They say we are living in a golden age of television. If that’s the case, Jill Soloway’s new pilot deserves its own unit of commerce. Ruby? Sapphire? It’s a cut above the rest, and it’s fucking amazing and you should drop everything you are doing and watch it right now.

A dark family comedy about sex and self, “Transparent” is “Girls” meets “Parenthood,” with some “Louie” mixed in. The plot revolves around a classic Jewish L.A. family, including divorced parents Judith Light (sublime!) and Jeffrey Tambor (almost unbearably good, equal parts vulnerable and funny), and their offspring: Jay Duplass as Josh, a music producer who we meet in bed playing with the boobs of a blond cutie; Amy Landecker as Sarah, a housewife we first glimpse hurriedly rushing her kids to school; and the astoundingly good Gaby Hoffman as Ali, a depressive twenty-something with big ideas and no money. The kids are touchingly close, and they are called in by Tambor for a family summit in which the truth he plans to tell them ends up buried, rather than revealed.

The show is equally compassionate and disdainful towards its characters, both distant from and reveling in their upper-middle-class lifestyle. (“If you don’t raise five grand for Tu B’Shevat, Dana Goodman just implodes,” quips Sarah’s erstwhile lesbian lover during school drop-off.) But it also seems to be asking viewers whether to accept or deny the father’s accusation that his children are selfish and unable to see beyond themselves, especially since the carefully guarded secret of this family’s patriarch—his transgender identity—has seeped into his kids’ psycho-sexual lives.

As the pilot unravels, we see the siblings responding individually to the truth their father fails to reveal. They seem somehow to intuit that the masculine center of their family is in flux, or perhaps, was never quite there. Ali goes in search of a trainer in the park for an old-fashioned dose of discipline in its modern masquerade—a punishing workout. Josh finds himself in the lap of someone quite the opposite of his blond bedfellow, a woman with big curly hair and large floppy breasts who tells him to get comfortable. He lies down on the floor (in the exact position in which we first see Sarah’s son), and lays his head near the woman’s crotch. Is he looking to replace his emasculated father? Or perhaps searching for the mother figure he senses waiting to emerge? And Sarah finds herself reignited by her college girlfriend, seeking out her less hetero-normative former self. The kids do see their dad for what he is, if only unconsciously, evidenced by their search for a father—or mother—figure. And Dad, too, has something to learn, should the series get picked up.

In addition to being smart and sexy, “Transparent” is also genuinely funny. “Dad’s not getting engaged—he’s too much of a pussy-hound,” says Josh on their way to the summit. “Really he’s a Marcy-hound,” Ali corrects him. “Haven’t the last six been Marcys?” (I won’t ruin it, but when the three kids try to pronounce the Jewish last names of the Marcys, hilarity ensues).

With characteristic aplomb, Jill Soloway gives us something to wonder about, something to be surprised by, something to be aroused by, and something to laugh at. A lusciously downcast soundtrack lends the whole thing a distinctively Soloway melancholy; one senses that things are not going to be OK, but somehow, it’s better that way. The only weakness is the portrayal of minorities—Ali’s black trainer and Sarah’s lesbian ex-girlfriend seem a little too close to a white liberal’s fantasy. But perhaps Soloway means this as a critique of her characters, who put these individuals to use in satisfying their cravings. We’ll only know if the show gets picked up by Amazon, so watch it and say yes to “Transparent”!

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Today I think only of Nora. Her work will forever be one of the greatest gifts of my life, her friendship even more so.

— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) June 27, 2012

In early April, I saw the late Nora Ephron in conversation with Lena Dunham at BAM, part of a Dunham-curated film series (which Nona Willis Aronowitz also reflected on) that took place in the immediate pre-Girls madness. Ephron’s 1992 film, This is My Life, was screened at the event, but that’s not what we were there for. Something about the confluence of the two women–one of whom so perfectly understood and depicted our most profound, if subtle, cultural moments and the other endlessly touted as either about to do just that or entirely the opposite–was almost dizzyingly appealing.

Dunham, who seemed somewhat in awe of Ephron at the event (as all of us in the audience undoubtedly were), mentioned the screening in a New Yorker blog post today about Ephron, who died Tuesday of complications from leukemia:

The last time I saw her was in April, for a screening of “This Is My Life” at the Brooklyn Academy of Music with Delia and the writer Meg Wolitzer, whose book the movie was based on. We did a long Q. & A. in which she was so generous with an audience of hungry young people that I still get thankful e-mails about it. She discussed directing for the first time, learning to shot list and talk to a crew. The idea that it had taken her a moment to settle into filmmaking was so deeply comforting.

Gaby Hoffman, who played Julie Kavner’s youngest daughter in the film (and later, and perhaps more memorably, Samantha in Now and Then), joined the conversation, and when Dunham lamented the film not being available on Netflix, Hoffman suggested wryly that Dunham, of all people, should be able to do something about it. She said something vaguely along the lines of, ‘Aren’t you the president, or something?’

Watching the women sitting casually on stage, I couldn’t help but feel as though this event marked some kind of passing of the cultural chronicler’s torch, or at the very least signified Ephron’s wholehearted approval of the young filmmaker (Dunham’s New Yorker piece all but confirms this fact, and for that will likely rile up haters) and her much-discussed HBO series, Girls–which Ephron enthusiastically endorsed, having already seen the entire first season.

As Rachel Shukert noted in Tablet Magazine, “If a flash mob of middle-aged women formed tonight to fake an enormous collective orgasm at Katz’s Deli, there would be no more fitting tribute.” Your move, Dunham.

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