Compared with those big-ticket projects, Orange Is the New Black arrived like unglamorous inventory. Adapted by Weeds creator Jenji Kohan from Piper Kerman’s memoir, the series dropped onto the Netflix servers with a thud a week after Independence Day. Unlike with Cards and Arrested, there were no A-list celebrities to promote, no preexisting fires to stoke. The series had a high concept — preppy blonde is sent to a minimum-security women’s prison — but a remarkably low-key, almost improvisational feel. With its enormous cast and yo-yoing tone (from ferocious to farce in the time it took to conduct a strip search), Orange seemed like the sort of established showrunner passion project that can be indulged only by a company flush with cash and distracted by all the potential ways to spend it.3 It also seemed like the kind of series that would require an analog virtue Netflix had previously not shown much interest in: patience. Spicy, salty, and laced with unfamiliar ingredients, Orange was a strange fit for Netflix’s otherwise predictable buffet. How hard would it be to convince an audience accustomed to the instant gratification of bingeing to sample something new?
Not hard at all, as it turned out. Freed from the whiplash parabola of anticipation/disappointment that had fueled Netflix’s previous shows, Orange simmered and bubbled throughout the long, hot summer. In the midst of a cultural landscape desiccated by the heat of a million takes, the relative quiet surrounding the series was like an oasis.
To watch felt more like a thrilling discovery than an obligation. It also felt like an antidote. As the heavy footprints left by a decade of swaggering, same-y male antiheroes receded from view, here finally was a show committed to real diversity. Not just in terms of the casting — though with its preponderance of black and brown faces and multiple sexual orientations and gender identities Orange looked a lot more like the country than most series that purport to reflect it — but also in terms of the stories it was willing to tell. Orange’s protagonists had all committed crimes, but that was what they had done, not who they were. First and foremost, they were women: lively, strong, hilarious, heartbreaking women. Freed from the predictable, hectoring roles of mothers and wives — though not, you know free — the inmates of Litchfield penitentiary were allowed to be just as fucked up and fascinating as TV’s men. It had to have been as refreshing to the actresses as it was to the audience. Instead of relying on the dull glow of fading stars to do the heavy lifting, Orange gave us an entire galaxy.