Transparent Season 5 (2019)
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Transparent Season 5 Review
Released in 2019, the fifth season of Transparent was made in the form of a feature movie called Musicale Finale. It’s solid, but very disappointing.
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“I spent the ’80s burying my friends.
I know when the soul is no longer in the body“
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Because Jeffrey Tambor was fired from the show rightfully so owing to his sexual harassment allegations, they basically killed off Maura in the first scene, and the rest of the movie is her celebration and her funeral. I was fine with that as it is the best possible way to deal with the actor’s departure, and the character was old. She was well celebrated here, and the family mourning and gathering together was emotional.
Let’s talk about the characters, all suffered as a result of the film’s musical approach. Sarah is fine, and I liked her relationship with Len, and that it ended on a happy note. Josh is also well used here, but I found him ending with Raquel way too unrealistic. The whole show ended on such an immensely positive note which was both good and bad in my opinion.
Ali calls herself Ari now, but to me the last season implying that she is non-binary was here entirely wasted. Instead of genuinely exploring that concept and advocating for it, here I got the feeling that she is just bored and making things up which was annoying to witness. But I did like Davina a lot. She here got the meatiest role by basically inheriting Maura’s money in entirety, and I loved how she dealt with that. And Shelly got some terrific moments here, again so well acted by Judith Light.
But yes, Musicale Finale is called that rightfully so as this last season/feature movie is a musical, and I really found that frustrating mainly because the musical numbers are so damn terrible. They are the kind of self-aware, self-parody numbers that are borderline ridiculous and laughable at times, and none are catchy enough to make them worthwhile.
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The movie looks good and is very well acted per usual, but I expected so much more. The dialogue is great as always, but the movie was concerned way too much with the Jewish instead of transgender identity. Ultimately, the show ended on a passable note, not as terrible as many said, but certainly not great either. This show started off very strongly, then became a bit weaker and now it really ended on a sour note. And that’s a shame as I loved it at first, but still I was glad that we got to see it end on such an epic and bold, though clearly polarizing manner.
