Orange is the new Black: Season 2
Aug. 12th, 2015 05:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakThe second season turned out to be awesome, minus the mystery as to why Larry is still in it.
The most dramatic storyline was the one with Vee as the antagonist/catalyst; her rise to power, manipulation of Suzanne, Tastey, Watson and Black Cindy, bullying/ostracizing of Poussey and first cold, then hot war against Red. As opposed to Tiffanny/Pennsatucky last season, I never had the impression of Vee as a one note villain, despite the fact she was arguably the worst person among the prisoners we've yet met. (It's the grooming part, I think, that makes her brand of evil so chilling; the way she preys on vulnerable, younger women in need of mentor figures. (And in the case of RJ, men.) Poussey was on to something when she compared Vee to "a pedophile without the sex". The way she encouraged Suzanne and turned her first into her enforcer, and then into her fall gal was ice cold perfectly executed manipulation. And when you realise WHY Vee showed up at the AA meeting to talk with Nicki - i.e. when a few scenes later Tastey presents Nicki, who has been sober for two years, with a free heroin sample -, it's one of those moments, both chilling and enraging, where any term other than evil really isn't appropriate and it's very clear why this woman is in prison in the first place. And yet Lorraine Toussaint's performance is such that Vee never comes across as a caricature. Just as a chillingly plausible master criminal.
(BTW, that Tastey went along with it was also a reminder that for all her own backstory vulnerabilities, Tastey is a criminal as well.)
If there was one thing about the Vee storyline that challenged my suspension of disbelief, it's Red's survival. I mean, I'm glad Red did, because Kate Mulgrew rocks that role, but Vee isn't the type to stop before making sure the other party is really truly dead, so once she had committed to killing Red at the end of the last but one episode, that should have been that, except the show wanted Red to survive and stay a regular.
Everyone who said Tiffany would gain depth: you were right. It's amazing, really, what the show did with Tiffany and Healy, because on most other shows they'd simply have stayed the boo-hiss figures. I mean, Healy is a homophobe (and a middle aged white male one at that), and homophobes show up in gay friendly shows only to either see the light in dramatic fashion and abandon their homophobia or be vanquished as boo hiss figures. And then there's the part where he was willing to let Piper be killed in last season's finale. And Tiffany spent the first season also full of homophobic rants and more and more violence. But this show, without "redeeming" Healy in the sense he sees the light and abandons his anti lesbian obsession, and without going the ridiculous villain/evil sidekick route either (think MASH the movie, not the series, with Frank and Margaret), lets them fall into this odd friendship created out of isolation, and in the finale it helps Healy do the right thing re: Red and Vee, just as Tiffany, when she hears Leanne mocking Healy, for the first time in the show acts out of sympathy and compassion for a friend when she seeks him out afterwards to tell him that he did help her.
Characters who were barely there in the first season like Miss Rosa got backstory, present day action and one of the key emotional catharsis moments in the finale, while other characters who were prominent in the first season like Sophia were more background characters this time around. (Though I loved Sophia's scene with Mike, and the form their emotional progress took - a card game instead of the 'let's talk about our feelings' scene Sophia had imagined.) When Rosa told Yusef she'd robbed banks I thought she was messing with him, but no, turns out this really was her backstory, and it provided the background for her perfect Thelma and Louise exit in the finale. (At least, I hope that was her exit, because anything else would certainly be an anti climax - and given her prognosis of only a few weeks more to live with her cancer, extremely painful. Was amused and approve of Rosa rejecting the copy of John Green's The Fault is in our Stars, btw. The show's pop culture use in general is very effective - when Morella mentions having watched Twilight five times, we should have been prepared for the big twist re: Christopher.
Which was a great "gotcha!" moment of the season, and yet not just there for its own sake, since we got the follow up with Christopher. It's very effective pov storytelling, too. What Morello did was objectively not only wrong but creepy and awful: she stalked a man and his fiancee, later wife. If my stalker somehow had managed to break into my house on my wedding day despite supposedly being in prison, and messed with my wife's dresses, and the police wouldn't believe me, I'd be upset, too, to put it mildly. And yet when Christopher shows up and exposes Morello's fantasy in front of those of her fellow inmates who are present it's impossible not to feel for her and her humiliation.
