Reformed

MAX trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMqGLjgBtbs

This is a slight series, but it will warm your heart.

What we've got here is a female rabbi who is not accepted by her father, that's not the gig he envisioned for her and he won't let her forget it, he slights her on a regular basis. Which is kind of weird, because he's a psychotherapist and you'd think he'd be more enlightened.

As for the rabbi, Léa, she's played by Elsa Guedj, who is not classically beautiful but over the length of the series you fall in love with her. Because she thinks, has emotions and desires, but does not carry the weight of the world upon her shoulders.

What I mean is she does have to give members of the congregation advice, but too many people today have chips on their shoulders, believing they're somehow disadvantaged and if things were just a bit different, they'd be rich and successful.

So what we've got here is a family of divorce. The mother is never seen. As for the brother? He's a good-natured doofus who we ultimately find out sells real estate. but seems to be most interested in a good time. But ultimately we find out he is not a doofus, and the sibling relationship between him and his sister...there is common knowledge and shared intimacies, yet the frustrations is very real. These are the people we know, our family members. And sometimes they drive us nuts, but they're bedrock, we can interact with them and they know who we are.

But then there's the driver of the new synagogue who used to be an observant Jew who no longer talks to his siblings who live in Israel because that's no longer how he practices.

Every episode presents a dilemma. And the viewer doesn't have a ready answer to the problem. And neither does Léa At first she believes she must, but ultimately she listens to the story, rolls with the changes and comes up with some advice, which later she might contradict.

Each one of these characters you've met in real life. Whether it be the kid who doesn't want a bar mitzvah or the parent who doesn't want their kid circumcised or the one who keeps their private life hidden for no understandable reason.

There are no gunfights. There is a death, then again, that's what happens in life, it's natural.

And everything that happens in the series is natural.

And you don't have to be Jewish to love Levy's rye bread, and you don't have to be Jewish to like "Reformed," but if you are, you'll laugh and smile during the seder scene.

So not every episodes resolves. But you get caught up in the rhythm.

And "Reformed" is not a huge commitment, eight episodes about a half hour each.

And I don't know if you'll hear about it from anyone but me. I heard about it from the "New York Times," but then I did research to confirm its quality before I dove in.

"Reformed" is not a masterpiece, it's a slice of life, and last I checked, that's what we're all doing, living life, so I know you can relate.

P.S. MAX is the worst app known to man. Zaslav gets paid tens of millions of dollars, if only he put some of it into tech. For some reason, about halfway through "Reformed," the subtitles switched to Cyrillic, maybe Greek, who knows. And no matter how much you mess with the settings you can't fix it. Although sometimes, after the opening credits, which play after the opening scene, the subtitles switch back to English. The only fix I found was to exit the episode and start again, after checking that your settings were correct, i.e. French audio, English closed captions, not that this always worked.


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