A thread for Netflix's women-in-prison dramedy ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK

i like to imagine taryn manning studied a lot of john malkovich performances while preparing for this role

also this show rules, can't wait for more

heard piper kerman on frrrrrrrrrrrrrresh air today and she sounded exactly like i expected her to: highly articulate thoughtful speaker prone to uptalk during explanations of the most delicate issues

finished it last night, the very end was v cathartic if maybe a little too "dramatic season finale" (esp. with healey looming in the background doing nothing)

i still think it's a weird show tonally, which as was noted upthread is just part and parcel of being a dramedy, but i did really enjoy it overall

i'm liking it more and more -- i think we have like 3 more episodes?

I hate Healy so much he is such a shithead

they really do a good job of shifting healey from "good-intentioned if misguided nice guy" to "huh this guy's kind of a creep" to "total asshole"

all the prisoners are good at heart, all the prison officials are evil at heart ... makes you think

like ... who's the real bad guy, you know?

bloggy voice rant about systemic oppression

i thought the healey story line was taking turns a little too abruptly, but i really did end up enjoying it once it all played out

all the prisoners are good at heart, all the prison officials are evil at heart ... makes you think

um no

well it makes me think

i'm just not sure if you're making a joke here or you just weren't watching the show very closely but i don't think that's really the dynamic.

i'm overgeneralizing a little bit but the prisoners are def more sympathetic and fleshed-out than the prison administration (note that i'm now subtly changing my wording to exclude the guards). healey, the woman boss, and mr. baldy mustache are all pretty scummy, whereas the most "evil" prisoner (doggett/pennsatuckey), while cartoonish, is still sympathized as someone who is clinging to her faith as the only thing that makes her feel like a worthwhile person.

healey, the woman boss, and mr. baldy mustache are all pretty scummy

oh yeah, definitely. i want pornstache to die, slowly and painfully, tbh. and healey certainly turned a bit supervillain a bit quickly.

i do love that dude lost his leg from using a dirty hot tub

i felt bad for that one-legged guard guy when that guy just waltzed right into his bachelor efficiency apartment. he was so defenseless. like a little kid.

oh the hot tub thing was great. i saw him changing before my eyes. it was perfect.

n/a did you watch weeds?

no i watched the first episode and pretty much hated it immediately. i don't remember why but i think there was some weird racial stuff?

i wanted to like weeds cuz i like mary-louise but i couldn't hang with that show. it was too something...

i think i said that on here already though. or maybe that was the netflix thread.

this shot kinda sums it up for me:

http://skyatlantic.sky.com/image/unscaled/2011/10/07/Weeds-S6-PW.jpg

i watched weeds for so so so much longer than i should've, pretty much 95% due to mary louise parker thought the usual 'it came on in the summer' helped also. avoided this cuz it didn't even have mary louise parker but it's a much better show. it does however get that smug cartoon characterization that weeds did insanely. show pokes fun at smug npr liberals but that is totally its viewpoint. it's somehow better and worse w/ this than tv sorkin. far more watchable than any recent tv sorkin obv. far far more watchable.

i don't remember why but i think there was some weird racial stuff?

i'm not entirely sure this show doesn't skew in the same direction, but i can't really explain it too clearly, so maybe i'm punishing it for weeds' sins. i have really enjoyed it, though there's a certain soapy vibe to it that i'm uneasy with - it's so much better than this, but sometimes it feels like Desperate Housewives Behind Bars. but it *is much better than that.

"show pokes fun at smug npr liberals but that is totally its viewpoint."

totally. in a post-american beauty world, you just have to hope that the humanity and humor outweighs the piety or flatfootedness.

"it's somehow better and worse w/ this than tv sorkin."

sorkin doesn't really understand what human people are like, so almost anyone is gonna look better to me by comparison.

http://jezebel.com/laura-prepon-is-no-more-for-orange-is-the-new-black-1141083629

whatever. like Prepon has something to do

something BETTER to do that is. oh well, their love story wasn't really a favorite plot thread of mine

I love that Laura Prepon has never fixed her bottom teeth, it makes her double sexy.

