S07.E13: Here's Where We Get Off

[sistermagpie]

14 hours ago, Dobian said:

Well Mad Men ended its run in 2015, so that show was still running when OITNB began its run.  The timeline was consistent.

Absolutely, Mad Men would still be on in Piper's timeline, but the action of S6 is pretty obviously referencing the world situation now with ICE raids in full swing, mass trials for children etc. and Red's wouldn't be referring to Russians leaking things in 2015.

[ThatsDarling]

On 8/14/2019 at 2:26 PM, sistermagpie said:

Oh yeah, it was blatantly fake. In the first season Piper was telling Larry not to watch Mad Men without her, clearly talking about a show that's still on. Then this season we're clearly dealing with 2019 and Red's making jokes about Russians leaking things despite having been in prison for years... They just embraced a science fiction bending of time.

OITNB had a floating timeline, which is relatively uncommon on live action TV shows (with the exception of soaps), but never bothered me too much. Every season takes place roughly in the present day, so if it’s 2018/2019 in S7, S1 is retconned as taking place in 2016/2017.

I totally see how this would bug people, though, because OITNB isn’t The Simpsons or a comic book series. But the writers and producers wanted to keep the show relevant to current day issues, which I understand as well. 

Edited August 18, 2019 by ThatsDarling

[Kel Varnsen]

On 8/12/2019 at 1:25 PM, iMonrey said:

I'm not sure I understand how Tiffany OD'd. That other girl was snorting lines right and left and she was fine, why did it kill Tiffany? Was it because her tolerance was so low since she was clean? Finding out she actually passed the GED was bittersweet.

They actually foreshadowed this earlier in the season. Someone, I think Dogett mentioned how it is not uncommon for addicts to OD after being clean for awhile. It's because their lose the tolerance for drugs that they had previously built up, but they still try to use the same amout they did in the past.

[sistermagpie]

9 minutes ago, ThatsDarling said:

OITNB had a floating timeline, which is relatively uncommon on live action TV shows (with the exception of soaps), but never bothered me too much. Every season takes place roughly in the present day, so if it’s 2018/2019 I’m S7, S1 is retconned as taking place in 2016/2017.

That was my reaction to it too. I was glad they made that choice. It would have been a shame to keep it to the original year. I just kept revising the timeline in my head, pretending that whenever it was now, Piper went in there X months before. In a way it's almost a comment on how time must work differently in prison.

[PeterPirate]

See, this is why it would have been good for the entire series to end on a shot of Piper writing a book about her experiences.  Then we could blame her for the warping of the time-space continuum. 

[tvisme]

On 8/18/2019 at 9:01 AM, Kel Varnsen said:

They actually foreshadowed this earlier in the season. Someone, I think Dogett mentioned how it is not uncommon for addicts to OD after being clean for awhile. It's because their lose the tolerance for drugs that they had previously built up, but they still try to use the same amout they did in the past.

I actually learned that while watching Intervention!  🙂

[RealReality]

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/amp/live-feed/immigration-detention-hotline-shut-down-orange-is-new-black-1234370

Well....that happened.  I won't get into the weeds....but damn does this ever seem tone deaf. 

[heatherchandler]

On 7/28/2019 at 9:12 AM, Blue Plastic said:

Pennsatucky's death really affected me.  Loved Suzanne and the guard singing Mountain Dew jingles at her memorial.  Sad to see that she passed her GED test but never knew it.

I saw that coming a mile away, but I liked it better when it happened on Shawshank Redemption. 

Same with Frieda hacking away at the wall under a poster.  Did the writers do this on purpose?

On 7/29/2019 at 9:33 PM, zibnchy said:

I'll admit I cried at the end.

I'm hard pressed to remember another relatively high profile show, that lasted more than a few seasons, where the ostensible "star" was such a non-factor. On her best day the character of Piper was annoying. Mostly she was just boring. Her big "love" with Alex was boring. McCullough had soooooo much more chemistry with Alex than Piper ever did. In the end Piper's story was just really not an integral part of the plot of the show. They could have written her out of the last three seasons and I doubt anyone would have noticed. I guess I really disliked Piper.

I didn't think she was a non-factor at all, and I didn't find her boring.

This season was not very good compared to the first few seasons, but at least it wasn't as bad as last season - that was awful! (IMO)

[Pallida]

Because I didn’t like last season, I put off this season for a bit, so late to the party!

I’m not sure what to think about Piper and Alex. Piper seems to be driving a car with Florida plates, and I assumed she was setting the route on her phone, which suggests she hadn’t been to the Ohio prison before. But maybe she was setting up music. However, she was wearing a ring that looked just like her prison marriage ring. 

I don’t see why she would be in Florida if she was still with Alex. 

[heatherchandler]

The writing (IMO) has been AWFUL these last two seasons.  I loved the first season, even kind of liked the riot season.  Were new writers brought in?  How could the storytelling be so good, and then get so bad?

[Dmarie019]

On 8/12/2019 at 12:25 PM, iMonrey said:

I'm not sure I understand how Tiffany OD'd. That other girl was snorting lines right and left and she was fine, why did it kill Tiffany? Was it because her tolerance was so low since she was clean? Finding out she actually passed the GED was bittersweet.

On 8/18/2019 at 11:01 AM, Kel Varnsen said:

They actually foreshadowed this earlier in the season. Someone, I think Dogett mentioned how it is not uncommon for addicts to OD after being clean for awhile. It's because their lose the tolerance for drugs that they had previously built up, but they still try to use the same amout they did in the past.

