<i>Transparent</i> Tackles <br> Israel-Palestine, and Other Boundary Issues
Transparent is the rare TV show held up as a symbol of the Obama era to return in 2017 without piling on references to Donald Trump. But the fourth season of the soulful Amazon dramedy about a Los Angeles family whose onetime patriarch transitions genders at age 68 could, if you wanted, be read as one long subtweet of wall builders. It’s a 10-episode riff on the concept of borders, with a riskier and more explicit political theme than most other shows would dare.
That hot-button theme? Drumroll ...Holy Land revelation, by the rest of the Pfeffermans. Ali, the youngest and wokestofMaura’s three kids, connects with an activist named Lyfe who shows her around Ramallah. Her growing distress about the plight of Palestinians complicates what would otherwise be an intergenerational Birthright trip.
