropped at the end of the episode, which is that Gershom and Gittel, who we’ve gotten to know in flashbacks from previous episodes, were the same person, indicating a trans history in the Pfefferman family that now makes Maura feel much more accepted, despite the trauma of never having known for so many years. Back in America, Shelly is going overboard on her Italian caricature, currently to critical acclaim, while Josh isn’t accomplishing much as he’s verbalizing the damage that Rita did to him. The most engaging plotline of this episode was the dreamlike meetup between Len, Sarah, and Lila which seemed like it could lead to a threesome and then very much did. I think we’re going to have a polyamory situation on our own which will excite Len at first but will likely alienate him soon when Sarah changes her mind about what she wants.