Orange is the New Black has overstayed its welcome. Since Season 3, the show has progressively become less interesting. Last season, the show had a significant shift in tone that made the show much darker. With each passing season, it’s becoming harder and harder to believe that this show used to be considered a comedy-drama.
Season 5 ended with a SWAT team hauling the Litchfield Penitentiary’s inmates off to MAX and solitary confinement. Naturally, this means all the main characters are separated. If premiere, “Who Knows Better Than I,” accurately represents this season, then each episode will focus on one inmate with the other inmates’ lives as side stories. Unfortunately, individually the characters are less interesting and Piper becomes annoyingly pathetic.
In “Who Knows Better Than I,” Suzanne Warren (Uzo Aduba) has gone without medication for an unspecified period of time. This causes her to hallucinate Red Reznikov (Kate Mulgrew) as a clown, Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling) as a Jeopardy! contestant (that only answers “Where is Alex?”), the other inmates in other unlikely (but character related) scenes, and her mother.
Throughout this episode, guards abuse Taystee (Danielle Brooks), Daya (Dascha Polanco), Gloria Mendoza (Selenis Leyva), and Maria Ruiz (Jessica Pimentel) simply because the can.
Frankly, It doesn’t make for a compelling show.
At this point, Orange is the New Black is resting on its laurels. The creators and writers know that fans are going to binge it, so they don’t bother to make the shows individually compelling. They’re banking on the fact that you’ll watch the first few episodes thinking “it has to get better” only to find yourself halfway through this season thinking “this hasn’t gotten better, but I might as well finish it now.”
If you haven’t already started the Season 6, don’t bother. Old favorites are gone and the new characters are cruel without any redeeming factors. Unless you enjoy watching mediocre shows for some reason, you can write Orange is the New Black off your shows-to-watch list.
Rating: 4 out of 10
