Right, what’s the Netflixiest show you can possibly think
of? Chances are, whether or not you have
the streaming service in your home, nagging away at you until it chains you
hopelessly to the sofa, that Orange
Is The New Black is near the top of that list. Sure, there’s House
Of Cards, and you’ve got Stranger Things. You might even love the often-overlooked The Get Down (I do). But Netflix’s
most watched original series is that one with orange jumpsuits about some women
in a prison or something along those lines.
I can hardly become some sort of boxset streaming guru, then, if I haven’t
watched this one. So, a few months back,
I took myself down to Litchfield Penitentiary and freely surrendered my viewing
liberty to the minimum-security women’s prison there. I’m now out the other side, six series down,
with a seventh and final season due in 2019.
I’ve never been in a real prison, but I loved every minute of this one.
I’ve wanged on before about certain things that make human
drama that extra bit tenser – I’m calling these my trigger themes. You know, things like having a zombie
apocalypse as a backdrop as in The Walking Dead,
which means your favourite characters can die at any minute. Or setting things in a dystopian future, like
the Gilead of The Handmaid’s Tale. All along, I’d forgotten that prison was one
of the best trigger themes ever given to a drama series. You’ve got the artificial and unnatural environment
of cells and wings, an entrenched division of characters into prisoners, guards
and those left behind, and the heightened stakes that come when prisoners dream
of their freedom. Orange Is The New
Black has all of this and a load more stuff you won’t be expecting. I was hooked in from episode one and happily
threw the key away until I had watched every instalment.
Everything is packaged up for your middle-class
sensitivities, as we enter the world of the prison through the eyes Piper
Chapman, an educated New Yorker with a wealthy background who is
self-surrendering on drugs charges trawled up from a misspent youth. She wrinkles her nose at the showers,
accidentally insults the food to the main chef and expects the guards to be
reasonable when it comes to listening to her many complaints. Piper is a good in to the prison world, but
in later series she ends up being one of the least interesting things about
it. Once her fiancé, best friend and
parents fall away, the show no longer needs its blonde, white leading
lady. Litchfield is divided racially
into prison families: Hispanic, black and white, with a splinter group shooting
off the whites for the methheads, who you can identify from their bad teeth. While racial tension shouldn’t be boiled down
to a plot device for our own entertainment, Orange Is The New Black simply
reflects a prison predisposition for inmates to categorise themselves in this
way, like the segregation discussion in Dear
White People.
What’s surprising is the limited interaction between these
groups. Some of the cast go for series
only having scenes with their own prison families. While the main white family (finally)
embraces Piper under the matriarchal protection of fiery Red, you’ll want to
hang out in the black family for bigger belly laughs, or in the Latina family
for the wittiest bilingual dialogue. I
found myself getting excited every time a scene began for the Latina
characters, especially if my favourite Litchfielder of all was there:
Mendoza. Played by Selenis Leyva (who, like
all the cast, is unrecognisable in her IMDB headshot), Gloria Mendoza is
capable of a wonderful combination of bad-assery, smart-mouthery,
mother-hennery and unadulterated sass that my main feedback would have been to
make the whole damn thing about her (and maybe Aleida). She could push Piper down the stairs just by
glaring at her (fingers crossed for season seven). Next time you’re doing housework, imagine her
shouting at you and see if you don’t get the job done in half the time.
Let’s run through how six series’ worth of content can be
extracted from just one place and yet remain darkly comic and deeply dramatic
(the show, that is, not what I’ve written about it; though, maybe…):
Season one
This is our Philosopher’s Stone to Litchfield’s underfunded
and corrupt Hogwarts. Piper walks stubbornly
and headfirst into all sorts of unnecessary drama. Keep an eye out for, basically, everyone, as
even that incidental crazy hairy lady in the cubicle becomes a pivotal
character over time. Back on planet
Piper, though, where we are forced to go, she realises the ex-lover who got her
in the drugs trouble in the first place, Alex, is locked in with her. Cue LOLs as Piper insists she is engaged to a
man (Jason Biggs in
various sweaters). A dramatic arc around
naughty guard Mendez supplying drugs to addicts and supplying his tool to other
inmates in broom cupboards culminates in a sort-of Christmas special with
surprising singing... In all of this,
you find charm and humour, but you’re first exposed to the harsh reality of the
show’s treatment of its characters – they are never more than a hair’s breadth
from a life of disaster.
