The final season delivers, even with some stories left unfinished
BY: JACOB POLITTE
Online Editor
Orange Is The New Black | Season 7
Release Date: 7/26/2019
All 13 Episodes Now Streaming On Netflix
***SPOILERS INCOMING***
There is no disputing the fact that Orange Is The New Black is partly responsible for changing how we as a society consume television. The show, along with House of Cards, is primarily responsible for launching Netflix into the stratosphere, and it is the reason they have enjoyed near consistent success since 2013. So many successful Netflix originals like Stranger Things or even shows that were saved from cancellation like Lucifer may never have reached the heights that they have or even happened at all if not for the success of House of Cards and Orange Is The New Black.
Both shows are over now; House of Cards wrapped up last November with an underwhelming final 8 episodes that were overshadowed by the absence of the disgraced Kevin Spacey, and Orange Is The New Black finished just a few weeks ago at the end of July. Unlike House of Cards, Orange gets a chance to go out gracefully and with dignity. For seven years, we’ve followed a large group of diverse women as they navigate and survive a prison system that has become increasingly more cruel and uncaring with each passing season. But now, we’re at the end.
Some characters get happy endings, some don’t make it to the end, and some are stuck forever, but find contentment in their lives and a way to move forward.
This final season gives everyone at least a few chances to shine and take one last bow, but the four biggest stories surround the characters of newly released Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), Tasha “Taystee” Jefferson (Danielle Brooks), Tiffany Doggett (Tarynn Manning) and the various detainees in the ICE Detainment Center.
We have to start by talking about Piper’s arc. While she is not the show’s most beloved character, she was the character that got us to Litchfield in the first place, so it makes sense that the show would follow her post-prison journey. While Piper is out of Litchfield Maximum Security, released early last season due to shady circumstances she’s totally unaware of, she is by no means having a good time. Piper is stuck living with her brother and his crazy fiance, she’s struggling to find consistent employment, and she’s already having financial difficulties. On top of this, she’s become estranged from her father and is starting to become estranged from her “wife” Alex (Laura Prepon).
Those financial difficulties, which include having to pay for supervised drug tests as a condition of probation, are preventing her from visiting Litchfield to see Alex often, and begin to become a bigger issue when Piper’s brother and his wife start to ask for rent money. As the season progresses, Piper slowly begins to find her footing and make amends with her family and former lover and her once best friend, but drifts further away from Alex. Alex herself begins a relationship with a guard, and advises Piper to find someone on the outside. Everyone else tries to convince Piper to do the same, but despite a one night stand with a guy she met at a gym and a potential love interest named Zelda, she chooses to remain loyal to Alex, and even moves to Ohio when Alex is transferred there and she’s off parole. Despite Alex being the reason that she ended up in prison in the first place, it’s clear that Piper will never “quit” Alex, and I’m not sure if that’s a good decision or not. However, both seem dedicated to living a better life, so at least there is some hope of the two having a positive future together.
While prison has changed many for the worse, the total opposite was true for Tiffany Doggett. If anything, her nuanced growth into a better human being over the past six seasons has been one of the show’s most surprisingly effective stories. This season, while taking GED classes, she gets diagnosed with dyslexia, and with that knowledge and the help of her GED instructor, begins to take getting an education seriously. Her story, however, doesn’t end well. Her GED instructor is forced out when Daya and her gang threaten him, and as a result the replacement instructor isn’t informed about her dyslexia, forcing her to take the final exam without the extra time she would otherwise be allotted. Feeling down, she relapses and accidentally takes a lethal dose of fentanyl in the prison’s laundry room. It’s only after Taystee is about to take a dose of drugs herself that we find out that Doggett passed the exam despite the disservice done to her. Seeing her being taken out of the prison in a bodybag was devastating, especially once when find out her test result. It’s a very harsh, but necessary reminder that not everyone makes it.
When Litchfield Minimum Security Prison was shut down at the end of the riot in season 5, it was then converted into the ICE Detention Center that we find many different characters, both familiar and new, this season. Following her release in Season 6, Blanca Flores (Laura Gómez) was immediately taken into ICE custody, and eventually former inmate Maritza Ramos (Diane Guerrero) ends up there as well. Ramos is deported (eerily echoing what happened to Guerrero’s parents in real life) and so are two new inmates that we get to know named Karla and Shani, but Blanca manages to get released from detention, after she got her previous conviction overturned and her green card reinstated. Blanca chooses to head back to Honduras to be with her lover Diablo, in one of the happier endings that anyone gets this season, especially anyone from the ICE facility. The conditions these women live in are absolutely abominal. The ICE guards are uncaring and cruel to the detainees and barely treat them as people. It’s appalling.
