REEL PALI

‘Transparent’ Family Drama Renewed in the Palisades

By JOHN HARLOW | Editor-in-Chief

In the pilot episode of Amazon’s “Transparent” three years ago, we were introduced to one of the most powerful characters in the family drama: the wondrously sprawling (so that cameras can move around) clan home in Pacific Palisades, bought for $82,000 in 1972.

Much of the inheritance drama is classically Palisadian: One daughter is advised to hold onto the house unless she needs the money; her brother wants to “Zillow the hell” out of it.

We are never told the address, but scene-setting shots make it look like Rustic Canyon.

And it’s around the same size as the house on Kagawa in the Alphabet Streets that lead actor Jeffrey Tambor bought after “Hey-Nowing” on “The Larry Sanders Show” for six years and creating an even more monstrous parody of an egoist on “Arrested Development.”

Before that, the actor lived on Chastain Parkway in The Highlands.

Was it Tambor who suggested to Silver Lake-based writer Jill Solloway that if she was looking for a smart, comfortable liberal enclave nestled safely away from the rest of the east LA family that she might think about the Palisades?

(Not that you can find the wooden gabled home in the Palisades: It’s shot in Pasadena.)

That’s as Hollywood as one of Tambor’s daughters allegedly living in Marina del Rey when it’s clear the house is on the other side of the Washington Boulevard boundary into Venice.

Anyway, the important thing to know is that it’s a soapy comedy about Tambor playing a 68-year-old academic who decides to drop the charade of wearing male clothes (and identity) and come out as a transgender woman with some serious style questions.

The decision licenses the entire family to behave like adolescents. High jinx ensue.

(It’s a consistently humane performance from Tambor, especially: The Emmy and Golden Globe winner got his own Hollywood star on Aug. 9.)

And, secondly, is that Amazon has renewed its critical darling for a fifth season, which, like the forthcoming Larry David revival, may or may not carry on name-checking the Palisades and giving away all the town’s secrets. Are we that transparent?