Season two
Thinking you’ve got used to things, the first episode
disorientates you horribly, as we follow a bewildered Piper around what seems
like the whole federal prison system – truly grim. Back at Litchfield, a new villain, the slimy
Vee, is back behind bars, stirring up old tensions and manipulating the black
family to grim effect. We pootle through
a lot of the other surrounding characters, but the finale serves up perfect
justice.
Season three
Throughout this series, Litchfield is threatened with
closure until a private firm buys up the operation. Conditions deteriorate before and after and
the inmates’ growing frustration is palpable.
Piper (oh god, it’s all about her) grows into a role as a bit of a
hardass, taking advantage of the prison knicker-sewing industry to set up a
little enterprise for herself, despite good friend Nicky Nichols (the wild Natasha Lyonne) getting
carted off to max unjustly.
Season four
MCC, the new private owners of Litchfield, double inmate numbers,
with bunkbeds being the only infrastructure adjustment. This brings in a host of new characters, all
while we’re still uncovering those that have been there the whole time, such as
the Dominican faction and the older ladies.
Litchfield also gets its first celebrity inmate, but, overall, the new
guards are too inexperienced and feckless to ensure prisoner safety. All hell breaks loose.
Season five
This whole series revolves around a riot that bursts out in
response to the guard brutality that will cost you one of your favourite
characters. While some prisoners run
amok, others stay out of trouble.
Highlights include the emergence of coffee shop culture in the midst of
chaos, and the unveiling of the library memorial. Throughout, you’ll wish the cast dearest to
you would behave, as you fear their future punishment and resent how they
dehumanise themselves with their behaviour.
Worse still, the riot negotiations constantly dangle a satisfactory
conclusion that remains frustratingly out of reach.
Season six
The action moves to maximum security and a whole host of
characters never seem to return. You
really miss them, but D and C block are bursting with feisty new ladies (and
guards) to help with the loss. Every
riot action, it seems, comes with its consequence, but injustice seems to be
the overall response. A kickball game
promises to see a lifelong grudge between two sisters (Carol and Barb) erupt
into bloodshed, but it’s the way the prisoners are forced to betray each other
that will cause the most pain.
There, you’re all prepared for the journey. A lot of folk have abandoned Orange Is The
New Black midway through a series for its slower pace, but, on reflection, each
season does seem to set up, ramp down, and then crescendo perfectly in its
thirteen-episode arc. It’s ruthless with
removing characters, but each addition is worth their weight in orange
jumpsuit. Like Lost, each character’s pre-prison life is
fleshed out with flashbacks, with one dominating each episode. My only frustration here is that some of the
best ladies never got theirs. Methhead
Angie, like many, comes from the periphery to the fore over the show’s run, but
we never find out how she got such bad teeth and why she is constantly a vile
mix of naivety, foolishness and sinister selfishness. Gina, often called the squirrel lady, is
another inmate whose crimes I’d love to have seen unpacked. And finally, Maritza, a Latina whose lines
are almost as good as Mendoza’s, is just crying out for more explanation. Luckily, her story finally does get fleshed
out, but I was worried for a long time that it wouldn’t.
Either way, for me, the star of the show becomes
Taystee. At first, she seems like a
side-serving of comic relief, but her warmth and conflict is a magnetic force
on viewers. It’s in the riot that she
really comes into her own, bringing Caputo onside in a way that proves he is a
good man (beer can or not). While Piper ultimately
skips through her Litchfield journey relatively unscathed (minus some teeth
chipping, a shit tattoo and some involuntary burning), Taystee is set up to
shoulder an ultimate injustice that would be all the more alarming if it didn’t
feel so realistic. I said I loved every
minute of Orange Is The New Black, but that can’t be true. Taystee’s story is not one you can enjoy, but
it’s one that everyone needs to see.
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