Orange is the New Black: 10 Reasons Why It’s Officially My Life
Even though I’m way behind because everyone’s been on this show’s nuts for weeks now, I just finished Orange is the New Black. After very little much deliberation, I’ve decided that Orange is hands down, the best show not on television right now. If you haven’t seen it yet or it’s on your “to-do list,” girl, stop whatever you’re doing RIGHT NOW and start watching it.
You can trust my recommendation because originally, I was hard-pressed to give this show a shot. I kept hearing about how it was oh so diverse and inclusive and based on a true story and blah blah blah. When I read the description for myself and saw the promos, all I registered was a blonde, “straight” white girl who was seemingly scandalized by this new environment saturated by WOC that she’s in (because of course prison is where you find all the black girls, right?). The diversity was only a product of this typical main character trope being a fish out of water (because white people never go to prison, right?)
Here are all the reasons I was wrong.
10. THE “STRAIGHT” WHITE WOMAN IS NOT EVEN STRAIGHT AND SHE’S ACTUALLY THE LEAST INTERESTING PART OF THE SHOW
Piper (Taylor Schilling) is the “straight” white girl that we’re all supposed to relate to.
In the pilot, we find out that she’s going to federal prison for 15 months because she committed a crime 10 years ago. At the time, she was dating a girl (she’s not even straight!) named Alex Vause (Laura Prepon of That 70s Show). It was the lamest crime you can think of: she moved a bag of drug money for Alex (an international drug dealer).
Fast-forward 10 years later, someone (I won’t spoil it for you by saying who) gave her name up and she’s off to prison for a decade-old crime. She’s now in a new relationship with Jason Biggs who I guess has given up sticking his dick in pies, but he’s still just generally awful, boring and doughy. They get engaged. Try to stay awake, I’m almost finished talking about them.
Piper is narcissistic, uppity and privileged. Some people think she’s annoying. Some people hate her guts. Honestly, I don’t feel any particular way about her. She’s just there to me. I simply tolerated her early season storylines (being starved out by Red, the Russian mobster mother-hen of the prison and head of the kitchen; being pursued romantically by a mistaken-for-unstable inmate nicknamed “Crazy Eyes”). Toward the end of the season, though, some more interesting things happen to her (as a result of her relationship with Alex and her feud with a super-Christian “agent of God” named Tiffany Doggett), but it really doesn’t matter because the show doesn’t need her. She’s our Trojan House (as show creator Jenji Kohan so amply described her) and when you crack that bitch open, amazing stories about WOC come spilling out.
9. MOST OF THE CHARACTERS SUBVERT THEIR STEREOTYPES
The first couple episodes of the show are definitely the weakest. By the time you get to episode 3 or 4, though, you should be completely obsessed with this show. If you’re not, you need to call me so we can go through this thing point-by-point and can figure out what’s wrong with you. Anyway, the reason it drags in the beginning is because we’re spending too much time with Piper and Jason Biggs.
When the show opens up and starts introducing us to other characters (particularly, the characters of color), it becomes a new kind of thing. A refreshing, incredible, totally unique thing that shows like Glee and even the Fosters have been trying (and in my opinion) mostly failing to be and that is: having a really diverse set of characters without a) using their culture, sexuality, etc. as default character traits, b) ignoring them all together and/or c) treating them like shit because who cares about the POC, right??
Orange is the New Black is set in prison so the characters are pretty segregated by race (which is sadly realistic). We have our Black characters (Black Cindy, Taystee, Watson, Miss Claudette, Sophia, Suzanne/Crazy Eyes and Poussey -- the love of my life); our Hispanic/Latina characters (Daya, Diaz, Maritza, Flaca, Gloria); our white characters of course (Piper, Alex, Nicky, Morello, Big Boo, Sister Ingalls, Yoga Jones, Doggett); and Chang, the Asian lady. In the beginning, many of these characters are deep stereotypes, especially the Black and Latina characters. Taystee (Danielle Brooks) is more or less the Hilarious and Sassy Black Woman, Watson is the Angry Black Woman, Poussey has the Attitude, Miss Claudette is No-nonsense and description escapes Black Cindy. Seriously, you just have to watch her in action. She’s a combination of all these characters.
BUT. As the show goes along, the characters unfold with startling depth, especially Taystee, Watson, Miss Claudette and Poussey. Taystee is very funny, but also incredibly smart and knowledgable. She works in the library and has been teaching herself law. She loves Harry Potter and is a total grammar nazi. Doggett at one point writes a menacing note to Piper: “Your Gonna Die Amalekite” and Taystee describes the “your” vs “you’re” mistake as: “ignorant bitch-ass shit.” And through her heartwarming friendship with the love of my life, Poussey (Samira Wiley), Taystee gives us startling insight into how devastating the system can be for these women.
Sophia (Laverne Cox) is a trans* woman imprisoned for credit card fraud and estranged from her wife and son. She runs the prison salon and is very funny, but also thoughtful, soft-spoken, issue-conscious and just an overall delight to watch. I love that they’re writing this character with such softness among huge personalities. Her relationship with her wife who has stuck by her post-transition and incarceration has also been a highlight.
Bottom line, these characters have more to offer than finger-snapping, neck-rolls and being Proud, Black Women (*cough, cough* Ryan Murphy’s Mercedes Jones *cough,cough*) and it is wonderful.
8. YOU GET ALL 13 EPISODES AT ONCE
This may seem like a minor point because if you’re just starting the show now, of course the season is finished and you can watch the whole season at once, but hoe, it’s more than that! Even if you were watching when it first premiered, you would have been able to binge the full season because that’s how Netflix rolls. When you’re marathoning the episodes, too, as soon as one finishes, the next immediately starts about 15 seconds apart. The show is made for binge-watching and Netflix knows that. Structuring it this way helps a lot with the slump I think the first 3 episodes carry. You bang right through that and you’re onto the good stuff. This is the kind of show you watch over a weekend. Then you jump on Tumblr, crying and ranting about how long we have to wait until season 2. Speaking of which: how long do we have to wait until season 2? I’m dying here!
