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Mixed:
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Negative:
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Critic Reviews
Jun 8, 2017
Season 5 Review:
A few of the strands are engaging, particularly those involving the inmates led by Taystee (Danielle Brooks) who seek justice for Poussey, even if overacting is afoot in some of those scenes. But most of the strands are either dull because of the slightness of their plots or merely irritating.
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Jun 9, 2017
Season 5 Review:
The fallout, partly because of the size of the sprawling cast, partly because of the tonal shifts, sometimes within the same scene, can be jarring. Orange nails the dramatic moments. It’s the comedy that ranges from banter to slapstick and back that feels out of place, especially as the rioting wears on.
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Jun 8, 2017
Season 5 Review:
Orange is the New Black has always been more about characters than story, but the structure of Season 5 -- after the fourth's emotional cliffhanger -- puts that formula to the test, as the prison-uprising plot line drags on until it's easy to start feeling a little stir crazy.
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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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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 17, 2018
IndieWireMay 30, 2017
Season 5 Review:
This season was almost told in real time, with the 13 episodes taking place over the course of about days. ... It’s a choice that does elevate this season and give it new focus and directive. ... But, as the show has always struggled with tone, in later episodes the series delves far more into horror tropes than you might expect, in legitimately horrifying ways.
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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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Jul 18, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Orange Is the New Black remains a worthwhile series, retaining its place as one of the strongest Netflix dramas. But the show’s commitment to telling all of its stories has become wildly overgrown, like a tree desperately in need of pruning. It has everything it needs, but it also has way, way too much.
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Jun 9, 2017
Season 5 Review:
Even the best performances and moments suffer from the season’s lack of focus, inability to shift tonal gears smoothly, and Netflix bloat (the siege might’ve worked better as a more compact arc rather than a 13-episode extravaganza). Points for audacity notwithstanding--this is another instance of an ambitious and unusual series writing conceptual checks that its storytelling prowess can’t cash.
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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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Jun 16, 2017
Season 5 Review:
Viewers are likely to be just as polarized by the riot, which undermines the humanity of some of Litchfield’s inmates by showing them embracing violent vengeance. Like it or hate it, though, this season of the award-winning show manages to feel more relevant than ever.
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Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
An irritating comedy-drama. [15 Jul 2013]
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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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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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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Jul 27, 2018
Season 6 Review:
When both are in balance (Season Two’s arc with Vee), the series feels special, and like nothing else even within Peak TV. When they’re not (as was the case in the riot season), it can be hard to see how the two halves are part of the same show, for quality reasons as much as tonal ones. Season Six is in that more uneven vein.
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Jul 17, 2018
Season 6 Review:
The series has always treated its characters with indiscriminate humanity and nuance, and it regards its new characters in a similar fashion. ... These characters are a refreshing addition to the series, but audiences may be left wanting for more information about all the other Orange Is the New Black regulars who were sent to a prison in Ohio.
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Jun 8, 2017
Season 5 Review:
Though the compressed timeline may have seemed like a way to narrow the show’s focus, it ironically causes plotlines to feel more vague and messy. The result is a season that, remarkably, sees the series biting off more than it can chew for the first time in its run.
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Jun 17, 2016
Season 4 Review:
For all its faults, from some off-kilter performances and sometimes clumsy articulations of overarching themes, Orange Is the New Black feels as sublime as ever for so intuitively recognizing that even the little joys that prison life can bring to an inmate are deceptive, as they too hinge on a relinquishing of power.
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Jul 16, 2013
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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Jun 11, 2015
Season 3 Review:
Three seasons in, just about everyone on the show is loveable. This makes for a thoroughly enjoyable, but not particularly varied or gripping viewing experience: the show tugs the same heartstrings, works the same funny bones.... Orange would rather make prison look good than make its characters look bad, a jarring streak of timidity.
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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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Jul 27, 2018The Daily BeastJun 9, 2017
Season 5 Review:
In addition to being OITNB’s riskiest season yet, this is also its messiest. The lows are pretty low. ... But the highs are the show at its best: profound and funny, and simultaneously spotlighting and elucidating the ways in which women and minorities are oppressed, villainized, and ignored, often all at once. Still, that surfaces the show’s most fatal and longest-running flaw. There are so many characters—too many, in fact.
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The Daily BeastJun 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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The Daily BeastJun 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 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 20, 2018
Season 6 Review:
The story that propels the 13 episodes is more focused and on a smaller scale than what was attempted last year, which isn't entirely unwelcome. But it's not always clear which big issues and ideas the writers set out to address in the new season. As it stands, Orange Is the New Black remains a show so full of rich characters, ripping dialogue and great performances that I can focus on those things and not the characters or storylines that don't work.
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Jun 8, 2017
Season 5 Review:
In some cases, the heightened stakes of the season help deliver some of the show's best performances yet and beats of staggering emotion. In other cases, a series that has reliably been careful to treat even the ugliest behavior with nuance pushes to such extremes that it threatens to undermine a lot of what came before.
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