I recently finished the second season of OITNB and I had to sit and let everything sink in before I dived into a review. Just be warned that this review may contain some spoilers so if you haven't seen it yet be warned.
From the get go you can tell that OITNB was made for binge watching because it isn't a show where you can watch one episode and be done with it, every episode flows into the next seamlessly. After watching the first episode I was kind of let down because I had only watched the first episode and nothing else. The first episode in season two throws Piper into a new prison and this is where I went "what?", why would you throw away all the characters that we grew to love and enjoy watching but after slowly watching the season you realize that the first episode is essential to the series as it isn't entirely about Piper but her relation with Vause and adds to the development of Vause's character. Yes Vause did betray Piper but we slowly realise that regardless of this, the outside world is hard to adjust to for everyone, something which we also saw in season one when Taystee was released only to find that it was extremely hard to adjust to life out of prison after being accustomed to it for so long.
The second episode however fixes many things that fans were let down by in the first, that is we finally return to Litchfield and see all the inmates we grew to love. It is here that we finally see Taystee's background and the characters that influenced her to become who she is now, one of these characters who goes on to become the antagonist of this season: Vee. Vee is teased at the end of episode two when she is seen in the prison along side new inmate Soso and the returning Piper who is still pissed by Vause's betrayal.
Vee is an important character in this season as we at first like her character then slowly episode by episode begin to despise her. What make Vee so important? She is ruthless, manipulative and will do anything to gain power and on top of that this isn't her first time in Litchfield. We do see sprinkles of Vee's story throughout the season and her past relationship with Red and Taystee. From the get go Vee starts to manipulate Crazy Eyes and act as her mother figure which in turn makes Crazy Eyes loyal to Vee only to be struck down at the end of the season when she along with the other black inmates are betrayed by Vee. Seeing Crazy Eyes react to Vee's betrayal was hands down on of the most tear jerking moments in OITNB, Vee's betrayal played a heavy toll on Crazy Eyes and it hurts to see that she just can't catch a break. Hopefully in season 3, Crazy Eyes gets a happy story line because the past two seasons she has just been burned constantly by others and I don't think I can bear to see that again.
Another character that is heavily affected by the introduction of Vee is Pussay who now has to fight for her friendship with Taystee as Vee uses her prior relationship to Taystee to manipulate her into ditching Pussay. Over the course of the season we see the constant struggle between Pussay and Taystee as Pussay tries to convince Taystee and the other black inmates that Vee is no good for anyone of them. This ultimately ends in Pussay losing everything she has, her friends, her job and almost her life until Taystee wakes up and sees Vee for who she really is.
As you can tell by now Vee is not good news at all. In last season the Latinos took over the kitchen leaving Red to gain power from other avenues in the prison such as smuggling in contraband in through the sewers. This along side Vee's tobacco and heroin smuggling creates a massive fight for power within the prison which is suspenseful to watch. Red has tried to fight Vee in the past and loses, after Vee finds out about Red's method of smuggling contraband she demands a piece of the system to smuggle her goods which leads to an intense confrontation between the two. Red being the good natured character she has been since season 1 tries and fails to kill Vee when she has the chance because of their past relationship in which there were kind of friends, but as you may guess Vee doesn't care and almost kills Red in the penultimate episode. In many ways Red was victorious this season as she slowly won back her family after the stuff she had done back in season 1.
From the get go you can tell that OITNB was made for binge watching because it isn't a show where you can watch one episode and be done with it, every episode flows into the next seamlessly. After watching the first episode I was kind of let down because I had only watched the first episode and nothing else. The first episode in season two throws Piper into a new prison and this is where I went "what?", why would you throw away all the characters that we grew to love and enjoy watching but after slowly watching the season you realize that the first episode is essential to the series as it isn't entirely about Piper but her relation with Vause and adds to the development of Vause's character. Yes Vause did betray Piper but we slowly realise that regardless of this, the outside world is hard to adjust to for everyone, something which we also saw in season one when Taystee was released only to find that it was extremely hard to adjust to life out of prison after being accustomed to it for so long.
The second episode however fixes many things that fans were let down by in the first, that is we finally return to Litchfield and see all the inmates we grew to love. It is here that we finally see Taystee's background and the characters that influenced her to become who she is now, one of these characters who goes on to become the antagonist of this season: Vee. Vee is teased at the end of episode two when she is seen in the prison along side new inmate Soso and the returning Piper who is still pissed by Vause's betrayal.
Vee is an important character in this season as we at first like her character then slowly episode by episode begin to despise her. What make Vee so important? She is ruthless, manipulative and will do anything to gain power and on top of that this isn't her first time in Litchfield. We do see sprinkles of Vee's story throughout the season and her past relationship with Red and Taystee. From the get go Vee starts to manipulate Crazy Eyes and act as her mother figure which in turn makes Crazy Eyes loyal to Vee only to be struck down at the end of the season when she along with the other black inmates are betrayed by Vee. Seeing Crazy Eyes react to Vee's betrayal was hands down on of the most tear jerking moments in OITNB, Vee's betrayal played a heavy toll on Crazy Eyes and it hurts to see that she just can't catch a break. Hopefully in season 3, Crazy Eyes gets a happy story line because the past two seasons she has just been burned constantly by others and I don't think I can bear to see that again.
