ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK

At this afternoon's Meetup I did a scene from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, as the experienced cop about to show her the corpse from the 40 years-cold case.

Finally finished the first season of Jenji Kohan's Netflix series Orange Is the New Black.  I could have watched all at once like on DVD, but I ended up watching it once a week or even less often.  It was a bit of a chore, to tell the truth.  It's a very, very uneven show (not unlike Boardwalk Empire). 

An uneven show can be more frustrating than one that's consistently poor.  The subplots are often compelling, and some of the supporting actors are very good--I especially admire the transsexual hairdresser.  But I find the central character Piper annoying, especially her tendency to whine. (One comment in The Huffington Post suggested that she's intentionally annoying!) The sexual politics in the main storyline doesn't really interest me:  Piper used to be the lesbian lover of drug smuggler Alex, illegally moving cash for her, but now she's engaged to Larry, then she's serving a year in the same prison as Alex, and Larry finds out that Alex ratted her out, but lies to her about it to avoid worsening her situation, then Piper becomes Alex' lover again...

The "bourgeois bohemian" background of Piper and her fiance is a pretty easy satirical target, and a lot of the humor feels sour.  (Kohan's earlier series Weeds was quite uneven too.) Also, I should mention that the opening-credit sequence is unusually obtuse and unimaginative:  we see one closeup after another of the convicts' mouth, then they switch to repeated closeups of their eyes!  I guess they wanted an "in your face" effect.