Re: Orange Is The New Black: “an odd, sometimes ungainly, yet majestic being”

Reading ‘Orange Is the New Black’ Taught Us What Netflix Was For, an essay from the NYT’s chief TV critic, made it all the more bittersweet to realize that Season 7 — dropping this Friday — will be the last. Besides using a really great chicken metaphor, James Poniewozik writes beautifully about how the show used the whitest premise on earth (i.e., an artisanal soap-maker from Brooklyn has to go to, *gasp* prison!) as a trojan horse to critically examine the American criminal justice system and tell the stories of the most diverse cast ever seen on TV:

The series was an illustration of the principle that, when it comes to representing people, quantity sometimes does equal quality. When you have an abundance of characters of different colors, ethnicities and class backgrounds, you can show that none of those groups are monoliths, because no one person has to represent an entire demographic.

In a way, the composition of “Orange” — a vast ensemble, composed of subgroups that break down into sub-subgroups — was a metaphor for Netflix, and the ways in which it was and wasn’t like mass-media TV of the past. Like the old broadcast networks, it aimed to make TV for everyone. But like the niche cable channels, it didn’t try to make each individual show appeal to everyone. It was macro and micro, a confederation rather than a monoculture.

If you’ve never seen the show (or didn’t make it past those first episodes, which imho are the trojan horse part), definitely take the time to at least watch the Mother’s Day episode (S3, E1), and the amazing conversion scene in Trust No Bitch (S3, E13), which both top our personal ranking of the most beautiful TV we’ve ever seen.