The fourth season of “Orange is the New Black,” premiering on Netflix June 17, takes on some very topical issues as Litchfield comes to terms with its new corporate owner. It’s an interesting move for the show, which, in its early seasons, came under criticism, including from prisoners themselves, for being a far cry from the real experience of most female inmates.
As the first episode of the new season kicks off, the prison faces an influx of new orange jump-suited arrivals — just as the original ones are being rounded up from the gleeful broken-fence mass exodus that concluded last season. Icy-faced, hulking new guards, straight from corporate, replace the flawed, personable ones who staged a walkout last season. Tensions are high, and soon there’s infighting even among bunches of inmates who previously all got along. The already-segregated racial groups chafe at one another and begin to experience tension; one guard in particular, the newly-arrived officer Desi Piscatella (Brad William Henke), seems like a bully powder keg waiting to explode.
Prison overcrowding, and its ensuing issues, don’t get nearly enough attention in the mainstream media, and props to show creator Jenji Kohan for zeroing in on this increasingly prevalent topic, after already creating a show — which continues to be Netflix’s most popular — with an ensemble of female characters vastly underrepresented in popular culture.
That said, there’s a very meta problem arising from all of this increased reality: The drowning out of the individual humanity that makes this dramedy so compelling. But it’s to the show’s credit that all its stories are ones you want to hear more of. Some of the more soap opera-ish include the fallout from Alex Vause’s (Laura Prepon) attack by a hit man sent by her drug-lord former boss; the budding romance between Crazy Eyes/Suzanne (Uzo Aduba) and her literary admirer, Maureen Kukudio (Emily Althaus); and the long-awaited arrival of celeb inmate Judy King (Blair Brown), who seems a cross between Martha Stewart and Paula Deen.
Lorna Morello (Yael Stone) is still on a high after getting married — and absolutely steals one episode in which she and new husband Vince (John Magaro) have, essentially, in-person phone sex during visiting hours. Lori Petty also continues to shine as Lolly, the slightly unhinged inmate Alex initially suspected of being a hit woman. (Side note to the industry: Can Lori Petty be in more things, please?) Taystee (Danielle Brooks) gets a new gig as unpaid assistant to Caputo (Nick Sandow), now the prison’s official warden, and Poussey (Samira Wiley) and Soso (Kimiko Glenn) are embarking on a tentative, more than slightly fraught relationship — maybe the oddest pairing on this show so far.
And that’s not even all the things! This is the challenge and the burden of being an “OITNB” fan. It rivals “Game of Thrones” in characters you need to keep track of — and now it’s adding even more.
The show seems to be echoing criticisms about the ever-increasing irrelevance of Piper (Taylor Schilling) by giving her delusions of grandeur about her status as a panty-business magnate and a “gangsta with an a.” You’ve got to feel for Schilling, a talented comic actor who’s found herself in a bit of a thankless role (though she really aced that hilarious motivational panties speech from last season).
But darker themes are percolating. Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett (Taryn Manning) is coping with the aftermath of her rape by Officer Coates (James McMenamin), and worrying about her replacement, Flaca (Jackie Cruz), the newly appointed van driver with a level of empathy we’ve never seen from her before. Sophia (Laverne Cox) is still unseen; in solitary after being attacked and fighting back. In interviews with the Hollywood Reporter, cast members have also hinted at a Black Lives Matter story arc to come.
And then there’s the overarching mandate of the prison’s new owner: “I don’t know if that’s cost-effective.” The company’s chillingly cavalier meetings, in which employees suggest ways to further cut prison expenses, include suggestions about hiring veterans with PTSD to be corrections officers (for the tax break) and installing Port-a-Potties in the prison recreation yard to offset the huge lines for the real bathrooms. as one character notes, “We’re a for-profit prison now. We ain’t people no more.” It’s an amazingly scathing look at a real industry that’s making a killing dehumanizing prisoners, and if Kohan succeeds in making her captive audience (so to speak) pay attention to that issue, she’s already way ahead of the game.
