‘Transparent’ Catch Up Guide: Where Did We Leave The Pfeffermans?

When we last see Maura (Jeffrey Tambor), she’s mourning the loss of her true self on the family cruise. Maura spends much of Season 3 preparing for her gender confirmation surgery, but when her doctor informs her that her heart isn’t strong enough to handle surgery, she is, naturally, devastated. She then has to go off her estrogen hormones, leaving her feeling stuck in limbo between who she is now and who she sees herself as. To top it off, Maura and Vicki break up after visiting Maura’s sister Bryna, and Maura isn’t exactly loving being single. She does meet a man named Donald at a club, and it looks like he sticks around, as we see Maura tell Ali about him in the Season 4 trailer.

Man, Josh (Jay Duplass) has a rough go of it in Season 3. Josh spends much of the season attempting to come to terms with his former babysitter/lover’s suicide. He drives with Shea (Trace Lysette) to Kansas to tell his son Colton about his birth mother’s death, and while there, he converts to Christianity in a desperate attempt to find something larger than himself. Josh then tries to buy a house and insert himself more into Colton’s life, but his son tells him that this would be bad for both of them, and ultimately, Josh heads back to California. On the cruise, we see Josh pour Rita’s ashes into the ocean in a final attempt to move on, but knowing Josh, it’s likely that his grief will continue to follow him into Season 4.

Out of all the Pfeffermans, Ali (Gaby Hoffmann) seems like she has her shit together the most in Season 3. She begins the season by sleeping with a professor in her program, Leslie (Cherry Jones), and their relationship quickly becomes serious. At first this is what Ali wants, but as Leslie becomes increasingly clingy, Ali isn’t so sure. She goes on the family cruise in an attempt to get away from Leslie–and Josh calls her out on it–but she doesn’t really make any definite decisions about how to handle the situation.

Oh, Sarah. From season to season, Sarah (Amy Landecker) has struggled to figure out what, or who, she wants, and Season 3 was no exception. Sarah vacillates between wanting to get involved with the synagogue and wanting to escape her life through BDSM (you do you, girl). She and Len (Rob Huebel) are living together but are not together together, which makes Sarah happy, but also confused about what she wants. Sarah also spends more time with Raquel at the synagogue, and she’s so passionate about her newfound “spirituality” that she begins planning events for the shul–until things go south with Raquel at Passover. Like her siblings, Sarah goes on the cruise looking for answers to her many problems, but she doesn’t walk away with any clear solutions.

To Shell and Back we go! Shelly’s backstory is expanded in episode 8, in which we learn that Shelly (Judith Light) was abused by her music teacher as a child, and the secret has haunted her ever since. The Pfefferman matriarch also breaks up with Buzzy after catching him in a lie, and she then tries to bond with Maura over their joint singledom, to no avail. It’s no wonder that she feels like an outsider in her own family. Shelly channels her pain into her one woman show, ‘To Shell and Back,’ which she debuts on the cruise. While her family may not listen to her about 98% of the time, they can’t take their eyes off her during the performance, a wonderful rendition of Alanis Morissette’s “Hand in My Pocket” that closes out the season finale.

Ever since Raquel (Kathryn Hahn) and Josh broke up in Season 2, the all-star rabbi’s position on the show has been somewhat unsure. We don’t see her in as many scenes this past season, but she does get a love interest in the form of Duvid, the synagogue’s new cantor. She’s unsure about how she wants to proceed, but at Sarah’s urging, she has sex with the too-sweet-that-it’s-actually-a-turnoff Duvid. Unsurprisingly, Raquel regrets sleeping with him, and she lashes out at Sarah for totally misunderstanding Judaism and spirituality. Later in the season, Raquel goes the the mikvah, a rite of purification for Jewish women, to presumably cleanse herself of the Pfeffermans’ influence.

Poor Len. Sarah’s husband really gets the brunt of her frustration, but he handles it with such grace that it’s hard not to love him. Len (Rob Huebel) ends Season 3 in a weird place with Sarah: he offers to be her BDSM partner, which she entertains for only a second before freaking out. The ex-husband and wife are still living under the same roof with their children, so we’re thinking that it’s only a matter of time before the duo get together in one way or another.

Davina (Alexandra Billings) has traditionally played a supporting role to Maura, but her presence goes a long way toward pushing Maura to become her true self. Throughout Season 3, Davina encourages Maura to do whatever it takes to be happy, whether that’s pursuing gender confirmation surgery, embracing her femininity, or accepting the things about herself that she does like. In Season 4, we’ll finally see more of Davina’s backstory, a storyline that Billings had a personal hand in crafting.

Like Davina, Shea (Trace Lysette) is one of Maura’s friends from the LGBT center. In Season 3, Shea accompanies Josh on the drive to Kansas, and things soon became intimate between the two. However, sweet Josh quickly turns into worst-version Josh when Shea tells him that she’s HIV positive. Rather than take the precautions Shea suggests, Josh yells at her, insisting that all he wanted was some fun, to which Shea responds (in one of the most fitting Transparent comebacks ever), “I’m not your adventure.” Shea leaves Josh in a cab to the Denver airport and we don’t see her again in the season, but Shea is too interesting a character and Lysette too good an actress to keep her off screen for long in Season 4.

Stream Transparent on Amazon Prime Video