7. IT’S SET IN A CLAUSTROPHOBIC ENVIRONMENT (PRISON) BUT IT DOESN’T FEEL CLAUSTROPHOBIC
Orange is the New Black has a love-affair with flashbacks which totally makes sense because these women are incarcerated. It’s the perfect device to show us how they ended up in this dump (Litchfield Federal Prison) and who they are.
The first couple of episodes center heavily on Piper’s life outside of prison (Jason Biggs and her pregnant best friend Polly) but this was a disservice to those episodes. Kohan said the reason for this was because she didn’t want to be so closed in inside the prison but the thing is, the prison feels like a world itself.
First of all, we have three different groups that we’re working with (the white girls, the Black girls, the Latinas) and we also have our cast of villains (a guard with a hideous mustache nicknamed “Pornstache,” a lesbian-hating counselor named Healy) so we’re constantly moving around the prison. The groups even have their own neighborhoods: the Ghetto for the Black girls and where Piper ends up rooming with Miss Claudette; Spanish Harlem for the Latinas and the Suburbs for the white girls. We have Sophia’s salon. Chang runs the prison store. Red’s kitchen and cafeteria is basically it’s own town at this point. Each area has its own politics, too.
When you need an uptown fade from Sophia, you better be bringing something to barter with. You can always stop by the library and hang out with Taystee (Poussey will probably be there, too) and laugh your ass off at their stream of ridiculousness. And in the earlier episodes, there was an entire plot surrounding Piper waiting for her money to land at prison store (with Chang) so she could buy supplies. If by chance you start to get sick of the prison, there’s always a flashback around the corner to show you what these women were like before they were snatched by the law.
In the first couple of episodes, Piper’s treated to a bloody tampon sandwich. At one point, Crazy Eyes legit squats down and pees on the floor in front of Piper as a threat. Piper then has to get on her hands and knees and clean it up. That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Yeah.
Now, you can argue that this gross-out factor shouldn’t be a plus for the show, but I love it. I love seeing the women on this show completely deglamorized and allowed to act like assholes sometimes. They’re humanized. They have conversations about things other than men -- one of my many grips with the “progressive” Sex and the City -- did those hoes talk about anything other than men, penises, “true love” and shoes??
The women on this show however, are allowed to be people. They play pranks, they fall down, they dance goofily, they cuss, they fight, they’re friends, they’re enemies, they’re people. They are allowed to simply exist and be flawed. These characters are written with the same endless possibilities that Hollywhite Hollywood writes male characters. Thirteen episodes down and I’m still not over it.
Yes, he has a prosthetic leg. And yes, the show completely acknowledges that he’s also gorgeous and sexy and refrains from ignoring that he’s a sexual being the way some shows like to do disabled characters.
4. THE TAYSTEE AND POUSSEY FRIENDSHIP
Individually, Taystee and Poussey are great characters, but their friendship is everything. For one, their banter is hilarious. There’s a scene where they act out a conversation between white girls that can actually cause you to go into cardiac arrest.
For another, they have great chemistry because the actresses went to school together and are friends in real life. Thirdly, it’s emotional.
There are a lot of great shows that do the whole “sidekick” thing and do it very well, but a lot of the time, those sidekick buddy pairings don’t have much depth (i.e., Iz and Connie from Gossip Girl; early Santana and Brittany from Glee (though this relationship was explored in later seasons, early season one episodes left much to be desired; Shawn’s two best friends from the movie Orange County). With Taystee and Poussey, they can argue over the remote and how Poussey’s name is pronounced -- it’s pooh-say by the way, not what you were thinking -- but when things get serious, so do they.
When it becomes clear that Taystee is leaving Litchfield and Poussey may not get a chance to say goodbye, Poussey tears through the prison looking for her friend. She ends up banging on the prison window to get Taystee’s attention. The look on her face is simply heartbreaking. They always know what to say to make the other one feel better (Poussey takes to complimenting Tastyee’s hair when Taystee’s feeling down about her upcoming hearing) and their relationship brings great depth to the show, reminding us that these women form families in here.
3. THE ACTING IS ALARMINGLY GOOD
It blows my mind that some of these women are just now being recognized for their talent. When you watch this show and see some of these performances, there’s going to be a moment when it hits you that for some of these women, this role is their big break and you’re gonna want to break something because they should have had their big break years ago! The talent of some of these newcomers is astounding.
Many are double and triple threats, too. Uzo Aduba (Suzanne “Crazy Eyes”) made waves on the Broadway stage before joining the cast and Lea DeLaria (Big Boo) was already a legendary comedian pre-Orange is the New Black). For many of these women, however -- Samira Wiley who plays Poussey, Danielle Brooks who plays Taystee -- this is their breakout hit.
2. JUST THE MERE FACT THAT WE CAN EVEN HAVE A TV SHOW LIKE THIS, MY DUDE!
Whether you watch the show and love it (which you freaking better or I’m coming to see you) or not, just the fact that we can even have a cast like this and a show like this be such a huge hit deserves recognition. This is a group of women of diverse nationalities, races, sexualities and sizes on a mainstream show having their stories told. It’s incredible. We have a lot of work ahead of us, be just be proud of how far we’ve come.
My love for this character cannot be overstated. She’s hilarious, she’s clever, her friendship with Taystee is a main draw to the show, she’s just delightful, but most importantly: Will you look at that face!!!
That’s what I’m leaving you with -- gifs of Poussey’s incredible face. That is all. Now, go watch this show.
