#oitnb negativity

[camhowes]

not even excited for vauseman? :(

I mean, I’ll always love them. Of all my ships, they have the most history together - which has allowed fandom to play around and fill in nearly a decade’s worth of emotions and headcanons and alternate versions of the story. It’s been my most immersive ship, for sure. I’ve spent an absurd number of hours thinking about them, so I’m always going to appreciate and love that.

But I’m also not the kind of person that can keep up my enthusiasm for a particular ship when I no longer enjoy the overall tenor of the show? I just feel like, on OITNB, the plot is no longer serving the nuance of its characters like it did in the first two seasons. It feels like too many of the characters have been stripped of their vivacity and complexity in order to better use them as Examples and Symbols of social justice issues. Like, the show absolutely should explore issues of injustice, obviously - but it used to have much more interesting, engrossing ways to do that? The lack of subtlety last season reached a point where characters are practically turning to the camera to say “hello my name is ____ and I’m here to talk to you about [social issue]” and while the subject matter is important, that’s just… not a good or interesting way to tell a story. 

Bottom line, for me OITNB used to feel like a show that examined and celebrated the varied identities of its characters - but now it feels like a show that reduces its characters to those identities. It relies on heavy-handed plots and increasingly lazy characterization, and instead of working to overturn stereotypical narratives it seems to be leaning into them. (That may be partially because the cultural/tv landscape has changed enough in five years that what used to seem subversive now feels overdone?) But regardless, the storytelling is now the opposite of what I signed up for. No matter how much I’ve loved the individual characters (and I’m talking about the entire core cast - Red, Sophia, Janae, Doggett, Poussey, etc) I just don’t think the show is telling their stories the right way anymore. 

So yeah, like I said - I’ll watch s5, and I’m sure there will be parts I enjoy. But it’s getting more and more difficult to stay invested in certain characters and plotlines when the show’s overall approach to storytelling is no longer all that interesting or enjoyable. 

It really bums me out.

[camhowes]

(discussing early reviews of oitnb s5, and my feelings about them)

they’re all over the place, but all of them seem to conclude that this is no longer the show it was in its first two seasons, and i’m ridiculously depressed to the point of almost not wanting to watch it. which sucks because i have 4 days off of work for The Binge™ and now i’m like... why bother. 

i feel so bitter because when this show was good it was so undeniably good, and i feel so let down by everything since season 2. i just can’t believe how short-lived its peak was, and I know i need to move on and let go of it but i’m really depressed about it. i know it’s just a tv show but like, my heart hurts over this. 

it’s so hard to move on. it’d be easier if POI was still airing, but that’s over too, and there won’t be any Carmilla episodes to look forward to this summer. and none of my friends watch HACF so even though i love it a whole lot it doesn’t really fill the fandom void.

also i have amost no motivation to finish the fic i wanted to wrap up this week, so.

this sucks.

(anon please don’t say ‘i told you so’)

[camhowes]

I think we are going to take the white supremacists seriously next season. Since one of them said they are going to get a shiv for the riot, I have a strong feeling they are going to play a role in it. I totally agree with you, but they were also kind of there because of Piper in the beginning and the way she as a white person dealt with all that was pretty interesting.

idk, they just felt like such cartoonish characters that I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to take them seriously. Honestly, I thought Doggett and her gang in season 1 was a much better/more interesting version of this group. They were humorous characters and their racism was parodied, but they still felt genuinely threatening. Even in her earliest episodes Doggett was an earnest, authentic, and grounded character, whereas Skinhead Helen & Co just have no weight to them whatsoever. The writers just haven’t given me any reason to care or worry about what happens with them.

I think you’re right that they were there to serve Piper’s storyline and also to help create this dialogue around race in s4, but that’s also part of what bothers me. Using characters solely as plot devices, without actually making them worthwhile as characters, is one of my biggest pet peeves in ensemble dramas. If the strength of your show depends on the strength of its characters, like OITNB’s does, you can’t just create lazy duds and hope the audience won’t notice (ahem, Stella), especially when you already have a ton of characters and not enough screen time to go around. 

