Back in the past, Maura and Marcy are still on their secret hotel getaway. Maura is worried about “acting natural” and passing and in her nervousness acts kind of unnatural and it’s adorable. Maura and Marcy look through a pamphlet for Camp Camellia, a weekend getaway with beauty pageants and more. Maura really wants them both to go, but Marcy doesn’t think she can get away for a whole weekend. When the waitress arrives and calls them both “ladies,” spirits are boosted and it seems like maybe there’s enough good energy in the universe to make Camp Camellia happen — but then Maura realizes that the camp dates are during her kid’s bat mitzvah. Womp womp.
Josh is alone in the depressing greyscale hellscape that is his apartment, and is being Furtive With A Laptop. Whatever could he be doing? In keeping with the theme of these siblings using any trans people they can find as vehicles for knowledge and self-growth, Josh is logging onto a live-feed video chatroom with a trans cam girl. She’s acting as though this were a sexual encounter, because, you know, that’s what her job is, but Josh just wants to ask a lot of personal questions!
This is like if you went to Starbucks and the barista kept trying to ask about what kind of coffee you wanted, and instead you tried to get them to tell you who their first kiss was with in exchange for a dollar tip. Josh could also benefit from reading Autostraddle or somebody buying him a copy of Whipping Girl or something. Josh does not really learn the answers to the burning questions he needed to know before he could decide whether to treat his parent with respect, I guess? He feels weird or something and shuts his laptop. I hope he paid like $20 a minute.
Across town, Maura and Davina have arrived for shabbos dinner! Everyone looks lovely, Maura brought flowers and Tammy is in a cute little suit situation. The kids are adorbs, Maura meets Bianca, everyone’s happy. Tammy is gonna make drinks for everyone! Yay! Probably this will be a peaceful evening of fun and serenity.
Elsewhere, Josh is arriving late to Rabbi Fein’s Friday afternoon services. Fein is talking about how the Hebrews had to wander the desert for an entire 40 years because the old generation couldn’t handle the Promised Land; God needed to wait until a whole new generation was born into freedom before he could let them in. I see the parallels here, Rabbi, but honestly the younger generation in this show doesn’t seem like they can handle really anything at all.
Back in the Palisades, Sarah is serving dinner and telling people to turn off their cell phones, which she and Tammy learned about from Real Simple magazine. Sarah calls Maura “Moppa,” as Ali coined in previous episodes, and asks if she wants to light the candles because it’s a tradition that the mother of the family does so, so that’s nice. It’s all very cute and nice!
Back in the synagogue, Josh and the rabbi are flirting. Rabbi Fein shows him an old mikvah that she’s trying to renovate, and Josh goes ahead and sits in the little hollow in the floor where the water should go. It’s tempting to make an Oscar the Grouch reference here but I will take the high road.
Maura is announcing her appearance at Trans Got Talent to the rest of the family, where she’s going to do a duet with Davina, and she wants them all to come! She wants them to also bring Josh, because he’s “so weird in this area,” and it does my soul good to hear Maura affirm that Josh is the one with the problem, not her.
Back in the empty mikvah, Rabbi Fein is ignoring the whole rest of her congregation to hang out with Josh and rehash her relationship history for him. She says she’s never been married, and that:
“I did get close… I ended up wasting maybe my last good years on just… the wrong person.”
She’s concerned that her eggs have all died and they’re just “crunchy, crispy old lady eggs,” and I think we’re supposed to connect this to Josh’s newfound desire for kids, but I’m focused on the fact that Rabbi Fein has avoided using any gendered pronouns to refer to anyone she’s dated. Vote for Bisexual Rabbi Fein 2014!! I’m printing campaign buttons.
Back at Shabbos dinner, Len has suddenly arrived, because the rule for this house is that everyone just waltzes in whenever. He and Sarah have disagreed about what time he was supposed to come pick the kids up, and I think this is the first time Len has seen Maura presenting as a woman, and also of course Tammy is there, and Len assumes that however Sarah and Tammy talked to the kids about Maura was wrong, and everything goes off the rails in a heartbeat and suddenly Len is speaking in a falsetto and threatening to cut his penis off while waving a knife around! So that happened. Obviously Len is being gross and transmisogynistic and horrifying, like basically my worst nightmare is having an argument with a man in my life who’s angry with me and then having him pick up a knife off the table, so this is all awful. Thankfully, Maura steps in and saves the day:
This is my family, Leonard. I am so sorry, this is my fault, I should have called you. Honey, I should have taken you out to lunch and we should have talked. But I didn’t do that, and I’m sorry about the Mort and the Maura and the he and the she; I’m just a person, and you’re just a person, and here we are. And baby, you need to get in this whirlpool or you need to get out of it.
Len says “I’m sorry about the knife. Good shabbos.” Family, everyone!
After Len and the kids have left, Maura and Sarah have cigarettes outside and dip their feet in the pool.
Sarah: I hope I’m not ruining the kids with all of this crazy stuff.
Maura: Remember our crazy stuff?
Sarah: Yeah, but it’s all blended in with the good stuff.
Maura: I’m glad you remember the good stuff.
Maura says she wants Sarah to have the house, even though she sort of implied to Josh earlier in the episode that she’d let him have some of the money from selling it. Sarah likes Maura’s toenail polish, and they sit in the dark and it’s quiet.
Join us next time for more Transparent, which is hopefully set at A-Camp and Josh and Len have to stay home.
