Transparent - Musicale Finale (Series Finale) - Review

Even though Transparent is an ensemble show that revolves around a Jewish family, Maura Pfefferman has been its central character from the very beginning on. In the very first episode of the series, Maura was still known as Mort, a father of three adult children and ex-husband of Shelly Pfefferman. In the pilot episode, he came out to his family as transgender and started her journey of becoming the woman on the outside she had always been on the inside. For four seasons, we witnessed Maura’s transition, suffered with her, cried with her and celebrated with her. When actor Jeffrey Tambor, who portrayed Maura, was fired for sexually assaulting fellow cast members, Maura was the consequential collateral damage. The actor left, the character died and the TV show was cut short several seasons.

The show’s creator and executive producer Jill Soloway decided to turn the final episode of the show into a 100-minute long musical film to celebrate Maura’s life. On paper a musical episode certainly sounds like a lovely idea, watching it, however, was rather tedious.

Maura’s ex-wife Shelly tries to deal with her grief by writing a musical about her family and Sarah, Josh and Allie – who came out as non-binary and goes by Ari now – are overwhelmed by their loss and all the responsibilities it brings with it. There really is not much going on in terms of plot which makes watching the 100-minutes film rather frustrating. The songs were not particularly catchy but the actors made as much as possible out of the material they were offered.

What the finale got right is that it brought back all the popular guest stars for Maura’s Shiva: Maura’s friend Devina, Josh’s son, Sarah’s Ex Tammy who is once again with Barb, Ari’s Ex and poet Leslie, the pre-school teacher who Sarah and her husband Len were a thruple with, yoga instructor Shea and rabbi Raquel who Josh ended up with once more.

Before watching the finale I had planned on writing a long, in-depth review but after having seen it I did not feel very inspired to type out a detailed essay.

The show was great, the ending was not.

How did you like the musical episode? Do you think the ending did the show justice?