What to Watch: Orange Is the New Black- The Final Season

by Mike Lunsford, Editor-In-Chief Great Geek Refuge

There is nothing greater than a show that knows when it’s time to wrap things up. Watching a show plod along for season after season going nowhere, repeating the same stories ad nauseam until they start resorting to cheap tricks and jump-the-shark moments is cringe worthy. When Orange Is The New Black decided that season 7 would be the last, I was both sad and relieved. I genuinely fell in love with some of these characters and would miss seeing their exploits and adventures. However, thank God they weren’t going to ring every cent out of this franchise choosing instead to end it with some dignity. But what would the final season hold for these plucky convicts now that they are no longer in minimum security prison and are residents of the max facility? In short, exactly what the prior 6 seasons held: excitement, humor, heartbreak, sadness, outrage, vindication and happiness. The final season, as were all the prior seasons, are a rainbow on the emotional spectrum and lived up to the reputation of one of the best written shows on TV.

Warning: what follows is spoiler heavy. If you haven’t seen season 7 yet, please don’t read any further. If you’re on the fence as to whether you should watch it, just go ahead and watch it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

The writing for Orange Is The New Black (OITNB) continued to surprise me. After season 5 was kind of disappointing, they followed it up with a dynamite season 6. The 7th and final season of Netflix’s crown jewel of original content couldn’t be that good, could it? When you look at final seasons of shows you enjoyed, it’s rare to find a finale that lives up to your expectations. I call it the “Christmas Present Effect:” you build this thing up in your head, the anticipation of what COULD be is often better that what you actually get.

OITNB Season 7 does not suffer from the Christmas Present Effect. The anticipation and expectations I set for the finale of this series was justified. Now, let’s be realistic: you can’t go into a show about convicts, their prison exploits, what put them there in the first place, and their life after incarceration to be cheery for all involved. It just can’t be. And honestly, it would be disappointing if it was, even if the characters you root for get a happy ending when you know good and well they shouldn’t. A fellow fan and often editor of GGR content, Char Smith had this to say about OITNB Season 7, which sums up the final season perfectly.

They could have gone the way of happy endings, but this was never about perfect endings, it was about the power of humanity and how regardless of systematic trauma, finding that silver lining.

Some characters, they get their silver lining. Others, not so much. Without giving away every single detail of the final season, I’ll give some of my take aways about certain characters.

Suzanne Warren (Uzo Aduba)

What started as a shallow, one-dimensional character added as a means of tension in the first season becomes one of the most fleshed out, complete characters in the entire series. In fact, calling her “Crazy Eyes” in any capacity seems disrespectful as you learn more about this character.

At first, she seems like an emotionally and mentally stunted crazy person. She’s described as being “in the mental state of a 6 year old"” but as this series draws to its close, she grasps highly complex concepts and has an emotional understanding that is far beyond that of a child. She asks her adopted mother when she was visiting if she deserved to be in prison, showing that even she understood how unfair the justice system can be. Her idealism, optimism and hopefulness was encouraging but how she developed deep, lasting relationships with some of the other inmates like Taystee, Cindy, and even Pensatucky was heartwarming. People in the outside world often treated Suzanne like she was an idiot or that she was crazy, but the prisoners, the “rejects of society” treated her like a human being. Suzanne was one of my favorite characters when all was said and done, and her rendition of the Mountain Dew jingle is moving.

Tiffany “Pennsatucky” Doggett (Taryn Manning)

The “big bad” of season 1, Doggett had an incredible story arc of redemption. She began as a meth-addled religious sycophant (and hypocrite) who was Piper’s biggest worry at Litchfield. After getting her teeth beaten out of her head, she got a fresh set of government-funded chompers, and a new mindset. She seemed much calmer, she got off the drugs, and began making friends with the right people. Her story was one of constant tragedy, exploitation and trauma but also one of redemption. We see her raped on multiple occasions (both in her past and the present while in prison), mentally and verbally abused by both of her parents, and signs that her perceived lack of intelligence was due to a learning disability. In prison, as her history with sexual abuse repeats itself, Doggett finally stands up for herself. She leaves a horribly abusive relationship with a prison guard and does the right thing: she actually turned herself in to the authorities after escaping Litchfield during the confusion following the riots.

In the final season, she decides to try to get her GED. in spite of her issues with school, she actually starts to enjoy learning. The GED instructor takes note of some of her issues and diagnoses her with dyslexia and tells her that will give her extra time on the final exam. She finally has hope that she might pass the GED and be a high school graduate. And then… the roller coaster ride that is hope in prison rears it’s ugly head. Some of the women involved in smuggling and selling drugs try to force the GED instructor to be their mule, threatening his young son in the process. He immediately quits and is replaced by a worthless prison guard. Taystee begins tutoring but Doggett is crushed. She takes the GED final and isn’t given the extension she needed for her dyslexia. She runs out of time on the test, panics, and is despondent. She’s sure she didn’t pass and turns back to her bad habits: drugs. Taystee finds her dead on the floor of the laundry room.

