Having left them eating chopped liver at Ed’s shiva at the end of season one, we rejoin the Pfefferman clan for what should be a happier occasion: Sarah and Tammy’s wedding. And at first everything does seem quite upbeat, as Sarah’s side of the family pose for the wedding photo – the cast becoming ever more unwieldy as Josh’s son Colton, Tammy’s ex-stepdaughter Bianca and Rabbi Raquel – who is now also Josh’s girlfriend – are welcomed into the frame. Everyone proceeds to jostle and clamour (and it’s unusually irritating – the only time you ever hear characters on TV speak over each other this much is during an episode of The Real Housewives), but it’s the photographer who manages to properly sour the situation by referring to a steadily preening Maura as “sir”. The photoshoot abruptly ends.
From then internal family drama takes the reigns. Josh tells Ali (who tells Sarah, who tells Shelly, who tells everyone) that Raquel is pregnant with his child. Maura’s estranged sister Bry turns up and warns Maura not to visit their mother Rose as a woman. And then Sarah, whose anxiety about the wedding has distorted and garbled parts of the ceremony into a nightmarish psychoscape, decides that she doesn’t want to get married after all. Discovered by Josh and Ali in the toilets panicking, Raquel is brought in to tell her that, actually, she’s technically still single up until the marriage license gets a special stamp. “So what is a wedding, then?” asks Ali. It’s a play, a pageant, she’s informed. The whole thing is one big spectacle.
Talking points
Jewishness
This is already a huge part of Transparent, with season one using festivities to punctuate the narrative and Ali beginning to take an interest in her background – partially connected to the outrage she felt at finding out she was allowed to cancel her own Bat Mitzvah. That season earned Transparent the moniker of the most Jewish show on TV. If anything, this series seems even more Jew-themed – and not just because (much to Shelly’s delight) there’s now a rabbi in the family. There are all the wedding rites, as well the faint odour of anti-Semitic humour hanging about the photographer, who proffers the phrase “I want a little w(h)ine”, when asked by Shelly to try a Jewish reference for them to chorus; they finally settle on Hanukkah. And it might just be a happy coincidence, but this series is being released slap-bang in the middle of that very festival.
Flashbacks
Series one was peppered with flashbacks to the 1990s, based around a storyline in which Mort attended a cross-dressing camp. This time, as Bry’s son begins dancing flamboyantly during the Hava Nagila, we (and he) are transported back to a raucous party in Weimar Berlin. Before long, the camera moves on from him and settles on a girl dancing in what appears to be a state of ecstasy. At the close of the episode, we see the same girl sitting on Ali’s balcony.
Performance
Gender-oriented or otherwise, this is clearly going to continue to be a dominant topic: the big performance of the wedding ceremony envelops various others. Maura is mortified when she is referred to by the photographer as a man – despite having clearly signalled that she is a woman by her outward appearance. Sarah is preoccupied with looking like she fits the bill – worried her eyebrows are more “ebony” than “mahogany” – even though she doesn’t feel right on the inside. Josh, meanwhile, is clearly embracing the performance of being a decent and selfless bloke, both by attempting to bond with Colton and his frenzied enthusiasm at Raquel’s pregnancy – but it feels like an act he won’t quite be able to maintain.
