Orange Is The New Black

I'm on episode 3 of the new season right now.

Yeah, well I'm on PTSD right now. I genuinely cried during the last episode.

I won't analyze anything now. I will just ask one single question: Did she shoot?

And by the way: this is the song you might look for once you are done with the show.

Don't open on YT if you want to avoid spoilers, because typical series watcher behavior is everywhere.

edited 19th Jun '16 7:29:42 AM by Julep

I'm on episode 7 right now (took a break to go see X-Men: Apocalypse), and I'm just laughing at Piper becoming EVEN MORE like Walter White. She actually recruits a gang of racist skinheads to project her business.

Omg, the Game of Thrones joke

So far I love Judy King too. "You're the straight white man, sweetie, you don't get to be the victim."

Also, Poussey—how does someone radiate so much charisma? "But those are maybes" Shit I got hit in the feels.

edited 19th Jun '16 1:26:26 PM by Phoenixflame

×3

What if the gun isn't loaded ?

Finished the entire season 4. God damn, this show gets better and better each season.

I really liked this season up until the last two episodes. Unless I hear good things about season 5, I don't think I'm gonna be too hyped about it. It made me viscerally angry.

The fact is, with the death of Poussey and no resolution on all the guards, there was very little catharsis in my book. Realistic? Maybe. But now I'm just apathetic and plagued with 'why should I care about what goes on'?

edited 19th Jun '16 10:42:30 PM by MrAHR

I think making you angry is the point. The show has always been on touch with social issues, but in this season it was much more obvious. We pretty much got the Eric Garner case in a TV format.

What is even more brilliant is that they made the perp to be a rather likable man, a man that is in immense shock, and a man that pretty much anyone could have been given the madness of the situation. I think it is made for us to face our unhealthy need to blame individuals, even though it is blatantly obvious that there are much deeper issues to solve.

Just got past the mouse thing. What the everloving fuck?

I wonder if season 4 was made in order to make us think "Man, I really preferred when Pornstache was a guard here".

In hindsight, the season 1 guards weren't that bad compared to the new guys.

Fuck, I cheered for Coates in one scene.

Though Luschek on molly was hilarious.

Season ending: It's not even just that he is an everyman, In the last two episodes' flashbacks, there was a brilliant justaposition between Bayley and Poussey. They were both somewhat reckless kids, both were guilty of trespassing and possession, for which Poussey got six years, and Bayley got a slap on the wrist. They were literally seen crossing paths in the New York flashbacks, yet somehow the system ended up arranging things in a way that one ended up with their throat under the other's knee.

Also, sure, he is not a murderer. It's called involuntary manslaughter, a.k.a. the same thing that Suzanne and Yoga Jones are probably sitting for. After a lifetime of Caputo guarding women like that, and occasionally throwing them under the bus, somehow the threat that Bayley would have to suffer the same fate, is the hill that he chooses to die on.

I will agree with one criticism, the lack of resolution on Piscatella's Guards is disappointing

Making me angry might have been the point, but that doesn't mean it was done in a way I want to continue watching the show. This type of thing happens in reality yes, but the fact is black folks know they're targeted unfairly. The people who don't know are white folk, which means she was sort of killed off for that "message" to get across. Shocking doesn't make it well done. Someone can punch me and say 'see you were SUPPOSED to get mad at me for punching you!' but that doesn't mean it makes it good.

If they wanted to make some kind of statement, she should have been killed by a scummy guard. A lot of police (or I guess in this case guard) brutality happens because of racial profiling and institutional corruption that lets scumbags like that get away with things just because they're in a uniform, while Poussey's death was caused by some moron who was hopelessly inadequate for his job. While obviously people die because of a cop/guard's incompetence and adressing the lax training of these people is important, that is not the norm when it comes to black people getting murdered by cops/guards. If they weren't so blatant about the Eric Garner reference, I might give them the benefit of the doubt. Being killed by one of the guards who are obviously on a power trip instead of the naive dumbass who they try to make us sympathize with rubs me the wrong way, because it frames their justified anger at it as out of place because the murderer is oh so sympathetic and didn't mean to.

I don't even think season 5 will manage to turn this around favorably, seeing how the writers made a gigantic effort to suddenly humanize the creepy rapist and have Tucky forgive him in this season I have absolutely no faith in them anymore.

On the other hand, Piper finally got interesting for the first time in forever. The way she tries (and fails) at being the top dog was priceless. Didn't even feel bad for her when she got branded, she was just so horrible up to this moment.

But the whole point of the season is that Bayley, one of the few guards that is depicted as a decent human being (the other being McCullough, and I'd say that after that Luschek is the next most sympathetic among the named ones) ends up guilty of manslaughter, in a situation that was caused by all the sadistic assholes. Suzanne became manic, which was caused by Humpfrey's sadistic fight club. And the whole peaceful protest by climbing on the tables happened because Stratman decided to force Flores to do it in the first place. And both of them got enabled by Piscatella who refused to even think about suspending Humpfrey after the Fight Club incident.

I really think that a death caused by a complete asshole would have been too easy a story to tell. And it kinda already happened, albeit in different fashion, with Pornstache and Tricia during season 1. If you get an obvious villain to blame, then you satisfy the viewers' need for justice, and it encourages them to see the situation as a "problem solved" without necessarily looking at the bigger picture. I think this season wanted to question our perspective, both with Doggett's dealing with her rapist, and with the death. Something like "there are insufferable wrongs in this world - should we try to correct them in a way that isn't right?"

Honestly, the situations that are depicted are meant to be perceived differently between viewers. There are no absolutes, so all these are my own interpretations. Still, the show is the only one to dare raising so many questions the others almost never touch (or in a very "naive" way), so for that only I praise it.

