In the 7th and final season of Orange Is the New Black a lot of stuff happens. Piper struggles to make it in the outside world while staying sober and remaining in good-faith relationship with Alex, who is still serving her time and will be for two more years. She finds the life of an ex-convict pretty tough: between shittiest jobs ever, lack of certainty in anything, necessity to deal with regular (and irregular) check-ups, difficulties of the long-distance relationship, and being frozen out by her own family, she went through difficult patch. She did snapped once or twice, almost got caught messing with her urine sample, but all in all handled her probation period like a champ. Among other thins she managed to heal her relationship with her father. Alex on the inside had to struggle with some shit herself, and ended up selling portable charges for CO McCullough as well as in a sort of relationship with her. This set a crack in the Piper’s and Alex’s union, threatening its very existence, even though Alex granted Piper the right for being with others just shortly before that. Worse thing about it was that Piper met a young woman named Zelda, who was pretty great, so she was really torn. Joe Caputo kept teaching a class for wanna-be wardens, and Tamika Ward, one of the COs at Litchfield becomes one of his students. He remains in a loving relationship with Natalie Figeroa; they try for a baby, and Caputo even allows to perform a surgery on his testicles to improve their chances. In the height of  the #metoo social media campaign a former subordinate of his – a girl he used to fancy – made a statement clearly implicating him in harassment. Caputo got deeply hurt by that and tried to amend the situation, but everything he did only made things worse – he ended up getting a restricting order. This event also brought to an end his participation with the newly introduced programs at Litchfield, even though he was making a difference. Natalie Figeroa got fired from the position of a temporary boss of Litchfield and became the chef of ICE instead – but her hands were basically tied, she felt helpless, and became quite depressed before finding the strength to continue. Tamika Ward, a simple CO, got suddenly elevated to the position of the warden. She faced some challenges, but managed to make a difference. For one, she closed down the SHU and let everybody contained there into the general population. She introduces a range of social programs to help the inmates out, which were tolerated by the management because they didn’t cost anything; among them were the chicken class, which Suzanne immediately took over; tutoring for GED, and a psychological class aimed at reducing the burden of guilt. She, of course, got fired eventually, but some things she made happen actually stuck – such as Tastee’s microloan project. Red returned from the solitary confinement at SHU, but something has already broken inside of her. The stress of abandonment she experienced set off early-onset dementia that manifested itself primarily in the loss of particular memories. Among others she was recruited to run the kitchen in the ICE unit, and it was there that Nicky noticed that something is wrong. Eventually, as the psych ward was closed down (saving the prison owners $2.5 mil a year), she ended up in Florida. As did Lorna, whose baby died of pneumonia, and she wasn’t able to bare the loss; her psyche cracked and created this defense mechanism that is based on denial. Nicky met a girl (Shawny) while working in the ICE kitchen, and fell for her real hard – but Shawny got deported, and Nicky didn’t even had an opportunity to say goodbye properly. Blanca got contained in the ICE detention center, along with Mariza (who got busted without documents on a club raid.) There she met a woman named Karla, who had children staying in the US, in the system, while she was being sent away – and she wasn’t gonna give up fighting it. Blanca became sort of friends with her, learned a lot from her, and eventually became a free woman (and with a green card, too) all because of her. Mariza got deported to somewhere she had never been in her life. Suzanne finally realized that what’s happening to her – the prison sentence – is not fair. She saw a lot of things differently. She tried to create peace between Tastee and Cindy, but it was impossible. She wrote down everything she saw happened on that unfortunate riot day when Piscatella died – which gave Tastee some hope but didn’t lead to anything. She got really fond of chicken, but still put them into solitary cells, which she later regretted. Tastee got really dismal after getting the life sentence for the murder she didn’t commit. She bethought a suicide and even made a deal with Daya, who got her some high quality drugs in exchange for the confiscate closet key. A series of events made her change her mind. She became a tutor for Tiffany Dogget, and readily adjusted her teaching techniques when they discovered that Pensutucky is dyslexic. She came up with the microloans project, and made it happen by hooking up with Judy (who published a successful memoir shortly before). Cindy suffered very much because of her betrayal. She got an early release, and came to live with her mother and Monica, her daughter who thought she was a sister. The three of them went through terrible crisis when Tastee wrecked the illusion of harmony with a letter, but Cindy, who found a job in the seniors’ home, eventually found the strength to return for real. Daya accidentally killed her girlfriend, and then took over her business. She gradually lost all the touch with humanity, abusing drugs, turning to violence at every opportunity, involving her younger sister into the drug trade. She started to enjoy the power. Aleida tried really hard to make it on the outside: to maintain her family, she stayed in the relationship with Hopper, the head guard, but also was hooking – all in order to save enough money to get her younger daughters away from that stuff. But teenagers are always teenagers, and at some point Aleida’s daughter did something that made her angry enough to violate the conditions of her parole. When she went inside, she found herself in confrontation with her own daughter. And when she found out about the continued drug trade and saw how much Daya likes it, she had no other choice. The show’s finale has a major death, drugs falling out of chicken butts, a fired warden, a prisoner transferred to Ohio, and her wife choosing between that and New Hampshire, a woman brushing off her green card to be with a man she loves, and Suzanne singing.

