Jeffrey Tambor

Though Amazon Prime kept audiences waiting more than a year for the return of Transparent and the volatile and captivating Pfefferman clan, the wait was truly worth it.

If the first episode of Transparent’s second season is any indication, any critic making a Top 10 list needs to wait until the full season premieres on December 11th.

Jeffrey Tambor stars as Maura Pfefferman, a retired college professor transgender woman who comes out to her family about her gender identity late in life. Meanwhile, her three adult children all struggle with their own personal problems, as well as the challenges posed by Maura’s transition.

Intimacy is a difficult thing to film. Rather, it’s difficult to film well. You can capture two people clutched closely together, in a vulnerable moment, so that it feels as if the camera is encroaching on their privacy, an intruder. You can film in close-up, for a more practical intimacy, catching every hair and freckle. But to really feel like you’re getting a close understanding of the characters onscreen, there’s no list of actions one should take. Jill Soloway has figured it out.

I imagine my feelings after finishing Transparent’s incredible first season were much like many people’s feelings after Orange is the New Black premiered. It is wholly original and seems to exist as a result of the ways online streaming has opened up the medium of television to previously unrepresented characters. I was enamored both with the show’s characters and the way it approached issues of gender identity and sexuality. I needed to keep binge watching.

Transparent follows the Pfefferman clan, a tightly knit Jewish family living in Los Angeles, as their lives are changed by one member’s brave announcement. Maura (Jeffrey Tambor) comes out to her family as a woman, despite being their father and going by the name Mort for all of their lives. Pfefferman matriarch Shelly (Judith Light) confronts this new knowledge as well as her new husband’s mortality. Eldest daughter Sarah (Amy Landecker) reignites a flame with a college ex-girlfriend after realizing how unhappy she is with her husband. Middle child Josh (Jay Duplass) seems to be on the verge of a midlife crisis as more and more romances fail in spectacular fashions. Youngest daughter Ali (Gaby Hoffman) is adrift in both her professional and personal life.

Ah, The Good Wife. You’re always good for a thinly veiled riff on a relevant piece of internet culture, aren’t you? “Whack-a-Mole” focuses on Scabbit, a website that is distinctly not Reddit (just kidding. It totally is.) which the FBI uses to crowd source an investigation of a terrorist attack, leading them to suspect Alicia’s kindly professor, who is writing a book on jihad, but not that kind of jihad.

The show’s interest in social media and internet culture occasionally leads to it being silly and obtuse in a vain attempt to be hip and relevant, but it returns to these issues again and again for a reason. Say what you will about it, but The Good Wife is incredibly skilled at keeping tabs on salient legal issues and building episodes around them. And the old refrain that privacy will be the issue of the twenty-first century means the show will look again and again at these debates. The internet is a fascinating place from a legal perspective, a playground where anonymity is theoretically guaranteed, where law can be subverted or ignored, and where regulation is either nonexistent or completely ineffective. Alicia’s efforts to get an injunction tonight are a perfect example: everyone agrees the legal system is woefully inadequate to deal with the situation, which makes it easy for Scabbit to exploit the law for its own benefit.

The Good Wife, Season 5, Episode 2: “The Bit Bucket” Written by Robert King and Ted Humphrey Directed by Michael Zinberg Airs Sundays at 9pm (ET) on CBS Only The Good Wife could take on the NSA with the near perfect mixture of dread and whimsy it manages in “The Bit Bucket.” It was inevitable …

Every season of The Good Wife begins with a resounding reminder of just how great this show is and how much television has missed it over the course of the summer. The Good Wife is a whip smart, lightning quick legal procedural with dramatic heft and a sense of humor. It has also developed serialized elements over the course of its run that put it on par with the best of what television has to offer. Few shows are as great at building out their world with recurring characters and developing plotlines and at its best, The Good Wife has enough on the stove that something is always sizzling.

In the seven years since Fox cancelled Arrested Development, its influence has not necessarily been as widespread as one might expect, given its rapturous cult following. A few series have attempted to emulate its heavily serialized approach to building and contorting gags over episodes and even seasons – Archer, in particular, springs to mind, as …

Netflix and the stars of Arrested Development have done a pretty good job of keeping fairly coy about the upcoming season. Devoted fans have been kept waiting for a trailer or a sneak peek and Entertainment Weekly’s latest covers delivers with a detailed insight to the new episodes. When describing the new season, creator Mitch Hurwitz …

“Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz and his co-executive producer James Vallely are working on a screenplay for the long-debated feature version of their short-lived Fox series…Hurwitz would also direct the Fox Searchlight feature.” The groundbreaking series launched the career of future Juno star Michael Cera (a newcomer at that point) as well as making a …