Based on Piper Kerman s memoir of the same name the series follows a fresh faced woman from Brooklyn (she s launching a line of artisanal lotion ) who is arrested for her connection to an international drug operation. What happened your honor was this A decade ago Piper was in a lesbian relationship and shuttled a large sum of money to Europe for her girlfriend who worked for a cartel. Someone has named her in an indictment and before she knows it Piper is sentenced to 15 months in prison.
Orange Is the New Black feels like Netflix s first real home run since it famously entered the scripted series biz. I realize some people couldn t get enough of the contorted House of Cards this year and that the Arrested Development niche is still dizzy from their group binge in May but Orange is the first series in which I d almost insist that viewers upgrade to streaming service and come along for television s seemingly inevitable future delivery method.
Kohan also created Showtime s sprawling drug and fractured family saga Weeds and Orange Is the New Black has some of that same comi tragic feel to it with a whole lot more depth. Once Piper (Taylor Schilling doing a perfectly naive little bird) is behind bars we are introduced to a harsh yet complex array of female characters.
Having bid her boyfriend Larry (Jason Biggs) a tearful goodbye ( Promise you re not watching Mad Men without me she begs him later) Piper quickly wises up and learns to navigate the distrustful exchanges that form her new life. She s completely thrown to discover that one of the inmates in her wing is the ex girlfriend ( That 70s Show s Laura Prepon) who got her in all this trouble to begin with.
Watching the show one begins to realize that all the good parts for women truly have been kept locked up somewhere now here they all are free (in at least one sense) to be portrayed. Within the first six episodes they are expertly and fully sketched textured and realized Latinas lesbians an activist nun a fireman who transitioned into a woman a housekeeper turned murderer a Russian inmate (Kate Mulgrew) who runs the kitchen and serves Piper a used tampon sandwich out of initial spite. (Warning The show is full of gross and intentionally unsettling moments it is a prison after all. With any luck the sandwich will be the worst of it.)
Together these women and their stories form a sad and strange tapestry but Orange Is the New Black is by no means a female Oz. And although there are unwanted advances from unctuous guards (including Pablo Schreiber as Officer Mendez a.k.a. Pornstache ) it has little use for our culture s exploitative and outdated Caged Heat style excitement for the notion of women doing time together. As in Weeds Kohan and her writers are obsessed with the million little details that form a believable and unembellished realm. Each episode contains fascinating revelations about the prison world almost like a documentary report from within.
Orange Is the New Black
(13 episodes) is available for streaming at Netflix.com.
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