Netflix’s newest original series does not disappoint. “Orange Is the New Black” is yet another game changer from the streaming video service that raises the bar for quality television.
Piper Chapman is a self-admitting upperclass WASP who makes artisanal soaps and lotions with her best friend Polly. She is engaged to an overly Jewish freelance writer and lives in a large Manhattan apartment.
Her J. Crew lifestyle comes to crashing halt when she is indicted for money laundering ten years ago for her then drug-smuggling lesbian girlfriend, a part of her life she has kept a complete secret from even her fiancé.
Each episode follows Piper as she adjusts to life in prison, making new friends and enemies, and it turns out her drug-smuggling ex-girlfriend is sentenced to the same prison. Most of each episode focuses on Piper navigating prison, but the show also shows us the experiences of the other inmates at Litchfield, as well as Piper’s fiancé’s life on the outside and how he deals with his loneliness and the stigma associated with her.
“Orange Is the New Black” makes you fall in love with all the inmates – the nice ones and the wackos – by showing their humanity as they go through their own struggles in prison. LOST-style flashbacks reveal how the women ended up at Litchfield.
The cast of inmates is exactly what you’d expect: ranging from a nun political protestor to a Russian woman involved with the mob. The prison is highly segregated by race, or “tribe”, and the world inside Litchfield quickly mirrors societal structure on the outside.
What makes “Orange Is the New Black” so entertaining isn’t Piper’s fish-out-of-water story, but how she’s actually just like everyone else in the prison. She doesn’t feel like she should be there, and she’s trying to make her sentence go by as quickly as possible. The corrupt prison system also plays a role in the story, turning out some of the most jaw-dropping moments.
Jenji Kohan’s 13-episode dramedy plays out more like a great novel, with each episode ending in a cliffhanger that seamlessly leads into the next episode, and the one in the finale will leave you scratching your head until season two comes out.
Ignore your Instant Queue for a few days to watch “Orange Is the New Black”. The series’ brilliant formula of comedy, drama, suspense, corruption and soft-core lesbian porn (it’s a female prison, after all) makes for 13 hours of unforgettable TV.
