As a result of this, Netflix’s choose-your-own-adventure programming style finally made sense artistically as well as commercially. Unlike Cards’ foaming froth, episodes of Orange were as broad as they were deep. One could dive in, but it was also possible (and possibly even better) to soak them up slowly. Each hour made things darker and weirder; every installment allowed another character to shine. It was too good to resist. After initially ignoring Orange, I cannonballed in a few weeks after the premiere. Though I had friends who didn’t start their sentence until the holidays, I don’t know a soul who was able to begin the show without finishing it. Netflix stubbornly refuses to release any specific viewership data, but the company was sufficiently shocked by Orange’s quietly mushrooming numbers to admit it had become the most-watched series on its servers. Doing time — and encouraging the taking of it — had paid off in a major way.
Time is both the central subject of Orange Is the New Black and, potentially, its burden.4 As the show returns for a second season this Friday (once again all 13 episodes will arrive en masse), the biggest question isn’t what it can do — it’s whether it can do it all again. And for how long. Piper Chapman, the show’s unexpectedly punchy lead, played by Taylor Schilling, is serving a sentence of just 15 months. That’s the sort of inconvenient detail that can be ignored in the stressy and uncertain early days of a series, when the future isn’t guaranteed and is largely unwritten. (Case in point: The sparkling Danielle Brooks was originally signed for only two episodes. When Taystee popped off the screen, Kohan had to scramble to find a way to get her back behind bars.) As Orange settles in for a long run — Season 3 was commissioned last month — Kohan and her writers must gently pump the brakes on their story, even as the clamor for more and more plot grows louder. All TV shows rely on flimsy mechanisms to keep their ensembles together — a paper company in Scranton offered more job security than the IRS — but Orange unites its characters against their will in a place they’re desperate to escape. A generation ago, M*A*S*H stretched out the Korean War for eight years longer than it actually lasted. I wonder if contemporary audiences, as vigilant about accuracy as they are about emotion, would accept such creative liberties today.
Judging from the first few episodes of Orange’s second season, it’s a question being asked in the writers’ room as well. “Everything ends,” Piper says at one point to a new arrival. “Even prison.” It just won’t end any time soon. The wonderfully disorienting season premiere — those still hanging by their fingernails from last year’s violent cliffhanger should expect to linger awhile longer — devotes its entire hour to muddying Piper’s already dicey legal situation. (I won’t spoil anything, but rest assured that just as Laura Prepon’s sultry Alex got Piper into this mess, she continues to keep her in it.) The action occurs far from Orange’s familiar halls, giving Schilling another chance to play befuddlement like a Stradivarius. And it’s also a winning showcase for Kohan’s inimitable voice. In just 50-plus minutes she introduces us to an entirely new coterie of scary monsters and super creeps, from a face-licking, tongue-biting amateur astrologist to a panty-sniffing dude who terrifies Piper until she learns, to her great relief, that he’s not a rapist, just a hit man. As ever, Kohan is admirably unafraid to play around with the sharp stuff. Still, the bits that stick tend to be the ones that take you by surprise. After spending a season in the insular, female-dominated world of Litchfield, it’s legitimately jarring to see Piper suddenly at the mercy of leering, jabbing, dismissive men. “I think I moved beyond stress into something more disturbing,” she says of her internal state, though the implication is that she’s been parked there much longer than she realizes.