Since ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK is one of my favorite shows (and since it's available to anyone with Netflix), I thought it might be cool to give my thoughts on each episode as I watch it. I'm hoping that it'll not only force me to parse the season out a little more instead of devouring it all in two days, but that it'll also allow me to think a little more about what exactly is going on. I have a bad habit of mindless TV watching is what I'm saying. I'm going to try to fix that... With mindless "analysis." Let's see how this goes.
Life's a strange thing. When you're born into this world, no one knows what's going to happen. The possibilities are literally endless. People grow, things they see influence them, they make choices, things happen as a result of those choices, they change and eventually they end up somewhere. Sometimes that somewhere is exactly where they thought it'd be. Some people grow up thinking all the way that they're going to become a doctor. They take the hardest science classes, they volunteer at nursing homes, they do well on the MCAT, they get into medical school and eventually there it is - dream accomplished. But some people aren't that lucky. Sometimes when a person is in the process of growing, making choices and changing, something unexpected happens. Some people may get into a car accident or get shot or get some kind of cruel disease and all those dreams come to an end. Other times, something will happen that sends a person on a path they never could have seen coming.
When Piper Elizabeth Chapman (Taylor Schilling) was a young girl, I doubt she could have pictured herself in a Chicago penitentiary selling her panties to a hitman in order to get a message to someone and trying to capture cockroaches so her cellmates can train them to carry cigarettes to other parts of the prison. But that's exactly where she finds herself at the end of the premiere episode of Season 2 of Orange is the New Black. It's hard to say exactly what started her on this path. It could have been when she was a child and saw her father kiss another woman. When she tells her mother about the incident, she is punished and learns as a result that sometimes not telling the truth is the best thing to do. It could have also been when she met Alex Vause (Laura Prepon). Piper had been a good girl her entire life - she wouldn't even jump off the school bus with her friends even though it was tradition and the bus driver slows down to 5 mph for them! When she meets Vause, she is swept up in her mystery and her charm. Alex jets her across the globe, they stay in the nicest hotels and eat in the fanciest restaurants. Everything seems perfect. So perfect that when she finds out how Alex makes all her money - she's an international drug smuggler - she can't give up the life. She lies to her family and she lies to herself and eventually she agrees to transport a suitcase full of drug money to Alex. Cut to ten years later and she engaged (to a man!) and living a law-abiding life in the upper middle class. Then she's arrested. Then she goes to jail. Then she reunites with Alex and makes new, unexpected friends. Then she makes an enemy of the drug addict turned religious zealot, Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning) who tries to kill her at the Christmas Pageant. Then she beats Pennsatucky (maybe to death) and get thrown into to solitary. Then we meet back up with her.
What I like about this premiere, apart from the interesting (and I think admirable) choice to focus only on Piper for the majority of the runtime, is how Piper's journey to Chicago and eventually to the court room to testify against a drug cartel kingpin acts as a microcosm of sorts for her life up to this point. Much like her life before she went to prison, where she is heading in this episode remains largely a mystery until she actually gets there. Like her jetsetting with Alex, Piper rides on a plane where she meets a plethora of new people - some of whom appear to be friendly like Lolly (Lori Petty), while others are threatening like the aforementioned hitman and a woman in a Hannibal Lecter mask. Piper does things she regrets like crushing her cellmates' cockroach and giving her birth info to Mazall (Rebecca Drysdale) who licks her forehead and appears to be insane. She does things that she is ashamed of like trading her panties for favors and asking a prosecutor to help her catch a bug so her cellmate who shits four (yes, FOUR) times a day won't beat her up. People who Piper thought might be her friends turn on her as we see the penguin ladies shun her for knowing Lolly and then stomp and kick Lolly while she watches. Again she commits a serious crime because of her feelings for Alex and again she is stuck in a hopeless situation as a result. But much like last season, she then finds comfort from an unexpected source as the new Yoda brings her a cigarette on its back.
Most of all, however, Piper is forced to come to terms with who she really is. In the best scene of the episode, Piper is telling Lolly on the plane about what happened between her and Pennsatucky. Pennsatucky was crazy, she tells Lolly, and she just wouldn't stop coming so Piper hit her. She hit her and she hit her and she kept hitting her. Something in her just kept going, she couldn't stop. And as she tries to hold back tears, ultimately breaking down into sobs, the camera slowly moves across her face in one continuous shot - just as the realization of what's actually inside washes over her. She isn't that young girl we see in the flashbacks getting the back door for the bus driver and not wanting to see Dazed and Confused because what if it's rated R for something that will scar her for the rest of her life. No, she is the woman who lied to her friends and family, who fell in love with an international drug smuggler and helped her transport a suitcase full of money. She is the woman who went to prison for it and who does whatever it takes to protect herself and stay alive. She may tell herself that she's not like these other women, that she's just going to do what she's told until she can get out and be with Larry (Jason Biggs) again. But the truth is, she is the woman who beat Pennsatucky within an inch of her life (though didn't kill her) and who lies under oath because Alex tells her it's what needs to be done if they're both going to avoid being killed by Kubra's men. It's going to be interesting to see how Piper deals (or doesn't deal) with this new realization and if this first episode is any indication, people discovering who they really are could be a driving theme of Season 2.
Admittedly, the majority of the flashbacks played a little too ham-handedly. The whole thing with Piper seeing her father cheating on her mother with another woman and then getting in trouble for telling on him was fine. But then to have the scene where she is calls her dad to wish him happy birthday and at some point ends up telling him that she learned everything from him after she lies to him while he sits waiting on her mom to take him to dinner makes it feel like they're beating you over the head with what they're trying to do. Same thing goes for the scene where Piper's grandmother tells her that not telling the truth is sometimes the best option. It's a completely unnecessary scene that does nothing but directly express what the show has already communicated with subtext.
Other than that, however, I think it's a strong return to one of the best shows going. It was a bold decision to only follow Piper for the vast majority of the episode, but Jenji Kohan and company (including Jodie Foster who directed the episode) handle it with aplomb. It's interesting to see the ways shows on Netflix take advantage of the unconventional release of every episode at one time. The creators here seem to realize that most viewers will be be viewing the next episode immediately after the first, so they aren't pressured to do some of the normal things a premiere would do. We don't have to check in on every character from last year right now. If you want to catch up with them, all you have to do is let Netflix take over and continue playing episodes. Likewise, instead of a loud (though it was audibly loud) and insane cliffhanger, Orange is the New Black instead opts for something that feels like an organic progression of this episode while having enough propulsive energy to drive viewers who weren't already going to watch the next episode to stay on the couch.
It says a lot that I've stopped writing this piece multiple times trying to talk myself into watching Episode 2 before finishing it. Orange is the New Black is a show that exudes confidence. It's mix of comedy and drama remains one of the strongest out there and from what I've seen so far, it seems to be the perfect balance of a show that is meaty enough to actually sit back and reflect on while remaining an amazing bit of entertainment.
This whole parsing out the season business may be harder than expected.
