part 367 bears and wolves oh my

[aphanon_meme]

YOU DID IT, I'M SO PROUD OF YOU. Well, it's been a year. I hope it was a good one for you--and that 2018 is even better! And maybe we'll finally get that fansub of even one of the musicals... just maybe.

Enjoy part 367!

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Comments

Re: ITT: what have you read/watched/etc lately?

[(Anonymous)]

just marathoned orange is the new black season 6.

hmmm... addictive as ever, significantly better than season 5 in my opinion, but i'm also a little annoyed with some backtracking over similar themes with characters. there's a particular new character that i expected to be way more interesting or have more depth because she got so much emphasis, but in fact she was a pretty two-dimensional bully. by depth i don't mean that i wanted her to be necessarily more sympathetic, either - but i did expect there to be something more interesting to her. piper and alex's problems and solutions seemed kind of forced, too. and i wish more time had been spent with taystee and the elements of her trial; this was by far the most interesting part of the overarching story.

on the bright side, though, certain other characters really came to shine. daya has always been one of my least favorite characters, and i think the clever thing about the writing of this show is that they retain and even intensify exactly the traits that annoy me about daya but also make me understand her. aleida, too. and frieda has become one of my favorite characters now. caputo and fig too. oitnb is excellent at showing the humanity in flawed characters without idealistically fixing their flaws. people have realizations, their hopes and motives and morals pivot, but also in a realistic way such epiphanies don't just make things better.

for me, the darkness of the humor and especially the sort of last joke showdown of the last episode worked really well.

i am completely confused by one aspect though: why the heck are prison gangs suddenly multi-culti as hell? even in the 80s flashbacks! the show's made a big deal about prisoner divisions by race (and about the rarer spaces/situations in which people bridge that gap), in real life prisons inter-racial conflict and division is very much a reality, and in this season race is still a huge huge issue especially in regards to how the system treats people - yet the prison gangs are all almost evenly mixed? how?

Re: ITT: what have you read/watched/etc lately?

[(Anonymous)]

there's a particular new character that i expected to be way more interesting or have more depth because she got so much emphasis, but in fact she was a pretty two-dimensional bully. by depth i don't mean that i wanted her to be necessarily more sympathetic, either - but i did expect there to be something more interesting to her.

Do you mean Badison?

i am completely confused by one aspect though: why the heck are prison gangs suddenly multi-culti as hell? even in the 80s flashbacks! the show's made a big deal about prisoner divisions by race (and about the rarer spaces/situations in which people bridge that gap), in real life prisons inter-racial conflict and division is very much a reality, and in this season race is still a huge huge issue especially in regards to how the system treats people - yet the prison gangs are all almost evenly mixed? how?

I feel like they were vvvvvaaaaguely implying that due to the Carol & Barb rivalry being so intense that they made people understand that in this particular prison, it was BLOCK ONLY rather than racial division. But... super unrealistic, and if they were trying to go that route they should have had some kind of line about it. Like having one of the white supremacist characters from the last 2 seasons in max and get pissy and then get told how it works there.

Re: ITT: what have you read/watched/etc lately?

[(Anonymous)]

yep. badison felt kind of like a plot device. i do think the actress did a terrific job and that her dialogue and mannerisms were very much on-point. i just think they didn't have anywhere further to go with it.

yeah... it's a stretch but i could've gone with it if somebody had at least acknowledged that this is a drastic change from the usual prison culture. it just felt like a plot hole. it was like they were magically colorblind for some scenes while vividly aware of race in other cases (like taystee's and blanca's arcs, and also how even though all of them are potential witnesses against each other the gravity of betrayal/expectation of loyalty falls clearly along racial lines).

i have read in other reviews that people disliked carol and barb but personally i found them hilarious and kind of one big joke unto themselves. almost like wes anderson characters. somehow i didn't expect as much from them as badison, and i felt the way their story wrapped up was just perfect.

taystee's court scene was also absolutely perfectly filmed/acted - man, that hit me so hard.

Re: ITT: what have you read/watched/etc lately?

[(Anonymous)]

yep. badison felt kind of like a plot device. i do think the actress did a terrific job and that her dialogue and mannerisms were very much on-point. i just think they didn't have anywhere further to go with it.

I was kind of hoping that hers would be a sort of bluff story? like she acts like such a horrible shit because she was in there for something ridiculous and she acted tough to make up for it. Which is.. KIND OF... what they did with her flashback in a way but, like you said, just didn't seem to go anywhere.

Yeah it was definitely odd. I wonder what they will do with the upcoming season. I know I read in an article that Piper will be in the next season at least, so I wonder if they will try to mimic the real life Piper and have her talk about her experience in prison + prison reform?

I like Carol & Barb but if they were just going to end their arc the way they did, I wish we would've found out more about them early on and had more flashbacks with them, like they did with Vee. I wanted to know more about them being prison celebrities and how they rose to be the "big bosses."

It was so expected but so brutal. I'm assuming she'll appeal but...

Speaking of, it broke my heart when Red went after Frida because she thought Frida threw her under the bus. :( (ESPECIALLY SINCE HER SON BROUGHT THE GRANDKIDS, fuck that hurt to see them waiting.) Although I did like the theme they introduced with Red realizing that her "prison family" was not her real family and facing the fact that in the end when it came to getting more years in prison, everyone protected themselves first.

Re: ITT: what have you read/watched/etc lately?

[(Anonymous)]

i think piper outside of prison will be a lot more interesting than piper inside prison, they've really wrung dry all the piper in prison plot points. i wonder if piper and alex's relationship will survive; i have a feeling piper's ego and her memoir ambitions will strain her relationships with her friends still in prison.

yeah, i also find it surprising that carol and barb ever made it to be top dogs in prison. they don't seem like the type, at least in the beginning. it's also interesting how barb seemed like the more successful sister initially, but carol has mostly beaten her by modern day.

i'm actually unworried for taystee; i fully expected her defeat this season and would bet on her getting an at least semi-happy ending next season. because all signs point to season seven being the final, i think that would be a rousing note to go out on and lend a sense of conclusion to everything.

welllll frida did throw her under the bus, technically. i think red was mad at frida especially because red had gone to the trouble of at least trying to stop her suicide. i really liked how the show acknowledged red's faults as a real-life mother vs prison mother. i had always thought red's sons were terrible, but on balance i can understand their frayed relationship more now. i'd still say the sons are in the wrong for not visiting more, but i can see how she also is too mired in her own drama and her expectations for her family vs their reality.

diablo with the flowers and blanca being led off made me so sad too. i anticipated taystee but didn't expect the blanca turn of events. i really really hope we follow blanca more next season.