Orange Is the New Black Season One Review

So far, Netflix’s original programming has left me feeling underwhelmed at best.  Of their four shows, I’ve only finished half of them (still have four episodes of House of Cards, and abandoned Hemlock Grove after two.)  House of Cards, while well acted and well made, feels a little too much like leftovers from better anti-hero shows.  Hemlock Grove feels like the worst parts of every contemporary popular horror series duct taped together.  And Arrested Development, well we know how disappointed I was with that.  I was ready to write off Netflix’s originals until Orange Is the New Black, the latest from Weeds creator Jenji Kohan.  I’m happy to say Orange has proved me wrong and is a great addition to the non-cable supported television movement.

The series, a fictionalization of Piper Kerman’s memoir of the same name, is about privileged WASP Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) who finds herself in prison for fifteen months because of a crime she committed a decade earlier.  On top of the fish out of water story, she’s dealing with an increasingly strained relationship with her fiancé (Jason Biggs) and her concerns her girlfriend at the time of her crime (Laura Prepon) sold her out.  The show tells its story in a series of flashbacks that jump all over the timeline, but it never gets confusing.  Also, taking a page from Lost, each episode besides the pilot and finale feature flashbacks from a specific inmate’s history, usually culminating in how they got to prison.  As it worked for Lost, it works here, giving us context to why the characters are the way they are now.

The cast is exceptional, with plenty of memorable characters: Natasha Lyonne as recovering addict Nicky, Uzo Aduba as the unstable Crazy Eyes and of course I can’t mention the cast without spotlighting Kate Mulgrew, who is my #1 pick on my Emmy fantasy ballot for next year, as the Russian cook Red.  I could easily list off most of the cast.  Considering the environment of a prison, it’s one of the most diverse casts I’ve seen on a TV show recently and like diverse shows that work, the diversity isn’t a transparent act of patronizing the audience.  Also, I think there are some networks that don’t have as many compelling female characters as Orange does.

With it being set in a women’s prison, women’s issues are a major piece of the show.  There’s a transgendered inmate, an inmate set to be married who’s involved with another inmate and an inmate who finds herself romantically interested in one of the guards with some horrifying consequences.  Some of the crimes the inmates committed involve women’s issues, or they wound up taking the fall for a man.  Not to mention the guards are primarily men, a mix of insecure men like Healy (Michael J. Harney) or cruel like Mendez (Pablo Schreiber).  Between this an Orphan Black, it’s refreshing to see such good entertainment with an emphasis on strong female characters at the center.  It shows those sexist dummies that so long as there are well written characters, it doesn’t matter who the story is about.

As it has been with all of Netflix’s originals so far, the entire first season was released in one day, trying to capitalize on the trend of “binge watching”.  As you can tell by the introduction, none of the shows really got that urge for me to binge watch because I actually wanted to until Orange.  Although I parsed my viewing out—not more than two a day—it wasn’t out of not wanting to see more.  This was the first Netflix show where I was actually looking forward to seeing the next episode.  Unlike its other shows, Orange Is the New Black doesn’t feel like a show that’s trying to be a great show.  It just is.

Grade: A-

Notes: (SPOILERS)

I don’t know if this is a problem with the way I saw it on (Roku box), but for some reason there were no subtitles during the scenes where the characters weren’t speaking English unless I turned on the subtitles for the entire episode.  There has to be some way to work around that or I’m missing something, right?

I have to imagine this was in the promo material, but I didn’t know Alex was a prisoner with Piper until it happened on the show.

Top 5 characters I want to see flashbacks from who didn’t get them in season one: 1) Crazy Eyes, 2) Taystee, 3) Poussey, 4) Sister Ingalls, 5) Morello.

Like many children of the 90s, it was a little weird to hear Patty Mayonaise’s voice coming out of Yoga Jones’ mouth.

One thing this show did really well were the transitions.  A favorite of mine (I think it was in “Moscow Mule”) involved the camera craning around a box of produce to a flashback.

Really found the friendship between Sophia and Sister Ingalls surprisingly effective, especially since it was started because Sophia wanted Ingalls’ hormones.

That throwaway line early on about Larry and some trouble with a webcam was a shout out to American Pie, right?

Favorite needle drop: “Sunday Morning” by Velvet Underground.

I like that Regina Spektor theme song a lot, but I don’t know how I feel about the montage in the opening credits.

I hope that’s not the last we see of Miss Claudette, though it sounds like it might be.

Poussey is the inmate that grew on me the most as the season progressed.  Really loved the season later on between her and Taystee when Taystee found herself back in priosn.

I’d love for this to set the stage for a comeback for Natasha Lyonne.  I have to imagine she mined a lot of her real life troubles for the role of Nicky, and it pays off in a big way.

Loved silent Norma singing in the Christmas pageant.

I wonder how they decided who was going to be a credited lead character, considering most of the large cast appeared in every episode.

It felt like the new administrator subplot was underserved this season.  The series in general had a lot to juggle and did it well,, but I imagine we’ll hear more from this story next season.

I wonder how long this series will go on for.  Season one covered 3-4 months of Piper’s 15 month sentence.  She could get more time because of her pummeling Pennsatucky in the finale (who knows how that’ll play out).  Season one definitely felt like one part of a bigger story, with a lot more left in the air than I’d usually like.  Regardless, I’ll be there whenever they put out season two.