Eighth Grade is so agonizingly real it’s like being back in eighth grade. It’s been so many decades since I was that age you’d think those feelings of awkward social insecurity would be long gone, but this movie brought them all rushing back.
Writer and director Tamara Jenkins handed Paul Giamatti and Kathryn Hahn an intimate script in Private Life. The two of them took it and made it vital and alive enough to reach out and grab the audience for over 2 hours of fascinating human drama.
Ali Pfefferman’s (Gaby Hoffmann) discovery of epigenetics in season 2 of Transparent hooked me. In fact, I thought the idea that stress and trauma from generations before yours could be passed through the generations was the most interesting thing in season 2 of Transparent. It certainly would do a lot to explain why the Pfefferman clan are such a bunch …
