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Positive:
133
Mixed:
18
Negative:
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Critic Reviews
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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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 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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Uncle BarkyJun 23, 2015
Season 3 Review:
This is still a quality, provocative series that’s unlike any other and has already been renewed for Season 4. But much work needs to be done during the off-season--beginning with restoring an ominous sense of disorder and peril in a place that’s gone more than a little too soft and soapy.
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Jul 16, 2013
Jul 10, 2019
Season 7 Review:
For as impossible a task as tying every loose end is, these last 13 episodes acquit themselves fairly well. But repetitive flashbacks and a couple hugely ambitious new plots unbalance the season and cause the series to make a shakier landing than it might have with some sharper focus.
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Jul 27, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Season six isn’t as messy as the show’s fifth season--which took place over just three days and chronicled a prison riot--but it’s also nowhere near as ambitious. It’s just good enough to make me interested in watching season seven, but not good enough to make me want to see anything beyond that.
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Jul 27, 2018
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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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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Jul 16, 2018
Season 6 Review:
Season 6 is indeed a marked improvement on Season 5. In fact, it’s even pretty good. But it also ends up highlighting the series’ overall weaknesses, making it more clear than ever just how frustrating it is when a show with this much promise loses sight of what could make it great.
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Jun 12, 2017
Season 5 Review:
This season of Orange gets better and better the longer it goes (though, weirdly, the slasher homage is dropped into the middle of the otherwise very good back half of the season), and the final three episodes go from strength to strength. ... There are a lot of plot holes and missteps along the way. But that doesn’t negate the power of the closing passages of the season.
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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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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:
The show can be applauded for giving opportunities to a wide range of talented actresses and for representing a multiplicity of ethnicities and orientations in its characters, but the stories built around them are notable for their melodramatic underpinnings and an occasional willingness to resort to clichés.... But Ms. Kohan and her writers, abetted by their excellent cast, know how to leave us laughing.
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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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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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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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TV Guide MagazineJun 8, 2017
Season 5 Review:
The series stretches three days and long nights of the soul over 13 fitfully compelling but more often squirm-inducing chapters. [12-25 Jun 2017, p.14]
Jun 11, 2015
Season 3 Review:
The structure of most OITNB episodes--in which one character is brought to the fore and we see flashbacks to that person’s past history, details about how that woman or man was shaped and became the person she or he is--has by now, in the new season, become predictable, either comfortingly or tediously so, depending on your degree of engagement with the series.... It’s all pretty pleasant, even if the jokes are often corny.
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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 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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The 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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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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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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Jul 8, 2013
Season 1 Review:
An irritating comedy-drama. [15 Jul 2013]
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