A transgender woman dressed elegantly in her wedding dress is about to marry her cisgender fiancé. A loving crowd surrounds them as the pastor begins the ceremony.

There's no dissension, no frowning on-lookers and nobody protesting what's in front of them — not that there ever should be. But this TV wedding isn't taking place in 2015. It's 1977.

The show was All That Glitters, a five-night-a-week series from Norman Lear that debuted in April of that year and would go on to last only 13 weeks before cancelation. The short-lived show has a special place in history for the transgender community, as it featured the first transgender series regular on a television series.

Jeffrey Tambor plays Maura on Amazon's 'Transparent,' which recently released its second season. Image: Amazon Studios

Since then, though, the transgender community's quest for visibility on television has been a rocky road. Even the shows that tried to include transgender charcters in the years that followed didn't always do it right.

But as the second season of the much-lauded Amazon series Transparent debuts, it's worth looking back — from the time when the T in LGBT was predominantly silent (or poorly represented) to now, when people like Chaz Bono, Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner have given a voice to the trans community on the small screen.

In GLAAD's 2015 “Where We Are On TV” report, which annually chronicles LGBT representation, the organization found that an "overwhelming majority" of Americans — 84% of respondents, in fact — "learn about trans people through what they see in the media."

And while Transparent focuses primarily on the transitional journey of Jeffrey Tambor’s Maura and her family, the report points out that a shift is happening as more series — like Netflix's Orange is the New Black and Sense8 — begin to present trans characters just living their lives — going "beyond the ‘transition narrative,'" as GLAAD says.

Given the strides made over the past few years, it's easy to forget that TV didn't always get it right. The shows that did worked really, really hard to do so.

And they're still working on it.

Starting the Conversation

In 1971, Norman Lear created All in the Family and soon became the king of the television sitcoms. His shows were as smart and socially-conscious as they were funny, breaking down stereotypes and offering new perspectives.

Whether Lear's series' were depicting an unsuspecting, bigoted Archie Bunker giving mouth-to-mouth to cross-dresser Beverly LaSalle or The Jeffersons' close-minded George Jefferson meeting a former Army buddy who had transitioned from Eddie to Edie, the TV titan insists that he wasn’t trying to be controversial. Instead, he says, he had one simple intention.

"That's the part that I loved the most, that people talked," Lear, 93, says. "[The shows] caused people to talk about the things that needed to be talked about."

Lori Shannon played female impersonator Beverly LaSalle on 'All in the Family.' Image: Viacom Enterprises

In fact, the writer/producer didn’t think he was doing anything out of the ordinary by presenting LGBT characters. "It wasn’t like it was strange to Americans, to people who lived normal lives. We all knew gay people. We all knew the world," he explains.

In 1977, Lear brought that universe to the forefront with All That Glitters, a show that flipped gender roles on their heads — where women ruled the world, and men were the subservient objects of desire. Of course, this gave a golden opportunity to include a transgender character among the show's regulars.

"[Norman] was so far ahead of his time in everything he did," says Linda Gray, who played Glitters' trans fashion model Linda Murkland the year before she started playing Sue Ellen Ewing on megahit Dallas.

Before taking on the role, Gray remembers sitting down with a trans woman in a chat set up by Lear. She wanted to get the full story — "who they are and how did this happen and what did they go through," as Gray puts it.

"We sat in a room together, and I thought that was the most generous thing to do because I had a list of questions as an actor," she says. "I thought, 'I want to respect the transgender community.'"

Unfortunately, All That Glitters received negative reviews and low ratings and was cancelled after its initial thirteen weeks.

Missed Opportunities

For all of TV's positive and carefully constructed portrayals of transgender characters — before and after Lear's trailblazing — not everyone always got it (or gets it) right.

Similar to early portrayals of gay and lesbian characters, the first trans characters on TV were often stereotyped as prostitutes, murderers and/or victims. Some writers didn't seem to know that being transgender and being gay were different, as was the case with one hot new sitcom in the fall of 1977.

Billy Crystal, seen here in the 'Soap' pilot, played openly gay character Jodie Dallas on the program. The character ended up entangled in some controversial plotlines over the years, including one that had him seeking a sex change. The character is seen here with Richard Mulligan and Cathryn Damon. Image: ABC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images

Soap, a half-hour sitcom lampooning soap operas, pushed buttons for a lot of reasons. One was the inclusion of Billy Crystal’s Jodie Dallas, a flamboyantly gay man who goaded his homophobic stepfather and took joy in wearing his mother's ultra-feminine clothing.

In the series' first season, Jodie wanted a sex change operation so that he could marry his closeted pro football player boyfriend. This would’ve been a groundbreaking storyline, had Jodie actually been transgender. Instead, the show's writers assumed that being a gay man meant you’d also want to be a woman. Wrong.

Eventually, Jodie did realize that he was a gay man — not transgender — and the character stopped wearing women's clothes. But even some 20 years later, TV still had a troublesome relationship with trans characters and storylines.

