The final season of ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK has arrived.
[SPOILER ALERT]
The series was based on Piper Kerman’s memoir, “Orange is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison.” When a show or movie is based on real life, the audience (myself included) is often left wondering what is real and what was the invention of the writers. As it turns out, most of the characters are real, but the stories are not, according to multiple reviews of the book. Piper and Alex did not serve time together; Piper served her 15 months in Danbury Connecticut and Catherine Wolters (Alex in the show) served 6 years in Dublin California and received nearly 14 years of probation. They also didn’t have a prison wedding and are not together today.
I haven’t always been a huge fan of this NETFLIX show. I loved seasons 1 and 2, but in seasons 3 and 4, I felt that the storylines felt repetitive and kind of boring. I was not a fan of the “panty business,” and the constant back and forth of the Piper / Alex relationship did not hold my interest and was frankly annoying a lot of the time. The story picked up again in season 5 with the riot, but once again fell flat in season 6 with the prosecution of those involved.
So, by now I’m sure you are wondering why I stuck with the show through all seven seasons, if I was so bored with the show. I loved all the other characters. Their stories of how they ended up in prison and their friendships were what kept bringing me back.
By far, one of my favorites was Galina “Red” Reznikov (Kate Mulgrew). When we are first introduced to Red, she is running the kitchen at Litchfield like a well-oiled machine. It would have been easy to make her this one-dimensional character, a Russian mobster, but she was also a mother figure to a lot of the other inmates, especially the ones working with her in the kitchen. As we watch her backstory unfold, we see she wasn’t a leader outside of prison. She did have a lot of influence in her own family, but they soon deserted her once she was in prison. In season 7, we learn that because she was a woman, many of her ideas were dismissed. Red found the control at Litchfield that was sorely lacking in her life on the outside. Her influence rose and fell throughout, but after the riot and being transferred to maximum security, she is shut away in the SHU and Red breaks down.
Other inmates, such as Nicky Nichols (Natasha Lyonne), provided her with the love she had lost from her own family. Nicky realizes that isolation has seriously affected Red and at first tries to cover for her, but then must convince Red that something is wrong. You have to wonder, if Red had started showing signs of dementia on the outside, would her family have been as concerned as Nicky was?
My absolute favorite character had to be Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren (Uzo Aduba). In the beginning you just think she is nuttier than a fruitcake, but as the show progressed, I began to believe that she was, at times, actually the sanest one of them all! The other inmates feel that they must take care of her. Her adoptive mother told her she could achieve anything if she tried her best and the stress of this did more harm than good at times. Suzanne does not like change, but then again who does? Eventually, Suzanne becomes the person who helps her friends recover from the blows dealt them. She writes about her friends and the riot in a journal which makes Taystee realize that there is hope. She finds a way to deal with her grief when Pennsatucky dies from an overdose, by holding a memorial service for her and sings the Mountain Dew Jingle as if it were a gospel song. If it weren’t for these two characters, and many more, I’m not sure if I could have hung on for all seven seasons.
The show also gave mainstream America an inside glimpse into the penal system. We have all heard how inmates become institutionalized during their incarceration, but we sometimes forget that the system also affects the guards too. In season 7, CO McCullough (Emily Tarver) is still suffering the aftereffects of the riot. She has been burning herself with cigarettes and drinking way too much to deal with the stress. She also is fed up with the fact that most of the other CO’s have been getting away with bringing in contraband to the facility. The foxes are guarding the hen house, because they are the ones charged with tossing the cells and searching for what they brought in. This brings back memories of her being raped when she was in the Army and her rapist getting away with it. McCullough ends up succumbing to the turpitude of the system and blackmailing Alex into selling phone charges she smuggles in one of Alex’s bustiers.
Besides the corruption of the guards, the audience also learns about the privatization of the prison system. This subject has been touched on in many criminal dramas, such as Law and Order, but here we also see it from the perspective the inmates, the wardens and the corporations. I think many people liked the idea was good to begin with. Take away some of the burden from taxpayers; however, they forget that corporations are in it for profit. How do you make a profit? You cut back on employees, benefits and programs. In season 7, you see Litchfield closes its mental health ward and returns most of the inmates to gen pop in Florida and a few are shipped off to a lockdown ward at a mental institution. They drug them up to make them docile and hope for the best.
Throughout the series, we see the wardens struggle with their orders from corporate to constantly cut costs, while at the same time maintaining order. The corporation also cuts all programs that are designed to help rehabilitate and educate inmates, which will help them upon their release and decrease the rate of recidivism. As a child, I remember hearing “idle hands are the devil’s playthings.” I have to wonder if the corporations that run prisons have ever heard this saying. If people are bored, they will find some way of getting into trouble.
In season 7, we see the same corporation now also running an ICE detention center. The horrors of what we have seen in the media of children being separated from their parents is embodied in Karla Cordova, a widow who works for a law firm who escaped Columbia to keep her children from being killed or being forced to join a gang. They are provided computers and phones to aid in their defense but must have the money to pay for a debit card to use them. They can have these “privileges” taken away from them at any time by the ICE agents. They are fed expired food and there is no attempt to provide an alternative for those with specific dietary restrictions. For most of these detainees, the only crime they have committed is being in the country without legal documents. These “criminals” are treated worse than the convicted inmates. After seeing the horrendous conditions that actually exist in real-life facilities on the news, I applaud ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK for also shining a light on this calamity.
For those of you who have never watched this show, I highly recommend it. For those of you who may not have stuck it out until the end, keep watching…the ending is worth it.
Everything & Nothing 