Image via Complex Original
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
For anyone who has only seen the trailer, it's easy to assume that Orange is the New Black is a surface-level look into a prison filled with a bunch of comedic relief circus acts. Each prisoner assigned their own one-note joke, that sort of thing. However, by the second episode, the show takes an unexpected turn. Just like how the pilot intercuts scenes of Chapman's past that led her to prison, each episode folllowing picks and chooses one or two more inmates or security guards to illuminate, each one a character introduced in the first episode. An African American trangender hairdresser with a wife and kid struggling with her transformation; a disenchanted security guard in a loveless green card marriage; an immigrant Haitian foster mother with a vengeance—the show gives a pulse to the prisoners overlooked in the system and the oft-parodied guards stuck there with them.
Each character, no matter their rank, has a soul. Even more refreshing, each character is distinct. They aren't all conventionally attractive. They aren't all size-two actresses made up to look haggard. They're played by women (and men) you see on a daily basis—belly flab, gaping pores, gapped teeth, and heavy eye bags all. This show isn't interested in visually feeding you, it's interested in making you care about people you might not have given the time of day. "No one's gonna hit you harder than life, not a guard, not a gangster, not even your wife," freestyles an inmate during the episode, "WAC Pack." Hell, you might even learn something from them.
Strength: No Exploiting LGBTQ Stereotypes
If you're an Internet savvy TV nerd, chances are you've seen the NSFW GIF of Laura Prepon and Taylor Schilling making out in the shower. If that's what you're expecting from the show, then don't even bother. Go masturbate to something else.
First of all, the GIF going around is taken from a flashback of Piper Chapman fantasizing about her life, and how good she had it, in the first few seconds of the series. Thus, its glossiness comes from the sheen of nostalgia.
Second of all, and what should be talked about, is that sexuality is a respected reality on the show, one presented as an integral part of every LGBTQ character's being. Most prominently, Piper Chapman's bisexuality. Not as cookie cutter as her beach blonde hair makes her look, Chapman is forced to deal with a life she's since buried under Whole Foods bags, juice cleanses, and her engagement ring to a wholesome Jewish man—all parts of the girl she explicitly states she was "supposed to be." With her longing, guilt-ridden glances at her ex-girlfriend Alex (Prepon), who's stuck in jail with her, juxtaposed with her tear-filled phone calls to her fiancé Larry (Biggs), it becomes clear that Piper genuinely loves them both. Prison for Chapman becomes less about a concerted effort towards atonement, and more about picking up and fitting in the puzzle pieces of herself she's tried to discard. She's accepting a full, albeit fucked up, picture of who she really is.
Weakness: One-Dimensional Non-Prisoner White Characters
With all the diligence taken to ensure complete pictures of each prisoner, Chapman's family and friends are cardboard cutouts, no different from sitcom characters in [insert generic TBS sitcom here]. Chapman's parents are WASPs more concerned about the chunk of her she cut off and bartered with another inmate for cocoa butter than her emotional stability. Her best friend Polly is so wrapped in her elaborate and superficial baby planning that she doesn't seem capable of relating to Piper's distress.
Most glaringly, Larry, a struggling Jewish writer supported by his rich parents—his father being Chapman's lawyer—hits all the notes of a lonely fiance that everything about his character feels predictable. Seven episodes and a million masturbation sessions later, it becomes obvious Larry won't be able to last the 15 months in prison Chapman's got left.
