orange is the new black season 1 release date

But at least this is a show-the rare, rare show-that is deeply committed to giving us a thoughtful and thorough, especially thorough this season, look at the lives of a vast range of different women. Whether this accurately represents real-life prison populations is certainly up for debate. They come from poverty and wealth and some hard-to-define place in between. And that’s fascinating to watch.Ĭharacters on Orange Is the New Black speak English, Spanish, German, Russian. Prison isn’t exactly good for these women, but it does something to their essences, states them more loudly and forwardly than otherwise might be the case. But more excitingly, Kohan and her writers also look at how life flourishes and begins to boldly, starkly define itself in restriction. The dehumanizing nature of prisons, and the way that “convict” can come to trump all other defining characteristics, is certainly explored in the series, and it’s a woeful, scary thing to watch. And not just diverse in the obvious, and important, ways of skin color and ethnicity and sexual identity.Īs the series judiciously uses its flashback structure to fill in the whys of these women’s lives, we’re confronted with an array of socioeconomic, political, and emotional realities that makes every character, even small ones, feel truly distinct, and human. No other show on television (as much as this show is “on television”) gives such vibrant, varied life to a cast of characters this diverse. In season 2, Orange Is the New Black becomes a true ensemble series, and the results are thrilling. It’s not that she’s been pushed back, exactly it’s that the other characters around her have been pulled forward. Season 1 lead Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling, who keeps getting better and better) has lost a little bit of the spotlight. In that regard, season 2 is the same as season 1.īut something fundamental is different.

The series, created by Jenji Kohan, still takes place in a women’s minimum security prison, still features the same lively rogues gallery of mostly well-meaning ne’er-do-wells, and still melds delight and dread to create one of the most interesting, idiosyncratic tones on television.

Season 2 of Netflix’s quirky, wry, wonderfully humane Orange Is the New Black is completely different.

Orange is the new black season 1 release date