It's 8 p.m. on a Thursday and the Complex offices are empty. I'm about to wrap up my seventh episode of Weeds creator Jenji Kohan's new series Orange is New Black, which I almost just spelled Orange Is the Netflix, because my brain is fried. It's on Netflix. All of it. All 13 episodes. I have been assigned to watch all 13 in one sitting—and then a little blue bird on my shoulder scream-whispered in my ear, "Stop it! Go home! You're losing your shit!"
People, I failed.
But it actually wasn't the torture I'm making it sound like. If I had the mental stamina, I would've kept going, because it's damn good. An adapted original series from the Piper Kerman novel of the same name, Orange Is the New Black follows Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling, NBC's cancelled series Mercy), a wealthy, Smith-college-educated, white woman sent to lock-up for her minor involvement in a drug ring during hippie days post-college. There's this thing about soap that keeps coming up. Chapman is starting an artisanal soap business, or well, doing her best to with the little amount of payphone calls and visits she gets with her BFF and business partner Polly (Maria Dizzia, Martha Marcy May Marlene). To anyone who casually watches an episode or two, it probably means jack shit. But to me, it's become a symbol for the entire show. OK, maybe it could be a sign that I'm in too deep, but let me get to my conclusion, seven episodes in and a hundred soap references later:
Orange is the New Black is a hilarious and heartfelt dramedy, set entirely in prison with the inmates' lives before bars spliced in, that's not about scrubbing off the oil stain of one's dark past, but rather washing the murk of oneself for a smudge-free reflection of who they really are.
Led by a virtually unknown and multi-ethnic cast (Schilling, Michelle Hurst, Laura Prepon, Natasha Lyonne, Kate Mulgrew, Dasha Polanco, Jason Biggs, and Danielle Brooks), Kohan's series is a can't-miss for anyone looking for some entirely different to watch on television. Just like its inmate characters, although its imperfect, its strength as whole outweigh its weakness.
Each episode of OITNB will hit you just as hard—with laughs and all the feels!—if not more so, than the last one, and it's worth every minute of your life spent on it. I've already cleared out my Saturday to finish the season.
Written by Tara Aquino (@t_akino)
Locked Up Inside an "Orange Is the New Black" Binge-Watch
It's 8 p.m. on a Thursday and the Complex offices are empty. I'm about to wrap up my seventh episode of Weeds creator Jenji Kohan's new series Orange is New Black, which I almost just spelled Orange Is the Netflix, because my brain is fried. It's on Netflix. All of it. All 13 episodes. I have been assigned to watch all 13 in one sitting—and then a little blue bird on my shoulder scream-whispered in my ear, "Stop it! Go home! You're losing your shit!"
People, I failed.
But it actually wasn't the torture I'm making it sound like. If I had the mental stamina, I would've kept going, because it's damn good. An adapted original series from the Piper Kerman novel of the same name, Orange Is the New Black follows Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling, NBC's cancelled series Mercy), a wealthy, Smith-college-educated, white woman sent to lock-up for her minor involvement in a drug ring during hippie days post-college. There's this thing about soap that keeps coming up. Chapman is starting an artisanal soap business, or well, doing her best to with the little amount of payphone calls and visits she gets with her BFF and business partner Polly (Maria Dizzia, Martha Marcy May Marlene). To anyone who casually watches an episode or two, it probably means jack shit. But to me, it's become a symbol for the entire show. OK, maybe it could be a sign that I'm in too deep, but let me get to my conclusion, seven episodes in and a hundred soap references later:
Orange is the New Black is a hilarious and heartfelt dramedy, set entirely in prison with the inmates' lives before bars spliced in, that's not about scrubbing off the oil stain of one's dark past, but rather washing the murk of oneself for a smudge-free reflection of who they really are.
Led by a virtually unknown and multi-ethnic cast (Schilling, Michelle Hurst, Laura Prepon, Natasha Lyonne, Kate Mulgrew, Dasha Polanco, Jason Biggs, and Danielle Brooks), Kohan's series is a can't-miss for anyone looking for some entirely different to watch on television. Just like its inmate characters, although its imperfect, its strength as whole outweigh its weakness.
Each episode of OITNB will hit you just as hard—with laughs and all the feels!—if not more so, than the last one, and it's worth every minute of your life spent on it. I've already cleared out my Saturday to finish the season.
Written by Tara Aquino (@t_akino)
Strength: A Compelling Taylor Schilling
Playing a yuppie-turned-prisoner is no easy feat. How do you go about making a spoiled, upper-middle class white woman likeable amongst a group of largely underprivileged minority characters? Simple: hire an actress who can do the job. As protagonist Piper Chapman, Schilling finally proves herself as a performer who can do more than squeeze Zac Efron's butt under his boxers in The Lucky One and mope as the blink-and-you'll-miss-her wife of Ben Affleck's Tony Mendez in Argo.
Schilling's Chapman, as she's referred to in lock-up, makes a transformation that doesn't feel sped up for the sake of character arch. Someone who begins as an artisanal soap-making, organic food-eating WASP with the naive delusion of treating prison as a personal vision quest, Schilling's Chapman embodies the struggle of someone who's been forced to look long and hard into a mirror under fluorescent lighting. She's exhausted. She's hungry. She's perpetually tense. And yet, she's reluctantly eager to get comfortable.
Strength: A Wide Array of Rich, Complicated, and Ethnically Diverse Characters
Strength: No Exploiting LGBTQ Stereotypes
Weakness: One-Dimensional Non-Prisoner White Characters
