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SEASON INFO
Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), a thirtysomething woman who, by all appearances, has her life together, is suddenly sentenced to a 15-month prison stay at Litchfield Correctional Facility in Danbury, Connecticut, for transporting drug money a decade earlier per the request of her ex- girlfriend (Laura Prepon). Once behind bars, Piper contends not only with the "fishbowl" of prison life (where seemingly miniscule infractions can leave one starved, stalked, or worse off), but the challenges of maintaining a long-distance relationship with her fiancé, Larry (Jason Biggs).
JULY 30, 2013 Netflix is continuing its hot streak of releasing entire binge-worthy seasons of television at once with Orange is the New Black, the latest comedy/drama series from Weeds creator Jenji Kohan. Based on the autobiographical book of the same name, Orange is the New Black centers itself on Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), a privileged and naive Brooklynite sentenced to a year in prison for a drug-related crime she committed ten years ago.
If you find the ‘misunderstood white guy/girl toughens up in prison and leaves a better person’ formula wearisome, fear not. Orange is the New Black is as much about the cast of characters Piper meets behind bars as it is her own self-discovery. It’s a multi-faceted show that opens itself up to you the longer you persevere with it, an easy task thanks to Netflix’s generous distribution model. This just might very well be the future of television, everybody. Say goodbye to the water cooler.
Orange's most brilliant trick is to play with our expectations by presenting us with archetypes and then twisting them into real people. In the first couple of episodes we think we've got the show’s fish-out-of-water shtick all figured out as the hilariously green Piper tries to adjust to the lack of niceties in prison, but the formula is quickly subverted as Piper realizes she has no idea who the hell she is without her “WASP” trappings. “I became the nice blond lady that I was supposed to be,” she reveals of her life on the outside. And without her artesian soaps and perfectly pleasant fiance Larry (American Pie’s Jason Biggs), what does she have?
There’s a secondary conundrum for Piper. Despite the fact she’s happily engaged to Larry, she’s stuck inside with her ex-drug-smuggling ex-girlfriend Alex, played with sultry coolness by That ‘70s Show’s Laura Prepon.It’s a plot point that stirs things up for all three characters and further challenges our perceptions of Piper; privileged, well-to-do straight girls aren’t supposed to have pasts littered with drugs and lesbian lovers, after all.Through Piper’s eyes, we meet more archetypes. There’s the ex-junkie. The nun. The transgender hairdresser. The hippie. The Russian matriarch. The meth head Jesus freak, whom Alex describes as a ’Deliverance extra.’ At first, they are presented in broad, scary strokes – because Piper’s first impressions of them are broad and scary - and then they are unfurled through a peppering of flashbacks to their former lives.
It’s a clever technique, allowing for measured and graceful storytelling. These stories are told with honesty and are never overcooked; the writers and the cast have far too much respect for their characters to make fun of them or claw at our tear-ducts with heavy-handed misery.
Take Miss Claudette (Michelle Hurst), for example, an older inmate whose viciousness has inspired urban legends. We meet her as an angry shut-in, but her story reveals an entirely different character whose fatal flaw had nothing to do with meanness. Yoga Jones (Constance Shulman ) is a calming and zen character, but the reasons for her incarceration reveal a darker side. There’s no moralizing here, only sad truths.
The show is at times riotously pulpy. The prison ‘society’ itself operates in a highly-charged political landscape, ghettoized by ethnicity (“it’s tribal. Not racist.”) Guards wrestle inmates and each other for power, sexual or otherwise. Social minutiae are chronicled and judged. "Women fight with gossip and words,” a counselor tells Piper, and certainly, as the venom is slung, you might shock yourself by cheering on your favourite team like some sort of deranged onlooker.
While occasionally graphic, sex in Orange is the New Black never feels gratuitous. It is a guilty pleasure, or a stolen luxury, or an exhibition of power. For Sophia (Laverne Cox), a transgender woman, sexuality is a commodity, something to be bargained with. It is sex above all, perhaps, that tends to unite these women, wherever they sit on the spectrum.
The show does, very occasionally, teeter on the edge of unsubtlety. Flashbacks to Piper and Larry’s hip young life intended to serve as contrast to her current misery tends to grate, because we already understand their privilege. Further, some of the characters living on the ‘outside’ slip oddly into caricature; Larry’s parents and Piper’s mother in particular seem roughly sketched. But they are the minority.
The cast is outstanding. Schilling is excellent as Piper, taking her from a comically hipster-esque yuppie to a self-centred train-wreck, and somehow preserving our empathy. But it’s with the broader characters that Orange is the New Black blossoms, with Kate Mulgrew’s tough-as-nails ‘Red,’ with Natasha Lyonne’s dry ex-junkie, Nicky, with Uzo Aduba’s Crazy Eyes, a character so fascinating it would be a crime to spoil her here.
THE VERDICT
These are the women whose stories we rarely – if ever – see on television, and they’re all here, in one place, behind bars. The flashback technique ensures the show has plenty of longevity, as long as there are enough black, Latina, white, straight, gay, bisexual, transgender, poor and rich women to fill it, and somehow, I don’t think that will be a problem.
Full Season 1 on Xmovie8
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