Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Amazing and perfect that a show can revolve, in some ways, around the corny, heartbreaking '70s song "Operator" by Jim Croce - a song about a guy on a pay phone, talking to an operator as he tries to get the number for his old girlfriend, who left him for his "best old ex friend Ray" so he can call and tell them both that he's fine, he's moved on, he's over it, which he isn't. But this is a show all about triangles, and even though there's no such thing as a pay phone any more - much less one where you can make a call for a dime - "Operator" is the perfect metaphor for the disconnection this whole family feels. Father Jeffrey Tambor can't believe he has raised three people "who can't see past themselves." Son and music producer Jay Duplass is mentoring a trio of young musicians - and sleeping with one of them - at the same time that he's having a weird, wordless affair with a woman who materializes out of nowhere in the middle of the episode. Daughter Amy Landecker is sleepwalking through her marriage until an old girlfriend drops in, a still smoldering human relic from the college days when she was "lezzing it up" so passionately. And then there's the second daughter, Gaby Hoffman, angry, depressed, unemployed, full of bad ideas for books no one wants to read. She wants someone to make her do something; if it hurts, so much the better. It doesn't necessarily sound like compelling entertainment. But "Transparent" is full of secrets and surprises, the biggest one being the powerful grip it exerts over its audience: four people, none of them particularly likable, all self-absorbed, all aching for something new and different that will turn their lives around. It ought to be pale and depressing. But that's not the way it feels.