So it was the same baggy that Daya originally gave to Tastee to kill herself and then Tastee gave it back. Which I thought it was maybe the same stuff that Daya gave to "Daddy" that caused her to OD.  So I was slighty confused on how it was some suicidal drug but then Daya and her crew could use it no problem and then Penn OD's on it.  Do we even know how "daddy" OD on the stuff?  Or did they both just take more than they should have? 

[ElectricBoogaloo]

My three favorite things about the final season of OITNB:

(1) Fig, who I found insufferable when she was introduced, lied about being pregnant so that she could help a woman with her unwanted pregnancy

(2) Seeing the little montage of what the characters were up to at the end of the last episode

(3) Watching the actors say good bye over the closing credits

I'm glad we got a hopeful and open ended wrap up for just about everyone. The stories that we saw end badly (Maritza being deported, Karla being left in the desert, Tiffany's OD, Lorna and Red in Florida, Hellman becoming warden, etc) were realistic and tempered some of the more positive endings we saw with characters like Taystee and Nicky.

It was a satisfying series finale to a show that was uneven throughout its run.

As for the timeline of the series, wasn't Maria the one who was pregnant at the beginning of S1? Her daughter still looked pretty young in the final episode so the seven seasons covered maybe three or four years at most. Daya's daughter still looked on the young end of being a toddler when she was shown with Pornstache which fits that 3-4 year timeline.

In a weird coincidence, while I was finishing up the last season of this show, I saw a play that starred one of the COs! I didn't recognize him at all so I didn't realize who he was until I got home and read through the actor bios in the program.

Edited October 30, 2019 by ElectricBoogaloo

[Ray Adverb]

It was interesting to watch this season because like Piper's brother, I am also living with a bisexual former inmate who is waiting for her wife to get out of prison.  My roommate greatly enjoys the show and said that Poussey Washington reminded her a lot of her wife.  She says it was pretty accurate in the early seasons but then kinda went off the rails.

I am glad that they tackled the immigration issue without being TOO heavy handed.  Most of the time, when a TV show tries to make a political point, it comes off as preaching to the choir.  It's easy to make your argument look good when you build an entire reality to support it.  Sort of like what Criminal Minds does with the efficacy of criminal profiling.

I just wish something terrible had happened to Tasha Jefferson.  I knew they'd chicken out and she'd never kill herself though.

On 10/30/2019 at 6:12 AM, ElectricBoogaloo said:

As for the timeline of the series, wasn't Maria the one who was pregnant at the beginning of S1? Her daughter still looked pretty young in the final episode so the seven seasons covered maybe three or four years at most. Daya's daughter still looked on the young end of being a toddler when she was shown with Pornstache which fits that 3-4 year timeline.

The whole first 6 seasons took place in less than 2 years.  Piper had a pretty short sentence which ended even earlier.

[Robert]

On ‎8‎/‎19‎/‎2019 at 1:35 AM, ThatsDarling said:

OITNB had a floating timeline, which is relatively uncommon on live action TV shows (with the exception of soaps), but never bothered me too much. Every season takes place roughly in the present day, so if it’s 2018/2019 in S7, S1 is retconned as taking place in 2016/2017.

I totally see how this would bug people, though, because OITNB isn’t The Simpsons or a comic book series. But the writers and producers wanted to keep the show relevant to current day issues, which I understand as well. 

My issue with the floating timeline is that it really only became a thing in the last two seasons.

I know as a show, it wasn't perfect and things slipped in that didn't match it being 2013/4 later down the track, but for the most part Production went out of the way in the first five seasons to match the seasons up with Seasons 1-4 each spread over apx 3-4 months (everybody rugged up in Season 2 but summery in Season 4) and half the reason Season 5 was set over three days was because they where running out of space in Piper's original sentence (though the Show Powers that Be always where wishy-washy if she had any extra time added).

Season six was actually not that bad following the original timeline other then Morello's pregnancy advancing really fast. It was only the last episode of season 6 and Season 7 that threw the timeline out the window by introducing 2019 issues and went with the floating timeline.

Or maybe the entire prison, as a result of the riot was thrown in a time eddy and resurfaced Philadephia Experiment style 5 years later LOL

Edited September 15, 2020 by Robert

[Vausemaniac]

On 7/28/2019 at 9:41 AM, kieyra said:

Randomly and I could be wrong: due to Piper’s voiceover at the end about clean slates, and something about their body language during the final prison meeting, I kind of took it that Piper was just visiting Alex in prison as a friend. Maybe I misread it, or it was intentionally ambiguous.

To use one of Alex's favourite expressions - are you fcking kidding me?

There was nothing ambiguous about Alex & Piper's final prison meeting. If that guard wasn't there, they would have done a lot more than grasp onto each other's hands. Piper moved to Ohio so she could be with Alex, her wife. 

And as for the "friend" comment, as Alex said to Piper (when she was stuck in the dryer in 1x08): "We were never friends, Piper.....Not for a second. I loved you. I loved having sex with you."

[GenerationX]

My wife and I spent the last month binge watching the entire series.  There was certainly pathos throughout, but the first couple of seasons had quite a bit of humor to them, as well, and were more enjoyable.

For us, the show went downhill at the point Taystee turned down the offer during the riot.  The writing got lazier and the characters more cliched.  I didn't care about any of the new characters in seasons 6 and 7.

I applaud the show for Taystee's ultimate fate.  She became the series protagonist, and her ending worked.  Unfair and bittersweet, but rang true.  The fates of all the original cast were done well, actually.

Finally, I have to give major kudos to the actors who played Aleida, Cindy, and Tiffany.  I don't know if any of them won any Emmy awards for their portrayals, but they were simply outstanding throughout the series.