I just realized that season 6 is less than two weeks away and I have some Expectations. First, I’m going to need a cute ass scene of Piper giving Alex an engagement ring made out of scraps Piper found around the prison. Then, I’m going to need “i love you’s” because we haven’t heard them say that shit to each other since season 1 and my ass is starved of that Good Content. Face touching, hair stroking, and smiling into kisses should be included for good measure. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.
In season 6, I want Alex and Piper to acknowledge their engagement in cute little ways, making jokes about their wedding, subtly planning their future, calling each other fiancee just because theyre so happy that theyre actually going to get married. Whispers of “we’re getting married.” before they smile into kisses. When Alex says something snarky, Piper going, “thats my future wife.”
Plus, some actual “i love you”’s would be nice, we haven’t heard them say that since what, season 1? Season 6, you better pull thru
You can't spend your whole life holding the door open for people and then being angry when they don't thank you. Nobody asked you to hold the fucking door.
Re: oitnb, it’s crazy how obsessed I was about vauseman for years and now never think about them. I considered them my favorite otp ever until I came upon stories where the love between two people made so much more sense and in comparison alex and piper seem so wrong now (this is also because of the disastrous last season). Since then - Imagine! You can have couples that are flawed but adore each other and don’t act like assholes to each other or cheat first chance they get!
I’ve said that exact first sentence so many times, haha.
I never watched the last season so I can’t comment on that... idk, it’s hard to assess them in retrospect. I still think their story was really compelling for the first two seasons, the level of longing and the ‘I feel like my best self with this person and no one else will do,’ and to a lesser extent seasons 3 and 4... or at least, the version of them we collectively headcanoned. But at a certain point the show just didn’t know what to do with them, or really any of the characters, without having them just repeat patterns of behavior they’d ostensibly already grown out of it. It got tiring across the board.
Honestly OITNB as a whole is difficult to assess, because by the end of its run it felt obsolete precisely because the show itself had taught us to expect more/better out of media. I never watched Transparent, but I think that was a similar situation--we didn’t need those shows any more by the end because they had such an impact on the industry that they were subsequently lapped by the shows they paved the way for.
I think it’s really easy to forget how dire it was for stories written for/by women on television for most of the 2000s. The “Golden Age” drama landscape was truly so obsessed with anti-heroes and so barren of, if not downright hostile to, stories about messy female narratives--let alone queer ones, and certainly not queer women of color. There were rare niche exceptions like Nurse Jackie and Damages, but most of the female characters on the big budget, high-brow, marquee dramas were either the punchline or the punching bag. They were frothy and sex-crazed and silly, or they were wet blanket wives getting in the way. And as far as ensembles go... like, nobody was taking the The L Word seriously.
The change in that storytelling landscape pre- and post-OITNB (streaming in general, but OITNB was the proof case) was a massive, massive shift, and in that sense I think you could make the case that it was one of the most influential shows of the decade. I don’t think you get Sense8, Pose, Vida, or Jane the Virgin without it, and probably not shows like Handmaid’s Tale, Insecure, Fleabag, or Russian Doll either.
So yeah, like, OITNB undoubtedly turned into a disappointment after two really good seasons. But those two seasons seemed to change everything in terms of what type of stories were getting told on television (or at least cable and streaming... the credit on network probably belongs to Shonda Rhimes).
And as for Alex and Piper... well, maybe the real Vauseman was the friends we made along the way ;)
I think, overall, this was my favorite since season 2. Like I said, it had pacing issues--a number of the early episodes felt like wayy too long, and making it to the midpoint of the season was a bit of a slog at times. There was a lot of jumping around to separate, scattered subplots, with scenes didn’t interlock enough to stay consistently compelling (as has been an issue on the show for a while now).
But there were also some big improvements this season over issues from S3-5: narrowing the focus down to the a core group of characters (so long, meth heads and white supremacists! pls never come back), doing a better job of setting up and integrating the new characters (who were much, much better developed & interesting than the newbies of the last few). S6 was less ambitious with its storytelling, but it was more even-keeled, provided a much needed break from the frantic pace, excessive onscreen violence, and head-spinning tonal shifts of the last few years. The show still doesn’t know what to do with certain characters (Red), but I’ll take S6′s dullish subplots over the head-scratchingly stupid ones (Red in S5, Toast Norma, etc) we’ve been subjected to in the past.
Some more specific storyline thoughts:
I really liked Nicky’s storyline this season: staying sober, making a conscious effort to be a better friend and a positive influence on people around her (helping Barb get sober, trying to help Blanca get pregnant, officiating Alex & Piper’s prison wedding). Those scenes were really sweet, in a crass Nicky Nichols kind of way, and it feels like she really earned the progress she’s made. Her scenes with Red in the first handful of episodes were some of my favorites of the season.
remember when Jenji was like “i didn’t like what the new writers did with Alex & Piper in season 5, it felt like fanfiction.” well guess what bitch, you must not have hated it that much because y’all outdid yourselves with the Vauseman fluff this year, and I loved every minute of it.
the kickball storyline: other characters actually appreciating Piper’s efforts to do good and bring happiness to people??? Piper being proved right?? CAN YOU BELIEVE
Taystee’s arc was heartbreaking, and Danielle Brooks was excellent as always. The one thing that bothered me was how often this storyline became about Caputo. Like, it was pretty good character work and I hated his scenes much less this year than in the past (and I actually enjoyed the Caputo/Fig scenes, which... wtf has gotten into me), but it still felt like they made Taystee’s trial more about the middle-aged white man’s moral evolution than about her personal struggle and predicament. That said, the “charades” scene was probably one of the most powerful and best-written scenes in the show’s entire run. It wowed me.
The guards were thankfully not as loathsome as the s4/5 guards, and I really liked what they did with McCullough--her scenes are a great example of how to do great character work through small moments & pack an emotional punch in just a few short, simple scenes (oitnb’s original calling card, which over the years became a lost art as it got mired in its own narrative sprawl).
as many people have said: Daddy > Stella. It was like they took the original blueprint for that storyline, rewrote it, and then cast someone who could actually act.
Linda from purchasing was one of the best/funniest parts of s5, but she went right back to being a very tiresome presence this year. I wouldn’t have minded if she’d been cut from s6 entirely.
The final episode was breathtaking in so many ways. It really nailed that particular mix of elation/optimism and heartbreak/cynicism that, when oitnb gets it right (like they did here), is as compelling as anything else on television. I’ll definitely be rewatching it.
