Anyone else watching this Netflix series?
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat...tflix_show_is_smart_moving_and_fun_watch.html
I just finished the 13 episodes of Orange Is the New Black, which Netflix released on Thursday morning, and for the first time in a long time, I turned off the TV set feeling like I’d just had a great time browsing through a store I’d never seen before.
I’m not sure why Orange seemed so fresh. The story of an upper-middle-class white woman’s incarceration in an upstate New York prison has many familiar components. I’ve watched every episode of Oz. I’ve seen TV shows set in women’s prisons before (Within These Walls, Prisoner Cell Block H, Bad Girls). I’ve seen shows that find drama—usually with a capital D—in the same source as The Real World: take people who usually don’t mix, put them in close quarters, and wait for the sparks to fly. And, of course, I’ve seen programs that use fictional scenarios to explore real-world problems.
In Orange Is the New Black, as in many such shows—including the ones I name-checked in the previous paragraph—the entry character, in this case Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), is privileged and educated. She’s an NPR-listening, Mad Men-watching, big-city-dwelling, wise-cracking intellectual. She’s just like “us,” in other words. And none of “us” would ever expect to go to prison.
Have seen 11 of the episodes so far - very enjoyable.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat...tflix_show_is_smart_moving_and_fun_watch.html
I just finished the 13 episodes of Orange Is the New Black, which Netflix released on Thursday morning, and for the first time in a long time, I turned off the TV set feeling like I’d just had a great time browsing through a store I’d never seen before.
I’m not sure why Orange seemed so fresh. The story of an upper-middle-class white woman’s incarceration in an upstate New York prison has many familiar components. I’ve watched every episode of Oz. I’ve seen TV shows set in women’s prisons before (Within These Walls, Prisoner Cell Block H, Bad Girls). I’ve seen shows that find drama—usually with a capital D—in the same source as The Real World: take people who usually don’t mix, put them in close quarters, and wait for the sparks to fly. And, of course, I’ve seen programs that use fictional scenarios to explore real-world problems.
In Orange Is the New Black, as in many such shows—including the ones I name-checked in the previous paragraph—the entry character, in this case Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), is privileged and educated. She’s an NPR-listening, Mad Men-watching, big-city-dwelling, wise-cracking intellectual. She’s just like “us,” in other words. And none of “us” would ever expect to go to prison.
Have seen 11 of the episodes so far - very enjoyable.