Taylor Schilling is pretty good in this, but to me she'll always be Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged Pt. 1.

http://gs1.wac.edgecastcdn.net/8019B6/data.tumblr.com/6a852fb3b3692e88034a90dfde991c40/tumblr_mr16cvodzg1qdetafo1_1280.png

"Taylor Schilling is pretty good in this, but to me she'll always be Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged Pt. 1"

that's what you get for watching that movie

FInally finished the series. I liked it, but worried from the first episode that Kohan won't be able to resist total darkness with this show (like what happened on Weeds). The final scene didn't really do anything to lower my anxiety.

had no idea the actor that played Mendes = Nickolas Sobotka from The Wire

whoaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

Me, neither! I even looked him up on IMDB for some reason and spent some time looking at his photos because I was shocked at how not creepy, nay almost handsome, he was.

WHAT WHAT WHAT

duh

^ great post

He seems so much SHORTER in OITNB than in The Wire.

he lost height for the role

lol

n/a otm -- he has the same exact face only with a mustache on it!!

Also, fun fact: he is Liev Schreiber's half-brother.

just finished watching this. The 'scared straight' ep was the BEST. I too did not realise that was Nicky Sobotka!

I know, right? Now that I see it is is sooooooo obvious, but I was just so creeped out by that character that I didn't make a connection!

so jodie foster directed an episode of this?

also taryn manning is fucking amazing in this show, as everyone else already said

it took me forever to place piper's mom - she's the mom from strangers with candy

no, it doesn't get better, but like everyone says it's pleasant when you stop truly caring abt it and just enjoy the amusing moments as they happen.

we just finished s3 last night. i have to pack it in now, s1 and s2 were really good and promising but shit just fell apart. sometimes it feels good to say goodbye to show without finishing it

Yeah don't become like me and try to finish Dexter after not enjoying it for three years.

S4 is a major drop off in quality, no reason to subject yourself to it

really? i thought season 4 was nearly as good as S2. S5 was kind of a mess though.

oh oops, I forgot there were five seasons. I did enjoy S4 quite a bit (that was the leisurely one where hardly anything happens, right? I mean that in a good way). But S5 really burned the show to the ground.

also damn just read this show has been renewed for a seventh season, too. That is one very long one-year prison sentence.

taking steps is easy, standing still is hard

wait, we are to believe that all 5 seasons have taken place in the span of 1 year?

watched the 1st couple eps of S4 and gave up on this. Really enjoyed 1st 2 seasons. Haven't thought about the show at all since stopped watching it. I think the Piper/Prepon softcore soap opera stuff was what 1st soured me on it.

yea for sure that storyline got really old even within s1

S6 began pretty wobbly, but ended up in a good place (for most of what remains of the original cast, anyway).

OITNB has a poor track record with integrating new characters in meaningful ways, and S6 is no exception, but at least the Carol/Barb thing was fun dramedy.

I watched the 1st episode of S6 and it stressed me out SO much, does the whole season go on like this?
like it's not fun for me to watch powerless women be abused???

It's no worse than S5 for this really (which I just rewatched and enjoyed more also) but yeah there's a bunch of depressing evil stuff (worst moment for this imo comes during a flashback to two of the new characters), some lols. I had enough interest in enough characters to keep watching somehow.

Another bleak season - how else could it go? But with the jokes not really hitting and an added sense of rudderless drift from the writers...not sure I could even drop spoilers if I wanted to. 2 eps left to go (165 mins between them).

The first third of the season was so dense that it felt like watching an entire previous season by the time I finished ep4. I soldiered on and finished it, though, and I guess it was about as rewarding as this show can ever get.

I hope that one day we get a womens' prison drama that learns from this show's mistakes.

what do you think of Pete McTighe's Prisoner reboot, Wentworth?