Maura is dead, the thing that leaves a big sad on the family. But the hard time increases when they know that Shelly prepares for a musical play that based on the whole family and their story. New comedy and dramatic events come in the fifth season of Transparent.
Transparent's musical moments always arrived when the characters felt at their happiest, their most ecstatically free. In a way, it's as if the series always had a song in its heart.
It's all over the map narratively and tonally... But what would a farewell to Transparent be if it wasn't equal parts clever and exasperating, delightful and baffling?
Perhaps most subversive of all for this relentlessly boundary-pushing show, what we get is what we might least expect to emerge from so much trauma and loss. A happy ending.
That a show as subtle and delicate as Transparent often was should have descended into trying this hard is a shame... it left me thinking that [Jill] Soloway never quite knew what Transparent was saying, and thus couldn't figure out how to stop saying it.
The show struggles to find a way to meaningfully wrap up the Pfefferman siblings' stories, whether sung or spoken, but the actors put considerable effort into bringing "Musicale Finale" to its fullest vision.