Doggett’s end was gut-wrenching because her redemption was so damn close. She had completely turned her life around and that final set back was her downfall. And what made matter worse was when the test results came in, she ended up passing. As sad as it was, it’s a sobering reality that many of these inmates don’t get a happy ending.

Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson (Danielle Brooks)

Taystee is a textbook example of an intelligent, thoughtful, caring individual being repeatedly screwed over by the system. From a young age, she was in foster care. She went through the system never really having a family of her own. After being so desperate for a family that she turned to Vee as her mother figure, Taystee turned to a life of crime. It landed her in Litchfield multiple times as she didn’t know how to cope with the world outside. She took comfort in the prison system. She had a family. There was Poussey, Cindy, Janae and later Allison. Then it all changed when her best friend, Poussey was killed by an overzealous, under-trained, inexperienced prison guard.

From season 5 on, Taystee was one of the most captivating and interesting characters on the entire show. Her own needs were no longer a concern in her mind as she demanded justice for her friend. When what was proposed by the prison leadership wasn’t enough for her, she refused to cave. And as the outrage of Pousey’s death and the horrible conditions of the prison spiraled into a full-scale riot, the demand for justice seemed to fall on deaf ears. To make matters worse, it seemed that Taystee and her friends would have the death of one of the prison guards pinned on them.

When the dust settled, Taystee ended up getting sold out by one of her best friends, Cindy. The system, in this case the investigators baiting Cindy into taking a deal to ensure her freedom, screwed Taystee again. After receiving a life sentence unjustly, Taystee is in a dark place. She feels that there is no reason for her to live but receives help from her friend-from-the-outside-turned warden of the prison, Tamika. She encourages Taystee to find glimmers of hope stating that “tomorrow will be a better day.” She works with the GED students and helps tutor them when their teacher disappears. In the end, when she is in her darkest place after the death of Pennsatucky you wonder if the system has finally broken her. But she finds an envelope with the GED results of all the students, seeing that Doggett and the others did pass. She finds the motivation to continue on and uses her connection with the Paula Deen/Martha Stewart amalgam Judy King to help create a microloan system to help recently released women (named the Poussey Washington Fund). Taystee found a way to carry on after every possible thing that could have gone against her did. Her ending was not happy. She didn’t deserve her ending, but it was uplifting as she refused to let her circumstances bring her down and aspires to help others.

And a side note? Watching Taystee beat “Badison” down multiple times in this season was truly glorious.

Those three characters deserved special consideration, but there were so many other inmates and people involved in the prison system that had compelling stories. What made Orange Is The New Black such a great series was that it was truly an ensemble cast. Piper was obviously the main character as it was based on her memoirs, but as the series moved forward, the other character’s stories became more important. The creators of the show really opened up what this show could be. It went from being one white woman’s stories of her year in prison into a commentary on racism, violence, and the many problems the privatized prison system brings. There were so many other stories as this densely packed series finale takes its course, but I’ll dive into a few of them, quick-hitter style!

• At the end of season 6, we see that Blanca (Laura Gómez) and Maritza (Diane Guerrero) are both headed for an ICE facility that MCC, the administrators of Litchfield Prison, are now running. The season shows the heartache, panic, hopelessness, and callous actions of the ICE agents.
  Poor Maritza never makes it out as she is deported to Venezuela: a country she never knew, lived in, or learned the language. Blanca on the other hand, uses every resource she possibly could and manages to go through multiple court cases to regain her freedom and reunite with her love, Diablo. Blanca learned a great deal from another ICE detainee, Carla whose story did not end as happily. She was deported to El Salvador and upon trying to make it back to US to find her kids, she severely injures her ankle and is left in the desert by the other migrants. Regardless of your feelings about the current situation in our country with asylum seekers and immigrants, seeing a realistic depiction was heartbreaking all the same.

• Back in Litchfield Max, we find out the fate of a trio that has been together since the beginning: Red, Nicky, and Lorna. We see that Red (Kate Mulgrew) has not responded well to her time in solitary. Gloria (Selenis Leyva) attempted to keep her sane by continuing to talk through the vents but after they get out of the SHU, things are not right. Red gets a kitchen assignment but she is not all there. The increased stress from being in the SHU caused her delirium which has now presented itself as early onset dementia. This is a crushing blow to Red’s prison family, in particular Nicky (Natasha Lyonne) who has looked up to the Red as mother figure since her incarceration.
  
  We also see that Lorna’s baby, who was born prematurely, has died of pneumonia. Lorna (Yael Stone) already was not completely mentally stable but this crushing blow has her complete detach from reality. She creates an Instagram account using stolen pictures of other babies, pretending like her son never died. Nicky tries to handle the degrading mental condition of both her “mom” and her best friend Lorna as best she can but it is a lost cause as both women are no longer themselves. The series ends with Lorna and Red both in the “Florida” psychiatric ward of the prison, and Nicky taking Red’s place in the kitchen and becoming a new “prison mom.” Another sober reminder of the often lacking mental health capabilities of the prison system.
  