Another character that is heavily affected by the introduction of Vee is Pussay who now has to fight for her friendship with Taystee as Vee uses her prior relationship to Taystee to manipulate her into ditching Pussay. Over the course of the season we see the constant struggle between Pussay and Taystee as Pussay tries to convince Taystee and the other black inmates that Vee is no good for anyone of them. This ultimately ends in Pussay losing everything she has, her friends, her job and almost her life until Taystee wakes up and sees Vee for who she really is.
As you can tell by now Vee is not good news at all. In last season the Latinos took over the kitchen leaving Red to gain power from other avenues in the prison such as smuggling in contraband in through the sewers. This along side Vee's tobacco and heroin smuggling creates a massive fight for power within the prison which is suspenseful to watch. Red has tried to fight Vee in the past and loses, after Vee finds out about Red's method of smuggling contraband she demands a piece of the system to smuggle her goods which leads to an intense confrontation between the two. Red being the good natured character she has been since season 1 tries and fails to kill Vee when she has the chance because of their past relationship in which there were kind of friends, but as you may guess Vee doesn't care and almost kills Red in the penultimate episode. In many ways Red was victorious this season as she slowly won back her family after the stuff she had done back in season 1.
Piper in this season wasn't developed much compared to season one, in this season the focus was more on the person that prison had turned her into. However in many senses she was still trying to reclaim the lfie she had on the outside which was ultimately crushed as Larry decided to sleep with Piper's best friend effectively finalising the end of Pipers relationship with Larry. We also see a slightly darker side of Piper in this season when she tries to sell Soso for a blanket amongst other questionable actions.
By far the weakest part of this season was Healy's story line and he turned into a more hateable character for me as he seems to only do things that benefit him which annoys me and on top of that it seemed that he did have a caring side but because of one incident where no one shows up to his counselling session and Healy goes ahead and cancels his counselling session all together which I thought was a baby tantrum move ultimately destroying any character development he made in the season. Alongside this story I found Daya and Bennet's baby dilemmas to be rather boring this season as all of it revolved around coming out which he did but only after Pornstache cam for a cameo and was put away for raping Daya. The final weak aspect of this season I found was Dogget and her crew (include Soso and her political ventures), Dogget annoyed me to no end last season which her harassment plights on Piper but this seasson she seemed tame and was brought down character wise with Healy for me.
One storyline which I found really enjoyable this season which unfortunately only fleshed out in the second half and that was Caputo's rise to power. We have all seen and kind of wanted this from season one because honestly Caputo is easily a better assistant warden compared to Figueroa and this season we got our wish with Figsy being being destroyed both career and life wise and Caputo becoming the assintant warden by the end of the season but it was unfortunate for Caputo that the season ended the way it did. Just so you guys are happy and surprised by the ending of the season I wont talk about the story lines which affect the final scenes of the season. I have also purposely not mentioned characters like Morello, Big Boo and so on so that you guys can enjoy the season without me spoiling too much in my review.
Overall this season I felt was much more engaging and interesting compared to the first as we finally got to see back stories on some of the more intriguing characters in the show and on many levels the story upped the ante while adding a memorable villain. I am definitely itching to see the next season as I want to see many of the story lines which were opened in this season be explored. I hope that next season we get to see Chang's back story because for some reason I wanna know her story.
This season gets four out of five Taylor Schilling heads, in many ways this season was better than the previous one but still had it's floors. Can't wait till the next season, too bad it is next year.
One storyline which I found really enjoyable this season which unfortunately only fleshed out in the second half and that was Caputo's rise to power. We have all seen and kind of wanted this from season one because honestly Caputo is easily a better assistant warden compared to Figueroa and this season we got our wish with Figsy being being destroyed both career and life wise and Caputo becoming the assintant warden by the end of the season but it was unfortunate for Caputo that the season ended the way it did. Just so you guys are happy and surprised by the ending of the season I wont talk about the story lines which affect the final scenes of the season. I have also purposely not mentioned characters like Morello, Big Boo and so on so that you guys can enjoy the season without me spoiling too much in my review.
Overall this season I felt was much more engaging and interesting compared to the first as we finally got to see back stories on some of the more intriguing characters in the show and on many levels the story upped the ante while adding a memorable villain. I am definitely itching to see the next season as I want to see many of the story lines which were opened in this season be explored. I hope that next season we get to see Chang's back story because for some reason I wanna know her story.
This season gets four out of five Taylor Schilling heads, in many ways this season was better than the previous one but still had it's floors. Can't wait till the next season, too bad it is next year.
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