Perhaps the oddest, yet compelling story to come out of this arc is the redemption of former prison warden Natalie “Fig” Figueroa (Alysia Reiner). Fig, whose embezzlement scheme in season 2 was arguably the starting point for Litchfield’s descent into madness, has never been a particularly nice person. However, when she’s appointed to be the warden of the ICE Detention Center, she’s finally starting to show signs of change. She’s absolutely disgusted by conditions at the center and while she’s relatively powerless to stop any of it, she does sacrifice her IVF treatment and her chance to give birth to a child of her own in order to get an abortion pill to a detainee who doesn’t want to give birth to her rapist’s baby after ICE refuses to. While Fig can’t fix her past mistakes, she can become a better person because of them. Turning Fig into somewhat of a beloved figure among the viewing audience is perhaps Orange’s most surprising achievement.
In this final season, no current Litchfield inmate got a rawer deal than Tasha Jefferson. After being betrayed by one of her closest friends, she’s confined to prison for the rest of her life for a murder she didn’t commit. Taystee starts this final season in a very dark place, and stays there for a majority of it. Only at the end, despite her final appeal being shot down, she begins to find hope in starting the “Poussey Washington Fund” which, with the assistance of former inmate and Poussey’s friend Judy King, gives microloans to released convicts to help them get on their feet once they’re released. She also begins to teach financial literacy classes to her fellow inmates to help them understand what challenges they’ll face and how to deal with them.
While she gets a hopeful ending, I do wish Taystee would have gotten true justice in the end. I wish the real truth would have come out, and that Taystee would have been vindicated and have a chance at getting released. Sadly, that’s not how real life typically works. I’m not a black woman, so it’s not necessarily my place to speak on the challenges they can face in an America that’s becoming increasingly more hostile, but this show always did a good job of showcasing those struggles, and helping its viewers understand them.
Admittedly, the show left several stories unfinished, like the mother-daughter confrontation between the fiery Aleida Diaz (Elizabeth Rodriguez) and Litchfield’s newest drug lord Daya Diaz (Dascha Polanco). Then again, these stories aren’t technically over, it’s just that the show is done following them.
It’s why we only get brief glimpses of most characters from past seasons from time-to-time (like the inmates that were transferred to a prison in Cleveland), or we never see certain characters again (like former CO John Bennett). Once they’re out of Litchfield’s orbit, they’re not really part of this story anymore unless they come into contact with someone who is. Their lives aren’t over, but they’re not a part of ours anymore. Leaving things in a state of uncertainty is somewhat fitting for a show like this, and didn’t bother me as much as it seemed to bother other people who watched the show.
There are so many stories that’s impossible to speak on them all, but I’ll do my best here:
- Beloved prison “mother” Red (Kate Mulgrew) is diagnosed with early onset dementia following extended isolation in the SHU, which really broke my heart. I have family members that have unfortunately fell victim to that disease, and seeing Red fall victim to it really got to me. If you look back on some of Red’s scenes from the first few seasons though, this story was heavily foreshadowed.
- Lorna Morello (Yael Stone) loses her newborn to a bout of pneumonia, which pushes her into a very dark place mentally. She becomes much more aggressive, lashing out physically and even unsuccessfully attempting to escape the prison.
- Following these two devastating events, Nicky Nichols (Natasha Lyonne) says her goodbyes to both of the above characters when they are transferred to completely different cell blocks, and takes over Red’s old role as head of the ICE kitchen, helping some of the detainees to detox from drugs. It’s a fitting end for her character and showcases the growth that Nichols has gone through.
- Flaca (Jackie Cruz) also matures greatly, and after being briefly reunited with Maritza before her deportation, secretly begins helping the detainees to get lawyers to argue their cases.
- Cindy Hayes (Adrienne C. Moore) is released early due to selling Taystee out and does manage to find stable employment at a nursing home, but shortly after release Taystee does manage to mess up Cindy’s home life via a letter that reveals a dark family secret. Cindy begins living on the streets, and only near the end of the last episode begins to mend fences with her mother and daughter. Cindy’s struggle to balance her guilt about Taystee’s fate and hope for a better future was one of the more compelling parts of the season, and it really is unfortunate that she and Taystee will probably never reconcile.
- Joe Caputo (Nick Sandow) begins teaching reformative justice classes, but soon resigns once his inappropriate past with former C.O. Susan Fischer (Lauren Lapkus) catches up with him. This wasn’t the best take on #MeToo, but eventually Caputo realizes the error of his ways, and that despite being a good person now, he still has a long way to go to make amends for the bad things he did.
- Fig and Caputo also advance their sex-capades into something serious this season, and end up looking to adopt a child. At the end, they seem to have found that child, and the two characters do get a happy ending.
There are so many characters, that it’s impossible for me to recap what happens to every single one. It’s safe to say that while the inmates themselves never do get real justice, the show itself does give them the spotlight that this diverse group of people deserves one last time.
The show could have gone on for longer, but by ending things where they did before the story could get too convoluted and drawn out, the show’s legacy will always be intact. Orange Is The New Black was undoubtedly one of the most revolutionary shows to ever be broadcast, and in time, it will also become one of the most important.
FINAL GRADE: A-