  

• In the equation of prison transformations, if Doggett was the yin, then Daya (Dascha Polanco) was the yang. After the events of season 5, Daya’s conversion to full-blown, hardened criminal was complete. She shot CO Humphrey in the leg which kicked off the prison riot and even after atoning for her actions to help quell the riot, the way the guards responded helped pushed her towards her path to darkness. After being transferred to max, she was repeatedly beaten by the guards for her role in Humphrey’s death. That led to her getting addicted to painkillers and a relationship with drug dealer “Daddy.” The dealer life and power that comes with it excites Daya and by season 7, she is nothing like the sensitive, artistic woman we met in the first few seasons. In a moment of jealousy, Daya accidentally poisons Daddy (Vicci Martinez), killing her. She takes over the kingpin roll from Daddy and embraces her role, even recruiting her siblings to help smuggle the drugs into the prison, a stark contrast from how she treated them in the earlier seasons. Her mother, Aleida (Elizabeth Rodriguez) returns to prison after being part of the pipeline getting the drugs into Litchfield in the first place and sees what her daughter has become. She asks her why she changed. Daya’s response?

“Because I know how it feels to kill someone.”

After revealing that not only is Daya using her sisters to help in the drug trafficking, that she intends to use Aleida’s youngest daughter Lucy to help as well, Aleida snaps. She punches Daya in the throat and begins choking her. While it seems hypocritical, Aleida believes that “you sell drugs so that your children don’t have to.”

It is not known whether or not Aleida killed Daya…but if I’m betting on it, Daya is toast. I mean…take a look at the final frame of the two.

Damn…

• I’ve alluded to this throughout the article and in previous articles about this series, but Piper went from the main character and the character you were most interested in to becoming the biggest pain in the ass. She is so frightfully annoying by the time the series ends that you find yourself wanting to scream at her. There are moments where you identify with her struggle as she deals with trying to rebuild her life after prison. Her parole is not easy to meet, her financial struggles are real, and the strain of being in a long distance relationship with Alex takes it toll. But even after all of these struggles, she is still annoying and obnoxious.
  
  As the series concludes, you realize that she has learned NOTHING. Not one single thing. You would think that a year and a half of incarceration would have given her some sort of perspective on what to do with her life. You would think that after seeing that most of the problems in her life were either because of or in spite of Alex, she would learn to be her own person, with her own moral compass. That’s a huge nope on both of those. She learns absolutely nothing and does not develop any character change. She’s the same naive idiot who keeps running back to Alex even after they essentially decide they would be better off separate. AND SHE DIDN’T EVEN COME TO THIS DECISION HERSELF! She had to ask her dad, her ex-fiancé Larry (Jason Biggs), her new love interest Zelda, the guy who runs the Thai restaurant downtown, the cable guy, the mailman, the butcher, the baker (those last 5 may not have actually happened). Not once was she able to make a damned decision herself. And she could have had a good thing with Zelda! But what does she do instead? When Alex gets transferred to Ohio, Piper presumably moves there (or just drives like 10 hours from New York to visit her which is ridiculous) and gets a job at Starbucks. And they’re happy and smiling! Yay! No, not yay. Barf. Goddamnit, Piper.
  
  What made matters even more pathetic for her was Larry called exactly what she would do. “You’re going to go after Alex,” he says. Piper gets mad and says something to the effect of “YoU dOn’T kNoW Me! I’m DiFfErEnT nOw!” but no, she’s not. She’s the exact same chump she’s always been. It was right around season 4 that the series shifted from her being the most interesting character and one you were the most invested in to it being pretty much everyone else. By the end of season 7, I couldn’t care less about her, especially when she makes dumbass mistake after dumbass mistake. Now, ultimately, is this realistic? Oh, for sure. We all know someone who makes repeatedly bad mistakes and we warn them or give them advice (after they ask for it, of course) and they will argue with you when you tell them how damaging their decisions are. They get angry and then do exactly what you warned them not to do. Ultimately, it’s their life. Why ask for advice when you’re never gonna take it? Piper, you pissed me off so much.

This is the kind of face she would make when you would give her advise THAT SHE ASKED FOR that was contradicting what she wanted to do. Selfish jerk.

In the end, it was just another example of how the writing of Orange Is The New Black was top notch. They made you care about this yuppie white girl from Connecticut who you’ve never met in real life. They made you see how awful things can be in the prison system for the prisoners. You get to witness how difficult it is for them once they get out and how their lives are often meaningless when they are incarcerated. There are excellent examples of the struggles the prison guards go through, as well. We see one of the counselors have a nervous breakdown. We see flawed-but-ultimately-good-person Joe Caputo go from prison guard to warden to prisoner’s rights activist to being embroiled in the #metoo movement. The show was complex, moving, hilarious, heartbreaking, and ultimately, after 7 seasons, completely satisfying.

I give Season 7: Orange Is The New Black a perfect 10 out of 10. The grade is for the final season, but in grading the whole series, it’s a 9 out of 10. With the exception of one less-than-stellar season, this series rarely missed it’s mark.