More than enough words here. The season is amazing – a lot of rich, colorful stories constituting a tangled web of delicate lines with a perfect closure on top. The horrible drawbacks of the US legal system are mind-boggling, but they do make for great attractions.

The structure of the season, with all these storylines, seems to be crazy complicated – but somehow Jenji Kohan manages to keep the construction harmonious and all things genuine all the way through. This is her second major show, and just like the first one, it’s quite perfect. That is true not only for the story, but for the execution as well – I haven’t noticed any significant or insignificant defects in any of the departments.

The show is an absolute must-watch, and, curiously enough, – the whole thing, without any exceptions. All the 7 season, all 90 something hours of pure cinema, are totally worth watching, for this is a rare case of high quality that remains consistent for more than 7 years.

All hail Jenji

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Sixth season of the Orange Is the New Black is build around the aftermath of the revolt, multiple manifestations of which constitute the bulk of the season’s story, along with the everyday of the Lichfield Max, where most of the inmates and guards end up, that revolves around the protracted mortal feud between two sisters, Carol and Barbara, each of whom is running one of the prison blocks. The investigation of the uprising, led by the FBI agents, results in charging several inmates with instigating the events and forcing them into excepting additional years; on top of that Tasha Jefferson (Taistee) gets blamed for the death of Piscatella, which story comes with a very unpleasant tinge of betrayal; Tasha refuses to accept the charges and goes to trial; her verdict becomes a major part of the finale. Piper gets very restless in the beginning, because of Alex’s disappearance, – this results in somewhat erratic behaviour, that causes some damage; when Alex finally arrives to the same facility from the hospital, they get reunited with Piper and exist together in relative harmony until the end of the season. Pensutacky gets to walk the earth freely for a while: together with her beloved guard, and another one, they travel and have fun at an amusement park; when her absence is discovered, she surrenders of her own free will, and spends the rest of the season in Lichfield’s privileged wing, the Florida. Same goes to Suzanne – after re-establishing medication, she becomes better and gets to spend her days in calm. Lorna follows up on her pregnancy. Nikki almost gets blamed for the revolt as well, but she gets a good lawyer, after making up with her father, and also harms Red a little bit, although not before talking to her first. She gets on a good side of Barbara and, sometimes consciously, and sometimes not so much, manages to ease the murdering vibe that surrounds her. Red gets to reconnect with her son Vasily, but mostly spends her days being very upset with Frieda. Joe Caputo gets appointed warden in a different state, but then refuses to move, and instead applies a lot of effort to helping Taistee; he also starts actually dating Natalie, who has been appointed interim warden at Lichfield. Dayanara lets herself go, becomes an addict, and also starts a relationship with one of Barbara’s lieutenants, Daddy. Aleyda, unable to find work after being released, gets drown into the multi-level marketing with nutrition supplements; she finds a boyfriend – one of the guards; later she realizes that this job won’t help her get her kids back, so she starts moving heroin into the prison. Maria Ruiz gets 10 additional years, and later has a very difficult time, generally trying to change for the better. Blanca wants to get pregnant, and even sneaks in some sperm from her boyfriend; she gets an early release, but only to be immediately apprehended by the immigration service. Linda gets a promotion and becomes senior vice president of MCC, which later changes its name to something else. Black Cindy feels extremely guilty for selling out Tasha, and also withholding some crucial information that might have helped her; together with Flaca she starts hosting the prison radio show. Finally, there’s the whole deal with Frieda, Carol and Barbara. Frieda applied a lot of effort to stay away from both of them, because many years ago she did something that made both of their sentences pretty much life-long, which made them crave for her death. After the revolt she has been transferred to the Max, which brought her within their reach – but only in theory, because Frieda managed to make her way to Florida, where she stayed for the better part of the season in relative safety. In the meantime both Carol and Barbara planned her death – they even put aside their mutual hatred to get to her. They came up with a plan that required a bloody war between the blocks, so when Piper came up with an idea to re-establish the game of kickball, they clutched to it as a perfect opportunity. The finale of the season is dedicated to that momentous game.

