Soloway and their older sister, Faith, finally committed to basing a project around their parent after observing that, as their "Moppa" was transitioning, and their stepfather was dying, "One was losing his voice while the other was finding hers.
[4] Additionally, prominent transgender artists Laverne Cox and Jennifer Boylan (who consults for the series) have praised the casting for being representative of older transitioners.
While admiring the models on the cover of a pornographic transgender magazine, Mort meets Marcy (Bradley Whitford), a transvestite who gives her the name "Maura".
Although she finds the camp liberating at first, Maura is disturbed by the transvestites' institutional transphobia of rejecting one visitor who started taking hormones.
However, Maura is forced to come out to her oldest daughter Sarah (Landecker), when she accidentally runs into her while in full female garb.
[11] Ali and Sarah, while drunk, reveal that Maura is transgender to Josh, who reacts badly, claiming his parent must have dementia.
[12][13] In an effort to introduce her children to her world, Maura announces she is going to participate in a transgender talent show with her friend Davina (Alexandra Billings).
[14] Maura reignites her friendship with Shelly, and helps her give an overdose of Percocet to her comatose, dementia-addled second husband, Ed.
[9] At Ed's funeral, Maura arrives with Davina ostentatiously late in limo, dressed in a showy outfit; she takes advantage of the following shiva to talk about her transition.
Rose, fed up with Yetta's fatalism and Haim's absence, accepted Gittel and went to live at the clinic until its destruction by the Nazis.
This results in Maura deciding to spend time with her daughters; the women take an opportunity to go to Idlewild Womyn's Music Festival together.
Maura is distraught and leaves the camp with Vicki (Anjelica Huston), a breast cancer survivor; they enter into a relationship.
Unable to express herself and perennially untalented at sports, Maura frequently dressed up in her mother's nightgown and jewelry and danced alone in the family bunker.
Things took a turn for the worse when Haim discovers the secret and screams at her in front of the whole family, revealing how Gittel had been killed in the Holocaust because of her gender identity.
Maura has recently published a successful book on Jews and gender during the Cold War, and is invited to Israel to give a special lecture.
During the visit, Maura is somewhat uncomfortable around her newfound sisters (who seem to take her gender identity in stride) and feels like Moshe is avoiding talking about her transition.
The Pfefferman kids descend into their usual antics, and Maura gives Ali, who had admitted her own feeling of gender nonconformity, permission to leave the group and visit friends in Ramallah.
The pair enlist Josh, Shelly, and Maura's boyfriend Donald to help evict a belligerent AirBnB guest from the Pfefferman house.
As much as Maura's transition is the driving force of the show, she's a complex character even without that detail: empathetic, discovering her own strength in a support group-meeting and comfortably communicative, endlessly caring for her children and deeply appalled at the way they turned out.
Matthew Gilbert of The Boston Globe wrote that Tambor "joins Lee Pace in Soldier's Girl and Tom Wilkinson in Normal in delivering one of TV's most sensitive and genuine trans turns by a non-trans man, quietly revealing the loneliness and longing at Maura's core.