After finishing this up yesterday, I was surprised to learn that the show is based on a real-life memoir of a white, female college graduate who spent a year in prison on a drug trafficking charge. This is surprising, because the majority of the characters in this show are, to put it lightly, far too crazy and/or bizarre to accurately reflect anyone living or dead.
There are important issues being covered here. I do think that the absurdities and abuses of our prison system are, in many ways, one of the defining issues of our times. But the caricatures on display here often go well beyond what I can take seriously, and I think this does a disservice to some very real problems. I can understand that making a comedy in a women's prison is walking a pretty fine line: this show's main problem is that it doesn't have much heart.
That's too bad, because the show is pretty smart about some things. For instance, the racial dynamics here are spot on. Piper, the main character, has friends and family that want to see her as better than her fellow inmates by virtue of being white. Despite this, Piper is often just as cruel and manipulative as everyone else, and there's a kind of deliciousness when the other characters pop her illusory bubble.
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