Orange is the New Black

Not quite Velma and Roxie, but just as fun to watch...

I tried to go back to work yesterday, but it turned out to be too much and I ended up at the doctor's office in the afternoon, where I was told to take some more time off. I have some internal bleeding in my leg and possibly a slight concussion. All things considered I still consider myself to be extremely lucky, even as I lie on the couch, an ice pack on my elevated leg, watching it change colors by the hour from red to yellow to purple and blue, wondering why I didn't buy more chicken at Popeye's before I came home. The downtime has given me to opportunity to binge-watch the Netflix series Orange is the New Black. Just like the chicken, I'm kind of bummed I don't have any more to consume- it's good stuff.

I don't write much about TV because I don't watch a lot of it. That's not because I'm some TV snob- anyone who still thinks TV is a wasteland is living in the distant past- there's a lot of great stuff to watch, it's just that I have a hard time working it into my schedule- I've had the same two Netflix DVDs sitting on my coffee table for months and one of them (Chloe) I've already watched- I'm keeping it around because I'm sure at some point I'm going to want to re-watch the sex scenes between Julianne Moore and Amanda Seyfried.

Now that's the perfect segue.

Of course it doesn't take much persuading to get me to check out any story involving women in prison- at least for an episode or two, even if Linda Blair or Shannon Tweed are nowhere to be found and the ads make it look more Sex in the Cell Block than Roger Corman. Sex, violence, & bad girls? That's my kind of entertainment.

The show's based on a memoir of the same name (which I haven't read and probably won't) about former debutante and Smith graduate Piper (Taylor Schilling) who's about to start a year-long stint in the joint for being a drug mule ten years earlier, when she was living a very different life as the girlfriend of an international heroin trafficker (Laura Prepon). Today she's a privileged WASP, co-owner of an artisanal soap company with her BFF, engaged to a somewhat nebbishy guy (Jason Biggs). Piper comes across as that annoying type who lives in the Marina and extols the virtues of San Francisco's "diversity."  An early flashback featuring Piper getting hot in a bathtub with another woman hints the story isn't going to be so obviously clichéd, and thankfully the show's excellent writers spend a minimal amount of time on on Piper and Larry's current life before she goes behind bars.

Once inside, the writers flirt with the stereotypes and hackneyed plot devices one expects from the setting, before twisting them into characters and situations which become much more interesting and often unexpected. It's a great balancing act of delivering the condiciones sine quibus non of the genre (nudity, lesbian sex, predatory and corrupt guards, racial stereotypes, sympathetic bad girls, violence, etc.) and playing off them in fresh and original ways. In a somewhat minor miracle, the show's first season never arrives at the preposterous moment.

That's not to say it's perfect- there are a couple of moments that made me feel like it's a non-musical version of Chicago, especially since Schilling is the good-girl blonde and Prepon the bad-girl brunette, complete with Kate Mulgrew as Red, a Mama Morton-type among the diversified cast of inmates. The show droops when it steps outside the prison walls, which fortunately isn't that often, and Prepon is gorgeous to a degree I find distracting, but Orange hits all the right notes when it matters most and if anything, it feels like the writers have a keen sense of when to hold back and when to let loose. No punches are held (has any other show prominently featured an explicit beaver shot as part of the plot?) yet it never crosses the line into gratuitousness for its own sake (for a show about women behind bars). Credit this to a strong group of writers, a singular vision of what the show is about, and an excellent cast, which becomes the real strength of the show as it wisely expands beyond Piper's own story to include those of the other inmates- all of whom develop over the course of the season to be of equal interest.

As I watched the final episode of the first season I wondered how it would end. Although the story line was beginning to spread out in multiple directions, there seemed one thread which needed to be addressed within the little time remaining, and I was beginning to feel like the show would finally disappoint me at this crucial moment. It didn't- in fact it delivered a season-closing note as good as those found on Breaking Bad- and that's about as high praise as I can give it. Strongly recommended.