Orange is the New Black

It wasn't as immediately satisfying as season two, but it was, in some ways, even more important to the run of the show as a whole, and it built to a final set of episodes that are as good as anything Orange has attempted so far.

Fortunately, the series is able to carry on making the ebb and flow of life at Litchfield matter even in spite of the writers' efforts to keep Piper at the center.

After 26 episodes, it's as funny, moving, compelling, and fresh as ever.

Everything operates on a slightly heightened plane, one that ensures that the show is the most dramedy-ish dramedy on television, and one that ensures that Orange is not for everyone. But for those who love this world, it's truly addictive.

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.

A quieter start to Season 3 feels welcome but never flat.

Orange occasionally seems overpopulated, assuming the audience doesn’t hold all of the characters in equal regard. Orange works better when it’s focused on what unites its inmates, not what divides them.

Jenji Kohan's series about inmates at a women's prison is as addictive as ever. Intermittently hilarious, occasionally infuriating and still very much the drama that new Emmy rules have declared it.

Season three makes no significant step forward, but improves by spreading its charm out to the supporting cast.

Orange Is the New Black is in a state of wheel-spinning and status quo, with its many characters repeating scenarios that have played out before. And that’s mostly fine since the women of Litchfield (and their guards) have become some of the best characters on TV.

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.

A great ensemble cast and characters who grow in complexity, and humanity, episode by episode. If you didn't know them after the second season, you will get to know them well in the third.

It’s a strong start to the season that continues in the second episode that introduces Mary Steenburgen as the mother of Pornstache.

Season 3 of Orange might be a slow peel with some sour bites, but its overwhelming richness reaffirms its standing as one of television’s ripest, zestiest shows.

This season has done a much better job at focusing on the characters and stories that really pop, and sidelining or writing out the relationships that were boring.

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.

Orange remains as sharp and funny and poignant as ever.... It's one of TV's very best shows, no matter how you slice it.

In the extended picture, it looks like season three might be playing a bit more with the larger concept of freedom--through the lens, naturally, of those who don’t have it.

The Orange cast is still bringing the same freshness to their performances to which we’ve become accustomed. And that may be the one reason to stick with the series.

Season 3 is an utterly confident mix of gritty comedy and affecting, underplayed drama.

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.

There’s inevitably a bit of unevenness to the quality of the stories.... but the series is blessed with a concept, with the right stewardship, that’s built to last.