Orange Is the New Black Season 3: A in Comedy, F in Drama

***Some spoilers for season 3 and past seasons of Orange is the New Black*** It’s the Tuesday following a major Netflix release and all of us are crawling out of our caves, battered and bruised, squinting at the light of day and shielding the sun from our eyes. You peeled off your sweatpants and hissed at the person who tried to reach for the coffee pot before you, and now you have to pretend your day at work isn’t going to be a complete wash. And with all that, you know the one thing that actually makes it bad? Season 3 of Orange is the New Black was hardly even worth it. And believe me, it hurts to say. In what began as a drama focused on a privileged, annoying woman and her stint in prison in Season 1, Piper Chapman was proven to be a storyteller’s Trojan horse in Season 2 – a clever means to tricking white mainstream audiences into paying attention to the stories of women of color. Season 3’s arrival was met with expectations of the same, but instead delivered several middling plots with little focus at all.

In fact, the overarching theme of the effects that privatization of prisons have on inmates hardly even showed itself until the end of the season, which is especially strange given that some of the character-driven subplots were fairly cheap filler for much of it. The most egregious example is probably Alex Voss’ paranoia of harm that showed to be a head-fake, a cheap build up for a weak punch line, and essentially replaced Chapman’s season 1 role of being the uninte…