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Critic Reviews
TV Guide MagazineJun 23, 2016
Season 4 Review:
Orange loses little steam in its fourth tour of duty, with extremes of dark comedy and bitter tragedy, often heartbreaking in its depiction of metal illness and addiction, devastating in its escalation of racial conflict after the prison's cold-blooded new corporate owners flood the cell block with new bodies, triggering a demographic power shift. [27 Jun - 10 Jul 2016, p.15]
Jul 12, 2013
Season 1 Review:
In Jenji Kohan’s magnificent and thoroughly engrossing new series, Orange Is the New Black, prison is still the pits. But it is also filled with the entire range of human emotion and stories, all of which are brought vividly to life in a world where a stick of gum could ignite either a romance or a death threat.
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Uncle BarkyJul 11, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Schilling, Prepon and Mulgrew are uniformly terrific throughout, whether in prison garb or flashback civilian clothes. But other characters are equally compelling, giving this series innumerable stories to tell for hopefully many seasons to come. Based on the first six of 13 episodes, Orange is the New Black has passed virtually every test with flying colors.
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TV Guide MagazineJul 18, 2019
Season 7 Review:
There are moments throughout the 13 episodes when you might also wish to seek release, but don't bail before the poignant final bows over the credits, which reminds us what a remarkable and diverse ensemble once wire the orange. [22 Jul - 4 Aug 2019, p.7]
Jun 8, 2017
Season 5 Review:
Nothing ever feels forced or repetitive about the show and its confined setting. In fact, it feels like the restriction has spurred even more creativity from the writers this year. There’s a fear and a scrappy anger to the dialogue and interactions happening around the prison, even more so than before.
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Jun 17, 2016
Season 4 Review:
This fourth season is not pretending that things are funnier or more upbeat than they really are. Either by accident or design, Kohan and her team have found a way to pull the rug out from under its audience, with a sudden reminder of the horrors of mass incarceration.
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Jun 12, 2015
Season 3 Review:
This season is more concerned with continuing to make its way through the lives of the women who occupy Litchfield Prison, and, with a few misses here and there, is so lived-in in its narrative voice and settled in its “Backstory of the Week” format that you’re quickly at peace and on board with the season’s new direction and slightly more upbeat tone.
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Jun 6, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Just as in TV’s first flashback-heavy, multi-character drama “Lost,” it’s the flashbacks that deepen and humanize the characters, and that makes Orange a unique and outstanding series. Piper’s story may draw viewers to the show, but it’s her fellow inmates who make time spent inside this women’s prison worthwhile.
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Jun 5, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Orange Is the New Black is as scatological as ever in the second season and leans awfully heavily on lesbian sex to the point of repetition. But where it shines most is when it shows the sense of dislocation inmates can have from being shuffled around with little explanation. Prisoners come and go, and they all seem to have a story.
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RogerEbert.comJun 5, 2014
Season 2 Review:
The memorable characters, playful tone, and subtle examination of culture, gender, and social roles continue to impress, as does the underrated ensemble, led by more confident work from Taylor Schilling than in the first season. If anything feels different, that’s it. There’s a striking sense of confidence across the board.
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Jun 5, 2014
Season 2 Review:
Almost every woman is a good person who made or was forced to make a bad decision, instead of something more sinister, more evil, or even more banal--as if these too were not human characteristics.... But if this sentimental streak is a little soft-headed, it springs from the series’ huge heart and its expansive humanism.
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Jun 2, 2014
Season 2 Review:
It’s better than the breakout first season, even, finally equalizing the wildly--though thrillingly--undulating tones and sprawling cast of characters into a streamlined and balanced, but just as original and bracing, mode of storytelling that makes the 13 episodes more bingeworthy than ever.
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Jul 15, 2019
Season 7 Review:
Ending a long-running series is fraught with obligation — story lines must be wrapped up, questions must be answered, characters must be honored. It’s a daunting task for a show with such a sprawling ensemble — there are 19 stars listed in the opening credits alone — but overall, OITNB delivers.