Well, obviously, the season is huge, complex and packed with stories, developments and twists – of course, it’s not exactly uncommon for the show. It always has been an elaborate, sophisticated patchwork of many different colors, and this season is no exception. As same as before, it’s of grand quality. Every component is quite delicious in and of itself, be that a piece of the story, or a detail of execution; and when it comes to the way all of them fit with each other, it is totally perfect as well, – among other things because there’s plenty of wonderful humor that smooths the harsh parts and connects everything together.

There’s not much to say, really, except that it is tremendously interesting and pleasant to watch. Although the show is relatively lengthy, it kind of flies by; frankly speaking, I could’ve just keep watching for at least twice the time it actually takes.

The acting is amazing, and, strangely enough, does not tire down, which often happens to things too stable. The execution is flawless; the same goes to the selection of music.

So, in shot, this is still the same powerful and wonderful show it was from the beginning. And there is every reason to think it will remain that way.

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Fifth season of Orange is the New Black is dedicated almost exclusively to the few day when Litchfield penitentiary was in riot. It follows the development of the situation and elucidates it from various angles; it tells about a vast number of characters, tracing each of theirs storylines quite meticulously, with conflicts and alliances forming and crumbling apart all the time. Several COs are taken hostages, including Caputo; they become a bargaining chip in the negotiations aimed at improving inmates’ lives, as well as making it right by Poussey. The negotiation are being held by Taystee – for the inmates, – and by representative of the governor (who brushed aside the corporation as soon as the conflict hit the media), with several other inmates and Caputo heavily involved. The COs in the meantime become exposed to quite a few unpleasant manifestations of the inmates’ love, but remain relatively safe, with the exception of Humps (one of the guards) who was shot in the very beginning and later got unlucky enough to get a bad in the hospital ward next to people wishing him ill. The inmates were united only for a brief moment, which soon elapsed, and some sort of feudal chaos took over, with several unions competing for resources, some of them also trying to establish some sort of order, and a great number of loners and tiny groups just minding their own business. At some point Piscatella in disregard of a direct order infiltrates the prison to take the inmates down one by one, and for some time he manages to get away with it. The several days of the wild reign come abruptly to anticipated end, when special ops finally gets the order allowing suppression by force.

Over the course of the show the internal time gets increasingly dense and slow: the duration of the season stays relatively unchanged, while the period of time it covers gets shorter and shorter in each new season, – it’s like a river spats broadwise and because of that slows down its pace forward. This approach allows Jenji Kohan to go deeper into the characters and their stories, instead of rushing the plot along, and as a result, we have incredibly complex narrative with unrivaled number of elements, all of which are relatively harmoniously balanced – relatively, because sometimes the tempo lagged a little bit when some characters were put aside for a period of time too long not to notice their absence; also, it’s quite obvious that some characters (like Bursett) were intentionally removed from the story to unload it at least a little bit. This, however, is pretty much all the criticism of the season I have in me. I think it’s brilliant, ingenious, and generally a remarkable work of cinema, powerful and beautiful in its sincerity.

All the stories of the season, each and every one of them, is interesting to follow; some of them produce wonderfully poetic images and situations, others provide the viewer with something to smile (or even laugh) at, and the best – combine humor with sadness of life to achieve some amazingly powerful pinnacles. I could’ve dived into specifics here, but learing it all anew will be much more enjoyable for you; besides, there’s too much going on there to squeeze it all into just a few paragraphs. Highly recommended for self-study.

