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On demand on Netflix
The second season of Netflix’s breakout hit dramatic comedy about a women’s prison debuted last week, and I binged on all thirteen episodes in one sitting. The second season is better than the first. By focusing less on annoyingly entitled blonde goody good Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), and much more on the other residents at the prison, creator Jenji Kohan has taken a fish-out-of-water comedy and turned it into an extremely complex ensemble show about morality, perseverance and the horrors of the American prison system. The introduction of psychopathic drug dealer named Vee (Lorraine Toussaint) and her attempts to upend the power balances between the black, Latino and white inmates fuels the plot, while each episode provides a back story to a different inmate caught up in the struggle. In particular, the subplots involving cancer-stricken bank robber Rosa (Barbara Rosenblat), sensitive lesbian Poussey (Samira Wiley) and romance-obsessed Lorna (Yael Stone) are powerful. The story arc of the season is engaging enough to make it hard to stop watching the whole series at once, but the fabulous writing makes the experience so much fun.