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Jul 11, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Yes, there are a few stereotypes--a guard nicknamed Pornstache is exactly the sleazeball you expect in a women’s prison series. But, for the most part, the show strikes a fresh tone, allowing for real tenderness, social commentary and lots of anxiety in a classic fish-out-of-water scenario.
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The GuardianDec 3, 2019
Season 7 Review:
The show mostly resists the temptation to say goodbye with a greatest hits tour, but it certainly gets the band playing some familiar tunes. It will be hard to find any fan with a complaint, given that all the favourites, and some surprises, get at least a little screen time, especially in the final episode. Even the chickens make a comeback. Not all of it works – Daya’s evolution into ice-cold top dog is cartoonish, for example – but it never lacks heart.
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Jul 29, 2019
Season 7 Review:
The show’s humor is key to its appeal, but in the weaker midseason episodes, it can feel like spoonfuls of sugar to make the pedantic bitterness go down. ... And yet for all its faults, it’s difficult to think of another show that stares so unblinkingly at the most egregious excesses of American capitalism and bureaucracy and injustice, and does so while rarely losing sight of the humanity of the people, especially the women, involved.
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TV Guide MagazineJul 19, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Season 6 is a return to near-peak form. [23 Jul - 5 Aug 2018, p.10]
Jun 9, 2017
Season 5 Review:
In its fifth season, the most important takeaway is that Orange Is the New Black” is a show that continues to take gutsy, filthy risks--port-a-potties are a major plot device this season, with all the scatological torture that implies --when it could be resting on its beige-uniformed laurels. It works.
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Jun 8, 2017
Season 5 Review:
Wwhether they say so or not, everyone seems aware that prison sieges don’t end well. That knowledge invests the season with purpose. More than ever, Orange is like a speeding vehicle with a wheel missing: It doesn’t always steer steadily, you can feel the chassis shimmying and straining, but the velocity is urgent.
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Jun 16, 2016
Season 4 Review:
Season 4 feels more like a drama than ever, and that’s not a bad thing. “Orange Is the New Black” has introduced a multitude of characters we don’t usually see on television and given them complicated and intimate relationships that speak volumes about issues not contained to prison’s impenetrable walls.
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ColliderJun 16, 2016
Season 4 Review:
Time management has never been the show’s strength, and the flashbacks can really put a spotlight on those woes. And yet, spending any small amount of time again with Taystee (Danielle Brooks) who has a new office job with Caputo, or Crazy Eyes (Uzo Aduba) as she wades through the waters of a doomed romance, or Lorna (Yael Stone) engaging her imaginary life with a real-live husband, feels like seeing old friends.
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Jun 11, 2015
Jun 8, 2015
Season 3 Review:
Its world-building is so strong there’s too much material: the episodes tend to run near a full hour and yet feel jam-packed.... Even if it sometimes builds soapboxes and strawmen (Taryn Manning’s Pennsatucky sometimes exists to be a fake-toothed mouthpiece for Ignorant Conservative America), it remains as fresh and interesting as when it began.
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Jun 5, 2014
Season 2 Review:
It's not quite perfection. Nearly everything to do with the character of Piper's fiancé, Larry (Jason Biggs), somewhat based on Kerman's now-husband Larry Bloom, seems problematic to me. Similarly, in emphasizing the humanity of the inmates, their warders have been made to look, for the most part, pathetic, foolish or monstrous. That is remedied in part this season by a deeper look at the staff, even as some of the more difficult prisoners, like Uzo Aduba's Crazy Eyes, are brought into better focus.
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Jun 5, 2014
Season 2 Review:
The problem isn’t the sentiments but the clunky way they’re expressed--as if the writers are reserving the good dialogue for the regulars, along with the empathy.... The missteps are easy to forgive because, in content as well as form, Orange is a modestly revolutionary show.
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Jul 10, 2013
Season 1 Review:
Schilling's Piper, engaged to the supportive Larry (Jason Biggs) and dodging the attentions of her former lover (Laura Prepon) as well as more aggressively amorous inmates, displays a nice comic sense as she encounters one prison Catch-22 after another. The supporting cast is a strong one. But it's Kate Mulgrew, as the inmate who rules the prison kitchen with an cast-iron fist, who steals every scene she's in, and should leave Netflix's streaming subscribers begging for more.
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