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In the fourth season of Orange is the New Black Jenji Kohan and Co continues to explore attractions of the corporate prison concept, prolongs the storylines of the characters we all grew to love, and, of course, adds some new heroes to the mix, interlacing their stories with ones already in progress. Alex, after receiving unexpected help from a mentally challenged Lolly, deals with the consequences of her self-defence actions; old COs retire en masse to strong-arm the management, but get replaced by an emergency fraction at first and with newly hired vets later; new team of COs establish their own rule, one that does not comply very well with the inmates; Chapman tries to assemble a semblance of a gang, but proves too weak for a life of professional criminal, especially after her actions provoke a much stronger reaction: the reinforced latin community starts acting in the same direction but with less humanity, plus the white power thing lifts up its ugly head; Brook Soso and Poussey become a couple; Nicky Nichols comes back from Max, which turns out to be too late for her sobriety; Bursett spends most of her time in SHU for no reason at all; Red works the kitchen, while trying to serve as a glue for the community; Dogget and Donuts become closer while trying to overcome what’s standing between them; Suzanne gets manipulated by ill-meaning guards into some nasty stuff, and so does a couple of other girls; Judy King becomes the queen of the prison, goes through several scandal, makes some friends; Caputo tries to balance between his duty as he sees it and the corporate interest, with the latter winning almost every time, which leads to rise of the tension in their relationship; Healy goes through some really hard times, with his wife gone, and fears about a mental illness inherited from his mother, starting to dominate him; Lorna enjoys the fruits of her unexpected marriage, but then starts acting destructively. Lives of old characters, as well as new ones, are explored through the flashbacks, as usual; this time it’s Poussey, Healy, Suzanne, one of the new guards, and couple of others. By the end of the season the tension between the COs and the inmates reaches its peak after a person gets killed by accident.

This season produces an impression of the strongest one so far: on the one hand, the overall quality remained just as high as it used to be; on the other – the main storyline builds up gradually with aggravation of conflict up to the point of no return (incredibly powerful death in the finale – like a cherry on top) and then escalates into a major cliffhanger, which imparts some sort of accord on the narrative intensifying it tenfold as a result.

The most important, the most interesting things about this season are: the purity of the Soso-Poussey relationship; the idea that criminal way of life is no joke, and you shouldn’t choose it unless you’re willing to go all the way, which you’re probably not; how impossible it is to help Lolly; that corporations are evil, and those dealing with living people are worst of all; certain everyday details of drug abuse and trade in prison; weird relationship between Dogget and the guard; how broken some of the new COs are; how cool it is to be a celebrity; that racial division in prisons is still quite real, but can be vanquished in the face of the common enemy. There were some truly brilliant scenes, including the one with fucking without any touching (#3), the finale in general, and tribute to Poussey in particular (#12-13).

It was quite fascinating, I loved it. Hopefully, season 5 would live up to my overgrown expectations.

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Third season of the Orange Is the New Black is all about the great change the american prison system undergoes presently: for the general arc, the prison’s senior staff gets in trouble due to their financial indiscretions, but the catastrophe is averted thanks to a giant corporation buying the prison out in order to make it profitable. The transition brings a lot of minor changes to the established environment, some of which may appear critical. Besides this general line that pierces everything else, the season consists of the following storylines: Piper and Alex’s conflicted relationship; the improv class opened by a new counselor and some of its consequences, including Crazy Eyes’s surprising career as a fiction writer; the loophole of a kosher meal that got abused too much, but had a curious consequence of turning Black Cindy into a jewish person before shutting down; Nichols gets upgraded to maximum security; Piper’s undercover enterprise that grew on the weaknesses of the corporate prison approach, as well as her action for its protection; Norma pretty much becomes the leader of a cult; Red returns to kitchen, only to regret it immediately; Alex is freaking out all the time expecting an assassin in every new person; Morello starts a mail scheme that ends up in the most unexpected way for her; Daya gives birth, considering if she wants to keep the baby in the family, or give it away to Pornstache’s mother. The intervals are filled with deep exploration of some of the inmates’ and prison staff’s lifepaths – this time it’s about Norma, Chang, Boo, Lianne, more Pennsatucky, and several others.

All this and more is carefully stirred and balanced for our enjoyment, and constitutes in general a consistent and interesting story for the whole of 13 episodes. The prison management format development does seem a little weird, but, considering all that we know about the US, not at all implausible. It definitely brought in some very curious offshoots to the story.

The narrative is rich and flows without restrictions. The acting is in harmony with everything else in the execution. All in all, the show is more powerful than even in season 3. Which makes me think that one tiny autobiography probably couldn’t have been the source of all of that power, and if so, what else do they use? Not very relevant, of course, as the quality of the final product is the ultimate criteria, and by that measure the show is at the top of the chart so far.

