I’ve watched nearly all episodes from each season so far, though I skipped some during season 2. I love the theme of the show and for the most part how it deals with trans issues. But man oh man are these people unlikable! People used to say all the Seinfeld characters were horrible people which made it easier to laugh at all the dumb or absurd situations they got into.
Is TransParent similar? I don’t understand if it deliberately features characters who are extremely unlikable or if it’s just me. If you watch the show often enough to have opinions on the characters, please share which ones you like/dislike and why. For now I’ll say the character I dislike most (difficult choice) is the older daughter, Sarah.
One of the reasons I’ve not watched a sitcom in decades as they all seemed to be populated exclusively with people I’d *never *want to know in real life, exchanging hateful comments to each other.
I’d say that Shelly Pfefferman, the ex-wife/mom mostly comes off okay. She has her faults but she’s not a bad person.
Of the 3 children, Sarah is not so much an awful person but really messed up and a bit self-centered. There’s hope for her. The other 2 are both seriously messed up and incredibly self-centered. Perpetual losers.
And Maura: this is definitely a horrible, horrible person. Someone whose insecurities drives her to knowingly inflict pain on others in order to feel better.
Some of the other characters are pretty bad: Tammy and Leslie, for example. But there are some mainly good people: Rabbi Raquel (what she ever saw in Josh is a mystery), Buzz, and most all Davina.
I like Shelly too (big Judith Light fan) and all the more since seeing her backstory this season in the episode showing them as young and young-adult children. Also loved that episode for how it showed young (little boy) Maura, including how the tension with her sister Bryna started. Great episode.
Gotta disagree about Sarah. She seems pretty awful to me. The scene where she starts screaming and berating her two little kids for allowing a pet turtle to escape its space and will not stop screaming at them, for example. Or the very TMI things she said to the temple board when she met with them while trying to gain a seat - that scene didn’t strike me as very realistic, it was hard to imagine she would say some of that stuff in front of people she didn’t know very well. Maybe Raquel, but some of the others? Pretty awful.
Agreed about Raquel and Josh. He seems like such a manchild to me. I know some women find that sort of thing adorable but personally I find it a huge turn off.
I want to like Ali so much but I just don’t. My personal politics skew pretty heavily in the direction of what young people these days call “woke” but if anyone on that spectrum can make me roll my eyes, it is the Ali’s of the world.
Regarding Buzzy, did you see the last couple episodes of this most recent season? Wondering if your opinion on him changed after those. I liked him. My opinion of him didn’t really change much after those episodes. I’m not sure if that makes me a bad person or not! I think he made Shelly very happy.
I skipped some season 2 eps because of the whiny but more specifically because of the rich, white whinyness. It’s like, yes I know some of you have serious life issues that you have legit and valid feelings about, but jeeeeeeeez, have a little perspective! Look around you! This family never heard the phrase “count your blessings” apparently because there they all are with their really quite nicely appointed lives and tons of resources and so on, yet they seem so deep in their own navels they are just clueless.
But then I decided to give it another try with this most recent season and am glad I did. I still have those same irritations, plus some new ones, but it’s still subject matter I think is important so I’m glad it’s there.
With you completely. I liked the Office for a while though it sort of jumped the shark for me long before it ended. Kimmy Schmidt was pretty good but I don’t think of it as a sitcom. There are no sitcoms I can think of that are worth the time it takes to watch them. Most of the ones out now I’ve never seen and have no wish to see for similar reasons as you state. I mean I’m no prude or delicate flower, but you’re right that a lot of what passes for comedy (not just in sitcoms) now just comes down to snarky or hateful comments and it’s been that way for a while. Fwiw, Transparent is not a sitcom and I’ve never so much as cracked a smile while watching it, though of course some parts are intended to be (and sometimes even are!) humorous.
Maybe I’m looking at them with rose-colored glasses, but the classic sitcoms seemed to be populated with decent human beings - flawed, but usually likable. There may have been snarky people like Buddy on the Dick Van Dyke Show, or Murray on the Mary Tyler Moore Show, but they were the exception rather than the rule.
No, I think you’re right. Even classics like All in the Family or Maude, where some characters very often said things that were downright rude, somehow seemed at least authentic and not smarmy and self-congratulatory in their rudeness like more contemporary shows do.
I happen to be in the midst of watching a bunch of old Norman Lear produced shows after watching a great documentary on him, so these shows came to mind. What’s funny is some of the Lear shows in particular were so, so UNpolitically correct yet even the “worst” characters (like Archie the bigot) don’t seem smug or performative. It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time, starting when I first tried to pinpoint why I liked certain Canadian humor much more than for instance your typical SNL sketch. American humor in recent years just seems mean.