Maura goes to visit her mother in the nursing home, where she seems to be unresponsive. She and Vicki wind up at Maura’s sister’s house. Maura wants to know about their mom’s wishes. They are not on the same page about this. It’s also a little weird, because Vicki and Maura’s sister can relate to one another about breast cancer scares and Maura feels excluded. But Vicki also says that she didn’t have reconstructive surgery after her double mastectomy because she didn’t want to go under anesthesia again — not a direct comment on Maura’s decision to undergo surgery, but close to it. That erupts into a big fight between Maura and her sister, including a whole lot of yelling where her sister says that Maura will not be a beautiful woman and that nothing can be done to make her beautiful. It devolves into a fight between Maura and Vicki, too. They finally air out some of the things that have been boiling beneath the surface.

Also of note: Raquel finally gets busy with the cute cantor, Duvid. The next morning, when she goes to the gym/temple to prep for the seder, Sarah is already there. Raquel tells her that she slept with the cantor. Sarah gets all giggly about it and brings up that all this spirituality stuff is sort of sexy. It might even be fixing her issues with Len. That’s when Raquel finally gets angry: She doesn’t think Sarah is questing for spirituality at all. She has a total meltdown and says she’s not going to host the seder. But both Sarah and Duvid realize that something bigger is happening here. Raquel curls up in a ball on the floor and they kneel down to take care of her.

Episode 8: “If I Were A Bell”

And here we are: The flashback episode. For clarity purposes, this recap will refer to Maura by her former name, Mort, using gender pronouns aligning to her identity pre-transition. This episode does something really beautiful with the casting of Mort a young child: He is played by a young female actor, an homage to the fact that even as a child, Mort knew he was Maura.

As a child, Mort wants to dress up in girl’s clothes. He wants to twirl around in the bomb shelter instead of playing baseball. In this episode, Gaby Hoffmann plays Rose, Mort’s mom. She is never around, leaving the two children to be raised mostly by their grandmother and grandfather — yep, the one who left their family and started a new one without them back in the ‘40s. Rose sees Gittel, the sibling she lost, in Mort, and while she’s not full-on supportive of his desire to dress in women’s clothing, she also has a unique understanding because of what she went through with her own brother, who became her sister. Both Rose and her own mother are aware that Mort often plays in the nuclear shelter, dressed up in his mother’s clothes and jewelry. One day, when there the test sirens go off, Mort’s grandfather enters the bunker to find Mort wearing a nightgown. He is furious, at his daughter and his wife, blaming them for not only Mort’s queerness, but also for the fact that his son, a.k.a. Gittel, died in the Holocaust because she would not live as a male. Mort is devastated. It’s the last time he will be able to be himself for a long time. Rose moves out of the house, leaving the two kids with her parents.

As Mort gets older, he wants to fit in with the girls in his class, but they reject him. His sister also cruelly betrays him in front of the other kids, humiliating him by telling their classmates that he wears their mother’s dresses. He runs away, but he also takes revenge by throwing a rock at his sister’s head. She doesn’t see who did it and he gets away with it.

We also get a peek at Shelly’s childhood: Her anxiety starts early, when she is sexually assaulted by her music teacher at school. She never tells her parents, but she stops eating and speaking for a while. We also find out that Mort and Shelly meet through a mutual friend, who Mort happens to be dating. From the moment they meet, something kind of clicks between the two of them. Months later, Mort and this girl have progressed in their relationship — but he finally acts on his feelings for Shelly. At his girlfriend’s art opening, Mort tells Shelly to meet him in a back room. They wind up making out and Mort tells Shelly that he will extract himself from his current relationship so they can be together. He asks her if she can keep a secret for the time being. “Can you?” she says in response. We know the answer to that one.