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In the 2nd season of Orange Is the New Black previously charted storylines continue to develop in their natural fashion, with some of them interlacing around Vee, a hardcore professional criminal who has history with Red. Piper Chapman and Alex Vause get to participate in the trial of their boss the drug lord, after which Alex goes free, and nothing changes for Piper; she returns to genpop, gets furlough and visits funeral of her granny, makes piece with her ex-fiance and her best friend falling in love with each other, but other than that she just lives. More and more often the focus of attention shifts from Piper’s storyline towards other lines, specifically the one about Vee, who just came to Litchfield, but started to distort reality around herself almost immediately; the one with Brook Soso, another newcomer, a young girl who launched a hunger strike; miss Rosa, a cancer patient who didn’t want to die behind bars; the Diaz baby intrigue, including Mendez the Pronstache, who returned briefly only to be taken to prison himself; and others. The further the more the show seems like a uniform soup with lost of brilliant parts in different places, but no particular hierarchy story-wise.

One of the show’s most powerful features is the diversity: on the one hand, it comes natural, because anybody can end up in prison, therefore no combination of characters would be too unbelievable (plus, there is a build-in mechanism to bring in new ones), all of which means it gives a lot of opportunities for not very high cost; on the other hand, the abundance of faces makes it a little challenging simply keeping up, but so far it’s barely an issue at all.

All of the small stories that constitute the multitude of the show are well thought-out and well-designed; they link together and form storylines that evolve over time. Arguably the strongest constituent of the whole season was Vee, a black woman of around 50 years old showing signs of manipulative and psychopathic behaviour, who gathers almost all black women of the block around herself, and creates out of them a dark force with potential to oppress every other force existing in the prison environment. As contrasted by the events connected to her character, previous prison intrigues seem even kind of childish.

All in all, season seems very strong to me, but with a certain doughiness quality impacting the whole structure of the show, although without any significant consequences so far. Still great, still fascinating, still powerful as hell.

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Orange Is the New Black is a drama with a touch of comedy about a girl (Piper Chapman) who was sentenced to a term in a minimal security prison for assisting drug trafficking some 10 years ago. It is based on the memoirs of Piper Kerman. The story follows Piper’s attempts to adapt to prison life and not lose her identity in the process, which proves to be extremely hard. Larry, her fiance, tries to be as supportive as he can, but some choices Chapman makes while behind bars, turn this task into an impossible one. Secondary storylines follow some of Chapman’s inmates paths, including those of Alex Vause, her former lover and the reason she’s got imprisoned; Miss Claudette Pelage, a Haiti native convicted for murder; Red, a Russian native and a power figure; Crazy Eyes, a strange and intense girl with lots of talents and stage fright; Nicky Nichols, a hot and bright lesbian; Pennsatucky, a christian fundamentalist with mental issues; Laverne Cox, a transgender hairdresser. Prison staff also produces some major characters for the story, including COs mr. Healey, Joel Luschek, George “Pornstache” Mendez and John Bennett; Joe Caputo and Natalie Figueroa. There are many other characters, too many to count, each of whom comes with his or her own story.

I don’t have a lot of words for this show, except, maybe, that it’s extremely rich and perfect in a lot of ways. The thing I loved about it the most, that it impacts the viewer in a way consistent with how Piper’s life developments impacted her – after the 1st episode, I was pretty much terrified with all that’s been going on, and my only thought was that all the romanticization of prison life, all the attempts to rationalize this kind of experience, are utter bullshit, and that I would never want something like that happen to me; later, as Piper adjusted a little bit, found some friends and engaged into some not entirely unhealthy activities, it became easier, and, of course, humor enclosed in the numerous funny situations helped a lot, so I even thought to myself – it ain’t that bad; but then the scale achieved relative balance: I got the feeling that even though life in prison is still life, and people there are still people, I still would never want to get there, because not being able to exercise my will is still a horrible experience, no matter what they say. All those stages of understanding corresponded really well with what the heroine was going through, and in that I see a great achievement of the writers’ team, and especially of Jenji Kohan.

Like I said, the show is very rich, however, notwithstanding the abundance of characters and situations, it would be hard to get lost in them as everything in this story is well-structured and extremely well-balanced. And because the writing and the direction are so good, the narration feels so smooth and easy, you may not notice the time passed. The acting is amazing; all the cast members are in their proper places, and all of them do their job amazingly well. The setting, the makeup, the special effects, – there is literally not a single element of the concept, or the execution, that has been overlooked or tumbled.

This is a great show, because it’s both significant and entertaining, and also because it’s implemented with unparalleled dedication and talent. At least, so far.

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