Studious inclusiveness can make the drama seem a little schematic, if you're in a mind to notice. Mostly you don't, because the performances are engaged and engaging and the Duffys feel like a real family, even in their fragmented distress. There are enough moments of conflict and crisis and cliffhanging to keep a viewer in the moment and to keep Butterfly flying.

For the most part, Butterfly humanely, delicately and realistically explores transgender issues with as much detail as it can muster in its three brief hour-long episodes. But the serial also spends so much time on Vicky and Stephen's precious feelings that Maxine could have instead been diagnosed with childhood cancer and this alternate McGuffin would probably have had the same functional impact on the narrative.