Like I said, that doesn't fit with the statement they were trying to make. The "point" they were allegedly trying to make fails, since Eric Garner didn't die because some naive dumbass accidentally killed him while he was trying to fight off another person. The black victims of cops/guards are not killed in such situations, thus the comparison falls flat. And I don't see how having an "obvious villain" to blame would discourage us from looking at the bigger picture. It merely needs to make the" bigger picture" into a show topic, which it already kind of is. The "obvious villain" would also fit into said bigger picture, because guards are kind of encouraged to be assholes, or at best apathetic, and it would show how terrible and uncaring the higher ups are for not noticing how brutal these people are. Also, what kind of perspective are we talking about here? Tucky's rapist was blatantly humanized, with how he all of a sudden spoke up against mistreating the inmates and suddenly got sympathetic focus. That wasn't just Tucky forgiving him, which was bad enough. Unless season 5 will do a 180, this is at best inappropriate and at worst completely disgusting.

I don't think it was that straightforward with Donuts. First, Big Boo made it abundantly clear that the only reason she ever lets Doggett near him is because Doggett asked for it, and that somehow she tries to cope with her pain like the damaged person she is. Second, Big Boo states that no matter what he does, he will still be a rapist in her book, which mostly tells that rapists are not a single type of entity all identical to each other - some are open about it, like Pornstache or Dixon, and others rationalize, like Coates. Third, Coates was never portrayed as a overt sadist, and he only ever showed his true face with Pennsatucky - which is another sadly common behavior, abusers who are able to put a convincing front towards other people. Fourth, the dialogue he has with Bayley in the Chapel kinda shows that deep down, he is a coward and an asshole, and that he only gets short-term realizations whenever Doggett or Boo stick his nose right into his shit The last scene he has with Doggett depicts him as barely able to restrain himself, despite everything she told him, meaning that deep down he really is a horrible person.

Jessica Jones was no different in portraying the way a victim deals with her abuser. Jessica tried her best to make Kilgrave a better human being because, as I understood it, it made the abuse she suffered meaningful in the grand scheme of things - "sure, I got abused, but in the end I managed to turn it into something good". A twisted sense is better than no sense at all. Doggett is trying something similar, she tries to give meaning to an awful act in her own flawed way, I found this to be both sad and touching.

I guess that's where the different perspective comes in. I felt Big Boo was framed as unreasonable for her distaste for the guy (even though it's completely justified), and Tucky pretty much told her to back off. Also he wasn't evil to the inmates, but also not caring. The way he suddenly cared about their well-being after the whole rape thing didn't sit right by me. I felt as if though the writers really wanted me to like this guy, or at least question my hate for him, all of a sudden, which is just awkward. Furthermore I interpreted his "restrain" in his last scene with Tucky as something we were supposed to applaud, because he resisted his urges. Give him a medal.

Don't really get where this came from, either. I never felt we were supposed to feel bad for Pornstache.

We weren't. The show never tells you what to feel. It gives you characters all over the scale of grey, from Vee to Lolly, and then everyone decides if they consider them villains, good characters, or inbetween.

The only time Big Boo was portrayed as being "wrong", I felt, was when she ignored Doggett despite her still being in intense emotional distress. That is the only moment, during the season, where I felt "yeah, Boo shouldn't do that". Even though she absolutely abhors the thought of Doggett forgiving her rapist, if she is her friend, she should still be by her side.

I don't think it solely exists in a vacuum. Every show has some biases in some way, and nudges us into a certain direction. Like for example, Healy's flashbacks in season 3 and 4 are pretty obviously trying to get us to sympathize with him. Red has a whole speech about how his wife should appreciate him and that he is a good man, which felt strange considering what a completely detestable person he is. And I think it was obvious we were supposed to be on Red's side; otherwise the wife would have pointed out what a shitty person this guy is. Like, you can't preach gray morality and then have one side deliver a Reason You Suck Speech to the other side with them not saying anything in their defense. It's obviously framed in the first side's favor.

Also I'm pretty sure Vee wasn't all that gray? I can't think of a single redeeming trait she had, or any kind of Freudian Excuse, she was just a greedy scumbag as far as I remember.

I think "making sympathize" is different from "humanizing". We just saw why Healy became such a detestable person. We also understand what his values are, which explains why he alternates between horrible bigot and heartwarming helper. We know of his issues, and we saw what he became. It doesn't make him any less monstrous, it just explains where the monstrosity came from, and also why sometimes (with Lolly) he appears to be a decent, helpful man. As for Red, she never was portrayed with a perfect set of values: since Healy appears affable and (as far as I remember) never hurt "her girls", she probably considers him to be, indeed, a good person.

The thing is that the show tends to give us different faces of characters in different seasons, which might make for conflicting imagery. Cindy was a complete asshole in season 2. But since it is a Netflix show, which means that everyone always has access to all seasons, I think it has to be taken globally instead of season-by-season. In the same way, it has been renewed for three years, which is different from almost every other show.

Vee was a bad example. Let's say Frieda instead, who seems to be pretty dark as far as greys go, at least from the clues we gather.

edited 20th Jun '16 12:43:50 PM by Julep

@Julep: Jessica Jones never tried to redeem him, she hated him from beginning to end. Thinking he was a monster the whole time.

Plus it all ended with Jessica snapping his neck .

The situations in these two shows are not comparable.

There was an entire episode with Jessica trying to "teach morality" to Kilgrave, where she brought him to stop a hostage situation. Yes, she hated him. She nevertheless tried to redeem him before resorting to killing him when it became obvious that it was the only possible solution.