In a December 1997 episode of Ally McBeal, a transgender woman named Stephanie (played by Wilson Cruz, who would later become GLAAD’s National Spokesperson and Strategic Giving Officer) played a fashion designer who turns to prostitution to pay the bills. Throughout the episode, Stephanie is misidentified as “confused” about her gender. Upon returning to prostitution, she ends up murdered.

Shortly after the episode aired, then-GLAAD Publications Manager Don Romesburg wrote a scathing response, blasting the show for multiple "insensitive remarks" directed toward the character and for failing to "address the larger issues of societal transphobia."

Lisa Edelstein played a trans woman in a 2000 episode of 'Ally McBeal,' but portrayals have come a long way since then. Image: 20th Television

Unfortunately, time didn’t change how Ally McBeal approached the subject. In a 2000 episode, Lisa Edelstein played a trans client who had been fired from her job when she refused to take a mandatory physical, which would have revealed her hidden status to her employer. When Edelstein’s distraught character tells her lawyers — played by Greg Germann and Lucy Liu — "I'm really a man," they both spit-take their drinks. Liu's character then says, in shock, "I can spot a he/she a mile away. There's no way."

Would that same reaction and dialogue fly on TV today? There's no way.

Trace Lysette (left) and Alexandra Billings (right) play Maura's (Tambor's) friends on Amazon's 'Transparent.' Image: Jennifer Clasen/Amazon Studios

Transparent’s impact

It’s no surprise that Lear gushes about his love for Transparent. Much as he did decades ago with All in the Family, The Jeffersons and All That Glitters, Jill Soloway’s series sparked a new, necessary conversation for the trans community when it premiered in February of 2014.

“Jill Soloway gets, for me, full credit for the uniqueness and the stunning way she executed [Transparent], electing to do it in the middle of a family where there were other problems that from a family standpoint were equally important,” says Lear. “It’s a wonderful show, and she is brilliant.”

For Soloway, who now has an Emmy to her name, focusing the story on the entire Pfefferman family was a way to show that this was only meant to be Maura’s journey.

"There is a misconception that 'coming out' is a singular experience," she says. "Transparent aims to de-myth this trope. Maura's coming out created an identity Jenga that literally pulled the foundation of each Pfefferman's identity out from under them."

A family wedding comes with a lot of drama in Season 2 of 'Transparent.' Image: Jennifer Clasen/Amazon Studios

Going into Season 1, though, Tambor — who won both the Golden Globe and the Emmy this year for bringing Maura to life — didn’t have time to worry about how the audience would react to the series.

“We put our heads down, we went to work, and when we lifted our heads again, there were people talking about this show the same way we were talking about the show,” he says. “Jill is a tremendous conductor and a tremendous director...I had great scripts and a great storyline, and [it was] basically just finding the breadcrumbs.”

If viewers feel close to Maura, that's because Tambor himself feels close to her. "Maura’s very real to me. I’m chasing her, and she’s like a friend who keeps beckoning me, and she changes," he explains. "This year [in the second season], we’ve sort of taken the bubble wrap off of her, and she’s searching for a home. She’s searching for friends. She’s searching for a trusting relationship. She’s searching for her politics. She’s searching."

How Can Television Help?

Despite massive gains in recent years, the trans community's search for equal and fair representation is certainly not over. Those involved will say that there’s still much room for improvement — especially when it comes to trans roles being played by trans actors, an especially loaded issue.

But all parties agree that trans representation can have only a positive effect — and can help curtail the all-too-frequent violence against trans people.

"It’s shocking and it’s horrible and it’s disgusting that it’s happening in such large numbers," says Tatiana Maslany, who plays a trans character, among others, on BBC America's Orphan Black. "I think the only way for that to change is for more characters to be representing trans people on television.”

Candis Cayne, seen here on 'Dirty Sexy Money,' the first transgender actress to play a recurring transgender character in primetime.

Super-producer Greg Berlanti, whose ABC series Dirty Sexy Money featured a trans character played by trans actress Candis Cayne, is also hopeful that we’ll see more conversation that will, in turn, prompt even more change.

“I think there’s definitely been a tipping point,” he says. “Obviously whenever that happens, the floodgates kind of open. The more that television, especially network television, looks and feels like the conversations that are happening in America, the more important and better off that is.”

While we are seeing more representation on television, statistically, there's still a ways to go. GLAAD’s “Where We Are on TV” report states that there aren't currently any transgender characters on primetime broadcast programming, and just three recurring trans characters on cable.

The numbers are better online, with streaming series boasting "the highest percentage of trans characters at 7% (4) with two notably being series leads." But of those seven trans characters, only one is a transgender man.

The hope, of course, is that while shows will continue to set the standard for bringing about understanding for the trans community and broaden the scope of exploring their lives by moving outside the trans journey, they will also show that these characters — like others — are just another part of our world.