Other than Vee, the season's main villain was Fig. I have been reading through a few reviews of the finale, and there was a lot of upsetness re: the blow job scene with Caputo, some reviews even making rape comparisons. I have to say, I had zero sympathy for Fig there, and definitely reject the rape comparison. It had been her idea, not Caputo's. At no point did he say "if you do this, I won't report you". He didn't stop her when she made her move, and was gleeful afterwards when telling her he'd already made his report, but given she spent two seasons humiliating him at every turn and being in general an awful human being with no empathy for the people in their charge (outstanding cases in point: her refusal to have the B shower repaired, her conviction that Daya could not possibly have been raped because female prisoners just love that kind of attention from male guards, her insistence of rehiring a guard who as far as she and Caputo knew WAS a rapist), it would have been extremely ooc if he had. Now, the scene where I think Caputo showed himself as awful towards a female character was much earlier, when he fired Fisher, which was very much about her not returning his feelings. But the blow job scene? Nah. I have no doubt that in the future, no matter his present intentions, Caputo will show himself a corrupted assistant warden as well, because that's the way the system works. But reading that with that one scene, he proved himself as worse than Fig already, well, that baffled me, frankly, because this season underlined the great, great harm Fig's corruption did to many of the people at Lichfield, Jimmie's fate being one of the most obvious examples.
In general, the prison officials and their interactions with each other and the prisoners were much more prominent this season. Side characters like O'Neill were hilarious and endearing, Fisher was sympathetic (I was surprised that her discovery of Daya's pregnancy happened, though, given there was no follow up at all due to Fisher getting fired an episode later) and had a fine farewell scene with Nicki, Caputo being in a band in his spare time and everyone's reaction to that, and I already mentioned Healy and Tiffany bonding. It made them more than cyphers without ignoring the power structure (as Daya says to Bennett during an argument, he has choices she as an inmate simply doesn't have).
Piper was among the characters with a much more background role during most of the season, as opposed to the s1 prominence, which made the continued existence of Larry on the show all the more mystifying. He had a purpose in s1 - being the life Piper left behind - but in s2 the only point of him finally came up in the finale when Larry and Polly were needed so Piper could maneouvre Alex back into prison, and yes, I can see they needed motivation to help her with this, hence their own affair and the guilt over it, but that could have been handled in one earlier episode instead of an entire plot line drawn out over the season. The Larry issue aside, I liked Piper's scenes - her befriending Red, connecting the Golden Girls with her dying grandmother, negotiating with Healy and Caputo.
In conclusion: a strong second season. I do hope it won some awards.
The most dramatic storyline was the one with Vee as the antagonist/catalyst; her rise to power, manipulation of Suzanne, Tastey, Watson and Black Cindy, bullying/ostracizing of Poussey and first cold, then hot war against Red. As opposed to Tiffanny/Pennsatucky last season, I never had the impression of Vee as a one note villain, despite the fact she was arguably the worst person among the prisoners we've yet met. (It's the grooming part, I think, that makes her brand of evil so chilling; the way she preys on vulnerable, younger women in need of mentor figures. (And in the case of RJ, men.) Poussey was on to something when she compared Vee to "a pedophile without the sex". The way she encouraged Suzanne and turned her first into her enforcer, and then into her fall gal was ice cold perfectly executed manipulation. And when you realise WHY Vee showed up at the AA meeting to talk with Nicki - i.e. when a few scenes later Tastey presents Nicki, who has been sober for two years, with a free heroin sample -, it's one of those moments, both chilling and enraging, where any term other than evil really isn't appropriate and it's very clear why this woman is in prison in the first place. And yet Lorraine Toussaint's performance is such that Vee never comes across as a caricature. Just as a chillingly plausible master criminal.
(BTW, that Tastey went along with it was also a reminder that for all her own backstory vulnerabilities, Tastey is a criminal as well.)
If there was one thing about the Vee storyline that challenged my suspension of disbelief, it's Red's survival. I mean, I'm glad Red did, because Kate Mulgrew rocks that role, but Vee isn't the type to stop before making sure the other party is really truly dead, so once she had committed to killing Red at the end of the last but one episode, that should have been that, except the show wanted Red to survive and stay a regular.
Everyone who said Tiffany would gain depth: you were right. It's amazing, really, what the show did with Tiffany and Healy, because on most other shows they'd simply have stayed the boo-hiss figures. I mean, Healy is a homophobe (and a middle aged white male one at that), and homophobes show up in gay friendly shows only to either see the light in dramatic fashion and abandon their homophobia or be vanquished as boo hiss figures. And then there's the part where he was willing to let Piper be killed in last season's finale. And Tiffany spent the first season also full of homophobic rants and more and more violence. But this show, without "redeeming" Healy in the sense he sees the light and abandons his anti lesbian obsession, and without going the ridiculous villain/evil sidekick route either (think MASH the movie, not the series, with Frank and Margaret), lets them fall into this odd friendship created out of isolation, and in the finale it helps Healy do the right thing re: Red and Vee, just as Tiffany, when she hears Leanne mocking Healy, for the first time in the show acts out of sympathy and compassion for a friend when she seeks him out afterwards to tell him that he did help her.
