What I’m Watching: Orange is the New Black (Season Premiere)

Orange is the New Black: Season 4, Episode 1 “Work That Body for Me” (B+)

I really like this show, and I’m excited to have it back to enjoy throughout this summer. This episode started exactly where the last episode left off, with all the inmates frolicking in the lake and most of them coming back inside to a far more captive existence. It’s a relief that Alex didn’t get killed, and I love the way that her near-murder brought Lolly in to her life into a fantastic way. Her help in covering up the murder was highly entertaining, and it all led to a far more gruesome dismemberment of the body and subsequent planting of the evidence under a beautiful garden. It’s good to see Crazy Eyes identified as the more sane one, returning to the prison after licking lead and then gleefully eating breakfast all by herself at 4:30am. Life inside the prison has changed tremendously with the addition of the likes of Brad William Henke’s tyrannical guard and the implementation of new regulations like an earlier breakfast to feed everyone without the supply to last through the whole population. Piper’s newly achieved thug status, as hilariously torn apart by Chang, is going to get her into serious trouble with some of the new inmates, but, like last season, Piper is no longer a main character and shouldn’t even be featured that prominently. Judy King, on the other hand, is going to play a big part, and chatting with Luschek for hours before being allowed to sleep comfortably on Healy’s office floor suggests that she is going to have this prison and its new hapless warden running in circles trying to figure out how to accommodate her. It’s going to be a great and wild season – I can tell already.