It kinda felt like they noticed the potential of the character midway through the production. She becomes more and more prominent character over the course of the season, even if she stays a side character the entire runtime.
Overall, I thought the season was decent, even if it often feels like a season-length cooldown period after the events of Season 5 (which in on itself is understandable). I commend the writers for quite boldly getting rid of a large portion of the show's cast (including some rather prominent mainstays), even if the replacements we got were not always that compelling. I enjoyed Barb and Carol's plotting and the librarian's non sequiturs, but that's about it. The new guards were also a pretty entertaining (if not particularly fleshed-out) bunch.
And it certainly seemed to me that this would be the last season of Orange, especially given the kind-of closure the last episode gives for everything. Not a particularly happy ending, but it felt like an ending nonetheless.
Edited by Xeroop on Sep 12th 2018 at 11:32:34 AM
Finally finished/got caught up after starting the series in late July. The show certainly has its ups and downs but it was worth it. Flaca and Taystee are definitely my favorite inmates with Soso in third though Soso bieng written out and Taystee possibly being killed off I really only have Flaca to look forward to next season. Hopefully with next season apparently being the last we can get some chance of happiness to end off the show.
I'm working on a TLP for scenes where characters share headphones
and I saw that there were a couple of these scenes in OITNB (between Crazy Eyes and Piper and between Piper and Alex), but I've never watched the show so I have no idea of the context. Can someone give some context for those scenes?

I was under the impression that Netflix was not renewing this show, so the end of Season 6 was the finale. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Anyway, after lots of watching over the past couple of months, I am finally caught up. Season 6 stuck the landing, but in general it was a disappointment. Too much of the season was devoted to new characters that just weren’t compelling. "Daddy" I thought was just a declawed, defanged version of Big Boo, minus anything that made the character interesting. And they saw fit to have a flashback for the character that took up the bulk of an episode, and failed to make me care about her any more. Ditto Badison, who was outright annoying; just a plain, flat psychopath with no character depth whatever. If the series does continue, it will be interesting to see if she can be Rescued from the Scrappy Heap à la Pennsatucky (who much to my surprise, became one of my favorite characters), but I doubt it.
Regarding the Carol/Barb thing, it was...OK. Not so OK that I thought we should have spent so much time on it, sidelining characters with more interesting stories like Taystee. But I got what they were going with; people starting stupid vendettas over tiny things that don’t really matter. I rather liked Barb, though I thought mainly as I like Mackenzie Phillips and thought she did a good job. Though my favorite of the new characters was the Nigerian scholar, whose name I forget, and who I felt was featured too little.