Characters who were barely there in the first season like Miss Rosa got backstory, present day action and one of the key emotional catharsis moments in the finale, while other characters who were prominent in the first season like Sophia were more background characters this time around. (Though I loved Sophia's scene with Mike, and the form their emotional progress took - a card game instead of the 'let's talk about our feelings' scene Sophia had imagined.) When Rosa told Yusef she'd robbed banks I thought she was messing with him, but no, turns out this really was her backstory, and it provided the background for her perfect Thelma and Louise exit in the finale. (At least, I hope that was her exit, because anything else would certainly be an anti climax - and given her prognosis of only a few weeks more to live with her cancer, extremely painful. Was amused and approve of Rosa rejecting the copy of John Green's The Fault is in our Stars, btw. The show's pop culture use in general is very effective - when Morella mentions having watched Twilight five times, we should have been prepared for the big twist re: Christopher.
Which was a great "gotcha!" moment of the season, and yet not just there for its own sake, since we got the follow up with Christopher. It's very effective pov storytelling, too. What Morello did was objectively not only wrong but creepy and awful: she stalked a man and his fiancee, later wife. If my stalker somehow had managed to break into my house on my wedding day despite supposedly being in prison, and messed with my wife's dresses, and the police wouldn't believe me, I'd be upset, too, to put it mildly. And yet when Christopher shows up and exposes Morello's fantasy in front of those of her fellow inmates who are present it's impossible not to feel for her and her humiliation.
Other than Vee, the season's main villain was Fig. I have been reading through a few reviews of the finale, and there was a lot of upsetness re: the blow job scene with Caputo, some reviews even making rape comparisons. I have to say, I had zero sympathy for Fig there, and definitely reject the rape comparison. It had been her idea, not Caputo's. At no point did he say "if you do this, I won't report you". He didn't stop her when she made her move, and was gleeful afterwards when telling her he'd already made his report, but given she spent two seasons humiliating him at every turn and being in general an awful human being with no empathy for the people in their charge (outstanding cases in point: her refusal to have the B shower repaired, her conviction that Daya could not possibly have been raped because female prisoners just love that kind of attention from male guards, her insistence of rehiring a guard who as far as she and Caputo knew WAS a rapist), it would have been extremely ooc if he had. Now, the scene where I think Caputo showed himself as awful towards a female character was much earlier, when he fired Fisher, which was very much about her not returning his feelings. But the blow job scene? Nah. I have no doubt that in the future, no matter his present intentions, Caputo will show himself a corrupted assistant warden as well, because that's the way the system works. But reading that with that one scene, he proved himself as worse than Fig already, well, that baffled me, frankly, because this season underlined the great, great harm Fig's corruption did to many of the people at Lichfield, Jimmie's fate being one of the most obvious examples.
In general, the prison officials and their interactions with each other and the prisoners were much more prominent this season. Side characters like O'Neill were hilarious and endearing, Fisher was sympathetic (I was surprised that her discovery of Daya's pregnancy happened, though, given there was no follow up at all due to Fisher getting fired an episode later) and had a fine farewell scene with Nicki, Caputo being in a band in his spare time and everyone's reaction to that, and I already mentioned Healy and Tiffany bonding. It made them more than cyphers without ignoring the power structure (as Daya says to Bennett during an argument, he has choices she as an inmate simply doesn't have).
Piper was among the characters with a much more background role during most of the season, as opposed to the s1 prominence, which made the continued existence of Larry on the show all the more mystifying. He had a purpose in s1 - being the life Piper left behind - but in s2 the only point of him finally came up in the finale when Larry and Polly were needed so Piper could maneouvre Alex back into prison, and yes, I can see they needed motivation to help her with this, hence their own affair and the guilt over it, but that could have been handled in one earlier episode instead of an entire plot line drawn out over the season. The Larry issue aside, I liked Piper's scenes - her befriending Red, connecting the Golden Girls with her dying grandmother, negotiating with Healy and Caputo.
In conclusion: a strong second season. I do hope it won some awards.