I mean I like your optimism and I guess they could surprise me, since they did somehow manage to persuade me into ignoring the ridiculousness of the Ayden plot enough to actually enjoy it a lot. So, you never know. I’m sure the Litchfield neo-nazis will have a role of some kind, I’m just deeply skeptical that they’ll ever gain enough weight or worth to justify their existence as characters.

[camhowes]

alxvse replied to your post: remember how poignant that christmas pageant scene...

do you think this shift has happened in the series kind of increased focus on the prison system as The Big Bad? Like that’s kind of where the ‘relentless suffering" really revved up. I remember having a discussion a few months ago about how most of the main characters are rarely allowed to screw up anymore (save for Piper). Compare how interesting the Vee based conflicts were in season two, where you have characters you’re invested in on both sides of conflict and a lot more poignant individual character moments that way as opposed to just “Everyone’s in a terrible situation and everyone suffers relentlessly”

short answer: yes.

long answer: I think the shift between s2 and s3 overhauled the entire focus of the show from micro (interpersonal) to macro (systemic). 

The thematic constant of this show has always been: who has power over whom, in what way, and how do they choose to exercise it, and what impact does that choice create? 

For example, Bennett has power over a Daya, girl he’s romantically involved in. When she gets pregnant, he has two choices: he can own his share of the responsibility and get sent to prison as a sex offender-- effectively giving up his power, and putting him on equal footing with her-- or he can walk away, and retain control over his life. He chooses the latter. He chooses power over love. And that decision impacts Daya’s worldview in turn, prompting her to take a “if you can’t beat ‘em join ‘em” attitude in season 4, which culminates with her picking up the gun in her own attempt to find power.

We can see how this one relationship becomes a multifaceted exploration of power dynamics impacted by race, gender, and structures of authority. It’s a story told on a micro scale, but it contains a lot of depth. And it shows how the narrative mode of the show was very much, “we’re going to give you the characters and tell the stories of their relationships, and from the aggregate of all those stories a running social commentary/message about the nature of our prison system will emerge.” Characters & relationships were the input; social commentary was the output.

But season 3 flipped the script and tried to make social commentary the input. It was like, “here’s what we want to say about The Issues; here’s our haphazard attempt to adjust characters and relationships to support that effort.” 

That seems like such an amateur writing method in contrast to the method employed in the first two seasons, because the audience can feel how contrived it is. We can feel the message being shoved down our throats. We can sense the lack of balance that happens when writers are willing to sacrifice a character’s integrity in order to Prove A Point. And as soon as your characters become incidental and expendable to the story you’re telling, that sense of moroseness takes over and you start to lose your audience’s investment.

So yes, I think a lot of this has to do with the decision to made the prison itself the monolithic Big Bad -- but I think that, in turn, was a result of this decision to choose macro storytelling over micro. The purpose of the show used to be to telling the stories of women whose stories never get told; now it’s to tell the story of the prison system (including the men who run it), which is inherently a setup for less focused, more dispassionate storytelling. 

tbh I what it comes down to is that the show just got too ambitious about its place in the cultural discourse and, in its eagerness, shot itself in the foot.

[camhowes]

remember how poignant that christmas pageant scene was in season 1? from like every character’s perspective? in ways both positive and negative?

why can’t we have poignancy without murder and death anymore

why is that too much to ask for

[camhowes]

Do you think it was good the fact that OITNB wasnt nominated for anything at the Emmys? To show the writers, producers, etc that season 3 was terrible and they should never do a season like that again?

Yes. I haven’t even looked at the nominations list (because I wasn’t personally invested in any contenders this year) but yeah, s3 of OITNB wasn’t award-worthy in any sense. All the praise it got from critics last summer was 100% lazy ass-kissing based on the fact that the show was at peak trendiness. There were some powerful character moments (Boo, Doggett, Cindy, Taystee) but structurally, tonally, and thematically it was a mess and deserves no awards. 

(I know this sounds very bitter, but I am bitter, and even though I understand now what they were trying to do in s3 they still did it badly and there’s no getting around that.)

[defectivegembrain]

I know there isn’t even more to watch right now but I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders just from deciding that I won’t watch any more oitnb

[stevechoosesbucky]

I’m so disappointed with the new season of Orange Is The New Black I don’t know what to say or think, such a betrayal...