Orange is the New Black: I did not see this coming

So I have this post that's 95% done on the Walking Dead that I was planning on posting next, but then I watched all of Orange is the New Black in under a week and I just HAVE to talk about it.  (Don't worry, we'll get to my love of Daryl killing zombies soon.  And I *do* love Daryl.)

But Orange is the New Black is something unlike anything I've ever seen on TV, even if it's only on Netflix Instant.  It's a show created by a woman, based on a book written by another woman, starring a cast of almost all women, the majority of whom are either not white or not straight.  It's a show that treats a gay love story with the same care and attention as a straight love story, and that shows the flexibility of human sexuality in a non-exploitive manner.  It's a show that gives us the stories of people that society has written off, and does so in a non-preachy manner.  Hell, it's a persuasive argument for prison reform wrapped in NPR jokes.




The premise of the whole show is that Piper, your average upper middle class woman in her late 20s/early 30s, is going to jail because when she was 23 she carried money for an international drug cartel, of which her girlfriend was a major player.  There's no doubt to her guilt, and Piper decides to plead guilty and serve a 13 month sentence rather than risk a trial.  While this is where the show could take a "poor little white girl" approach, instead it veers sharply off the beaten track.  Piper is an entry point for everyone who's never been to prison, but every character around her gets fleshed out with their own backstories, most of them far more tragic than Piper's youthful indiscretion.  In fact, Piper comes across as painfully naive and dumb most of the time-- the real joy is in the other ladies in the prison.


Piper Chapman: she's there so middle class white women like myself have a translator for prison experiences.

Also we're doing gifs instead of photos for this post.
Enjoy.

Like I said, Piper is in prison for a dumb thing she did almost a decade ago.  She owns it, and (much like I would do, if I ever dared to break a law more serious than underage drinking*) reads books on how to best interact with her fellow inmates.  Her ex (the member of the international drug cartel that got her into the mess in the first place) is in prison with her, causing some emotional tension as well.  Piper is now engaged to a man, but her feelings for Alex were very real--they were in love and together for several years-- and the show treats them with dignity.  Mostly, however, Piper makes dumb mistakes and offends her fellow inmates, and very, very slowly learns that prison isn't at all like she thought it would be.

*I am truly a Catholic school success story.  Give me an authority figure and a set of rules, and I am physically unable to disobey.


Alex, the drug runner ex girlfriend.

Laura Prepon really needs to go back to being a redhead.
It looks like a stranger is wearing her face right now.

Alex, who will forever be Donna in my head thanks to the actress being on That 70's Show, mostly hangs around to cause drama and make a distracting but convincing case for tattoos and dark frame glasses.



Larry: Jason Biggs will never escape American Pie. Never.

No, really.  There's like 30 masturbation jokes
about him in the first 3 episodes.
This isn't one of them, though.

Larry is there so that we get a glimpse of life outside of prison (he's Piper's fiance) and so that the show isn't just 90% women, 10% prison guards.


Sophia, queen of the disbelieving eyebrow raise.

See?  Told you.  The white lady is a nun. She's also awesome.

Sophia is a transgender woman (meaning she was born a man but fully transitioned to life as a woman, hence why she's in a women's prison) who does hair and dispenses life advice to dumb newbies like Piper.  She's also a former firefighter with a wife and son, both of whom she misses dearly.  What is so amazing about Sophia is that she's shown as far more than just a drag-queen-esque side show with sass: she's a woman with a complicated life who has made mistakes but has a good heart.


Taystee and Poussey: As Poussey herself says, that's Poo-SAY not Puh-SEE: accent a droite, BITCH.

That's Taystee on the chair. I tried to find their "white people politics"
bit, which is the funniest/most accurate thing I've ever seen, but I couldn't find it.
Just watch the show.  You'll know it when you see it.

Taystee and Poussey are really fairly secondary characters-- they don't interact much with Piper-- but they are the absolute BEST.  They are incredibly smart women that have been dealt a really rough hand (as Taystee says: everyone I know is either poor, gone, or in prison), and their friendship is absolutely adorable.  Taystee loves Harry Potter and hates Toddlers and Tiaras for it's sexualization of toddlers, and Poussey can pack one hell of a punch into a 30 second monologue.  They take two characters that could just be "sassy black women" and give them depth and humanity and humor and grace and seriously, this show is unbelievable.


Daya and Bennet, the dumbest/cutest people ever.

Bennet reminds me of Ripley from Luther, by which I mean
I want to bake him a pie and them smack him upside the head
for being a dumbass.  

Oh, Daya.  Daya is a sweet, sweet girl who is also kind of a moron.  Her mother is in prison with her as well (and it's implied that they went down for the same crime, just committed at different times) and her mother is completely awful. Bennet is one of the only not-awful guards in the entire prison.  Daya and Bennet start a sweet if incredibly ill-advised love affair, because they are both adorable idiots.

Mendez, otherwise known as Pornstasche.

He doesn't get a gif because he's a jackass.

Pornstasche is as close to an out-and-out villain as this show has.  He's a corrupt prison guard, and he's pretty damn awful.  The show has a disconcerting way of swinging between hilarity and tension, and Pornstasche functions as a huge reminder that no matter how much these women look out for each other, they are ultimately powerless in the grand scheme of things.  Pornstasche sucks, basically.



I've really only scratched the surface here-- I haven't even gotten to Red, the mean Russian cook, or Nicky and Lorna, the sweet ex-junky and her girlfriend who sounds like she's auditioning to play Frenchy in the prison's performance of Grease.  Or Yoga Jones (it's all in the name) or Watson, the girl with a backstory that will BREAK. YOUR. HEART.  Even the people who seem like punchlines at first-- like Crazy Eyes or Pennsatucky-- get backstories and emotions and reasons for their weirdness and after a while, you even start to sympathize with someone as awful as Pennsatucky.  Well,  a little bit.  Pennsatucky is pretty heinous.


Verdict: Perfectly Awesome.