Orange Is The New Black started on Netflix 5 years ago on a premise I never thought I’d get into.
If you’d asked me, “Morgan, would you watch…”
-Families going to war to sit on a throne in a fantasy realm? Of course.
-Survivors of a zombie apocalypse, desperately trying not only to survive, but perhaps more difficult, retain their humanity? Oh hell yeah.
-The continuation of the historic and groundbreaking series where humans have worked out how to exist peacefully among themselves and take to exploring the universe, starring an interesting collection of some of the best actors from the large and small screen today? For the love of Zefram Cochrane, is it Sept. 24th yet?
-A White Anglo-Saxon Protestant female goes to minimum security prison for smuggling drugs with her girlfriend? Probably gonna take a pass on that one.
But I ended up reading things about it: created by Weeds creator Jenji Kohan, based on a book written by the main character that focused on how degrading the system is, even to low-level criminals in minimum security prison, and with a couple well-known gems in the cast, like former Voyager Captain, Kate Mulgrew, and Donna/Hot Donna from That 70’s Show, Laura Prepon. So that got me interested, and once I watched it and saw how humorous and humanizing it was, I was hooked.
Now you may be surprised to find out, I know I’m surprised, but with how much I like Weeds and Orange Is The New Black as shows, I dislike both main characters. On Weeds, Nancy Botwin was selfish, made horrible decisions and put the D before her family way too frequently; but her circumstances, her bad decisions and the people around her made for interesting tv. It’s much the same with OITNB, Piper Chapman can be a whiny pain in the tookus, with constantly fleeting loyalties and romances and has to be forced to not jump onto every bandwagon cause that she finds; but the situation she is in, the crazy circumstances her causes get her into, and, most of all, the prisoners she’s serving time with, seriously make this show very enjoyable binge watching.
An unexpected effect of the show, I thought I already sympathized with prisoners wrongly locked in the system. I’ve done some activist work in the past, part calling for reform in our especially bad for-profit prisons in Louisiana. But this show has brought that to a new level. OINTB has flashbacks where you see the life of the prisoner before they were arrested, in these flashbacks you might see some background that explains experiences of the inmate that lead to decisions and alliances they make in prison, and you might also see the series of events that lead to their incarceration. And you can see how they are molded by their time served into hardened, criminal types, even if they’re not real criminals to start off. OITNB has an uncanny ability to show how, just to stay alive, inmates must hone skills that make rehabilitation and a transition back into civilian life nearly impossible.
Another thing about the show worth mentioning, I might catch about ¼ of the literary references and I still catch so many. I’d recommend a drinking game be made out of it, but I imagine the ability to catch literary references while drunk would de-escalate quickly. But it is kind of neat to catch those references while enjoying a story.
The last couple of seasons, were admittedly not great, the focus of the show was still mostly Piper as she struggled to hang on to the control she tentatively held, her decisions became increasingly questionable and she’s lucky to have lived considering some of the people she screwed over. I stuck with the show because Weeds had a similar slump couple of seasons, but it found itself again and wrapped up having climbed it’s way out of the slump. And I’m so glad I stuck with OITNB because Season 5 seems to have accepted that the show runs best when the story is not focused on Piper. She’s still there, and she’s still a main character, but she’s much less the focus than previous seasons.
S5 takes place over only 3 days as a riot takes place immediately after an inmate is killed by a guard. You have to see the end of S4, I’m not going to give away who dies, but she was a somewhat key character and her death is traumatizing for her friends that are left to seek justice from the broken system. I can only think of two tv show deaths that kept me crying several episodes after and this is one. The death is so sad and unfortunate for guards and inmates alike, and the grieving process for different characters is really interesting to see play out in the quasi-freedom of the riot. And because the riot is the 3 days following the death at the end of S4, the death is still very recent for the characters, so emotions are still high and raw and I caught a whole bunch of feels all the way to the end of S5.
The end of S5 is a huge cliffhanger, like Jenji Kohan has been taking notes from The Walking Dead or something. The last episode ends on the verge of big changes for all and big danger for a few. To any previous fans of the show who stopped watching: it’s a good time to come back. To anybody that’s been interested in the past, but not sure about the premise: it’s not really what you’d expect, I recommend giving it a chance.
TL;DR: Season 5 of OITNB is the return to greatness for the series that put Netflix Originals on the map.
-Morgan@1063RL