The present day action often proves just as informative as the returning episodic flashbacks, which shine the spotlight on character histories only previously suggested in Season 1. Most of the 13 episodes are devoted to filling in character histories we haven’t seen before, some you already expected to be worth exploring, but just as many that you wouldn’t. It’s a smart decision for two reasons: first, it further strengthens the show’s foundations, allowing previously tertiary inmates and prison staff to take on expanded roles through the season. Second, it reduces the risk of Lost-style paradoxes, wherein character actions in the present are informed by previous tragedies and defining history we weren’t privy to the last time we jumped back through time.
Few of the flashbacks in Season 2 are up to high watermark set by the batch we got in Season 1, and sometimes feel as though they’re not justifying the use of time better spent focusing on the here and now. Orange is the New Black is such an embarrassment of riches at this point that we rarely get to check in on everyone we’d like to in a given episode, even though most round out to be over 55 minutes. Some character arcs develop with occasionally awkward pacing, as events from one episode will bubble on the backburner until the next time we can get the right combination of people into the same room. Add to that the fact that certain characters have never been as strong as others, and 13 hours just doesn’t seem like enough time to do justice to absolutely everyone. The more time the season devotes to foregrounding the affecting and complicated relationship between fan favorites Taystee (Danielle Brooks) and Poussey (Samira Wiley), the more of a buzzkill it is to visit Larry (Jason Biggs), Piper’s yutz of an ex-fiancée.
The show’s freewheeling focus produces many varied arcs over the course of the season, ranging in size and dramatic importance (including a fun, frivolous sex competition between Nichols (Natasha Lyonne) and Boo (Lea DeLaria)), but taken as a collective, you can see how every single thread developed out of the same spawning pool. The characters of Orange is the New Black are multifaceted both in their personalities and their flaws; it doesn’t forget the usually awful crimes – legal or personal – these characters have committed, but doesn’t outright condemn them for their actions, or pigeonhole them either. Characters you’d previously refer to as “quirky” may be revealed as full on disturbed, yet are never fully without our sympathy. Though problematically forced to fill the role of villain last season, Pennsatucky takes on a new light after trading in her belief in the pearly gates for a new set of pearly whites, and pairing up with Season 1’s other outright heavy, Healy (Michael Harney).
