THE SUBLIME AND THE TRITE
Transparent and 9JKL offer vastly different ways of telling a Jewish story
Recently, I aced two online quizzes. One of them was called something like “How much of a true New Yorker are you?” and the other was similar: “How Jewish are you?”
I grew up in the American heartland, a.k.a. the Bible Belt, where I never once received an invite to a bar mitzvah (because there were practically no bar mitzvahs to attend) or saw New York with my own eyes until I was in my 20s. And yet, because we had a television and an Old Testament and a “Fiddler on the Roof ” soundtrack, my brain somehow got what it needed to know. By osmosis, then, I became one of those gentile TV viewers who is f aintly Jewish-ish (and/or New Yorker-ish).
Beneath the pernicious hostility of a statement such as “Hollywood is controlled by Jews” (or, more recently, those chants from young white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, of “Jews will not replace us!”), there is always the happy truth that the reach of popular culture can enlighten any openminded kid on ways of life besides his own, even when those depictions are a little too broad and reaffirm stereotypes.
What set of stereotypes, after all, is more firmly intact on today’s TV than that of the American Jewish experience? Non-Jews everywhere, raised on a steady supply of “Seinfeld” reruns (and delighted by the return Sunday of its crankier uncle, HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm”) can, by instinct, pick up on what a show is telling them about its characters, even when it isn’t telling them directly.
Which is one way of approaching “9JKL,” a mediocre and egregiously trite sitcom that premièred Monday on CBS and Global. In an undeclared but exceedingly Jewish-ish style, it’s about a man in his mid-40s named Josh (“Royal Pains’” Mark Feuerstein) who leaves L.A. and comes home to New York after the bad TV show in which he starred (“Blind Cop”) is cancelled and his wife has taken “everything” in a divorce.
Josh moves — temporarily, he hopes — into Apartment 9K of a Manhattan building. The apartment is owned by his parents, Harry and Judy (Elliott Gould and Linda Lavin), who live next door in Apartment 9J. They also own Apartment 9L, where Josh’s younger brother, Andrew (David Walton), his wife, Eve (Liza Lapira), and their inf ant son are living while their townhouse gets renovated.
On his first morning home, Josh wakes to find his parents beaming down at him with unrelenting pride and affection. “I just want to eat him and squeeze him and chew on his squishy little tushie,” Judy coos.
Nearly every joke in the “9JKL” pilot (the only episode made available to critics) is about the claustrophobic lack of privacy in this family arrangement, where “Joshie’s” parents feel free to let themselves into Apartment 9K (a sizable studio they’ve been using to store their Costco bulk items) at all hours, so they can loudly pressure their son about his career and love life.
Judy bribes the doofus doorman (Matt Murray) into alerting her any time Joshie comes home and is headed for the elevator, so that she can drag him into her apartment, ply him with his favourite foods (i.e., bakery-fresh black-and-white cookies) and debrief him on the day’s gossip she’s gleaned from her friends about their own children’s success and the possible availability of their single daughters. Other details, pertinent or not: Harry is a successful estate attorney who prefers to go pants-less around Apartments 9J, 9K and 9L, offering any- one a taste of his fresh honeydew melon. Andrew and Eve are both doctors.
“9JKL” leaves it to the viewer to assume that this f amily is Jewish, because it never comes up in the pilot’s 22 minutes. Their last name is decidedly neutral: Roberts. Yet, in a long-held prime-time tradition, they read as Jews; if they’re not meant to, then why lean so heavily on the overbearing-parent stereotypes? Why saturate the show in potentially contemptible upperclass cues and easy signifiers of coastal elitism? What audience is this show for ( just the Eastern and Pacific time zones?) and what audience will just have to wing it?
Feuerstein, who is also one of the show’s six executive producers (as well as its co-creator), based “9JKL” on his own recent experience of moving back in with his parents. While giving journalists a tour of the show’s set this summer, a reporter asked if there was a reason that the characters’ Jewishness goes unmentioned — was there some desire to downplay it, in a current climate of anger and hate? (Or is it more like a “Goldbergs” thing, in which the ABC comedy coasted for a couple of seasons on an implied Jewishness, until the Goldbergs finally celebrated Hanukkah?) If a show seems in every way about Jews but also seems to assiduously avoid saying so, what is the non-Jewish viewer supposed to think — that it’s too hot to bring up in the touchy, temperamentally divisive America of 2017?
According to a transcript of the set visit, Feuerstein said he expected “9JKL” to be more direct about the Roberts f amily’s f aith in later episodes. “I am very proud to be a Jew,” he said. “I’m very happy to say to you that, yes, this f amily is Jewish. And we will take our time with how we treat those issues.”
To drop Jill Soloway’s Emmywinning, consistently superb Amazon dramedy “Transparent” into a discussion of “9JKL” seems rather unfair — like comparing the smartest kid in the class to the dumbest.
Yet here they are, the success of one surprisingly relevant to the failure of the other (and each featuring parents who dote on a Joshie), with “Transparent” furthering its proud and frank exploration of how being transgender might closely and eerily mirror the outsider experience of being an American Jew.
In season 4, now streaming, Maura Pfefferman ( Jeffrey Tambor) is invited to speak at a gender conference in Tel Aviv; her youngest daughter, Ali (Gaby Hoffman), decides to tag along at the last minute. On the way to their flight at LAX, Maura softly sings a calming line from “Everything’s Alright,” a Mary Magdalene number from the 1970 rock opera “Jesus Christ Superstar,” an album Ali subconsciously recalls hearing from as far back as the womb. “Oh my God,” she says, recognizing the tune. “You guys were obsessed with that.”
After nibbling one of Ali’s pot candies to relax, Maura has a humiliating experience in airport security, set to the raucous section of “Superstar” in which Jesus confronts the money-changers at the Temple of Jerusalem; Maura hallucinates an image of Ali sailing through TSA on the arms of men in Orthodox dress. The scene is at once hilarious, disturbing and sublime — and among “Transparent’s” finest.
In Israel, Maura and Ali make a startling family discovery that lures the rest of the Pfefferman clan to join them — daughter Sarah (Amy Landecker) and her husband Len (Rob Huebel); son Josh ( Jay Duplass); Maura’s ex-wife Shelly ( Judith Light) and Maura’s sister Bryna ( Jenny O’Hara). On a bus tour that includes the Wailing Wall and the Dead Sea, the family experiences another series of self-realizations, while snippets of the “Superstar” soundtrack (“What’s the Buzz?”; “I Don’t Know How to Love Him”) rattle around in their heads. Ali, who continuously opens new doors to her own sense of identity, parts ways with her family to visit Palestinian friends, with eye-opening results.
Though the episodes in this season are short (careful, or you’ll blow through all 10 in one sitting), a viewer can sense that “Transparent” is nearing a conclusion, if not literally, then at least thematically, as far as its Jewish/trans dialogue goes. The Pfeffermans will continue to have their hang-ups, problems and assorted issues, but what’s striking now is the way Maura has become a peaceful, gravitational centre in the lives of her family and friends. She has made it home in every sense.
“9JKL” (30 minutes) airs Monday at 8:30 p.m. on CBS and Global. “Transparent” (Season 4, 10 episodes) is available on Amazon. Washington Post