--- description: More than a bold experiment in representational sleight of hand, 'Orange' changed TV forever. title: Orange Is the New Black Is the Decade's Most Important Show image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltc020d34f6399b700/698a0045db2987daaa263dc2/oitnb_707_unit_01125_r.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Entertainment](/section/entertainment/) ## Entertainment Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close * [Television](/tag/television/) ## Television Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close # Forget _Game of Thrones_. _Orange Is the New Black_ Is the Most Important TV Show of the Decade  by [Judy Berman](/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close TV Critic Jul 22, 2019 10:00 PM CUT  ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACKJoJo Whilden/Netflix  by [Judy Berman](/author/judy-berman/)  ## Judy Berman Update your preferences in [Account Settings](/account/preferences/) Close TV Critic Jul 22, 2019 10:00 PM CUT “Prison is just not as romantic as all those ’70s exploitation movies made it out to be,” Nicky Nichols, an inmate played by Natasha Lyonne, says to Alex Vause (Laura Prepon) in the emotional seventh and final season of _Orange Is the New Black._ “I want my money back.” The joke works on multiple levels: Nicky and Alex are lesbians. They’re also privileged white women who couldn’t have foreseen what awaited them when they reported to Litchfield Penitentiary, the fictional upstate New York minimum-security prison where the show’s first five seasons take place. But the quip is also a winking commentary on the expectations viewers have been projecting on the Netflix dramedy even since before its July 2013 premiere. Created by [Jenji Kohan](https://time.com/collection-post/70867/jenji-kohan-2014-time-100/ "undefined"), the maverick writer-producer behind Showtime’s _Weeds_, and based on [Piper Kerman’s memoir](http://content.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1985134,00.html "undefined") of the same cumbersome name, _Orange_ sounded, at first, like a pulpy look at women in prison as seen through the audience-friendly eyes of a pretty bisexual WASP from gentrified Brooklyn (Taylor Schilling). In fact, as fans—[105 million of them, according to Netflix](https://variety.com/2019/tv/news/netflix-105-million-watched-orange-is-the-new-black-1203271524/ "undefined")—who’ve made it both [the most-watched original series and the best-loved show in the service’s library](https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/netflix-orange-is-the-new-black-stranger-things-most-poular-1203267573/ "undefined") are well aware, _Orange_ was always a more ambitious project than that. Kohan famously conceived Schilling’s heavily fictionalized Piper Chapman as a Trojan horse for smuggling in dozens of women Hollywood historically ignored—poor women, black women, brown women, trans women, immigrant women, elderly women, mentally ill women, women with double-digit dress sizes. When HBO and Showtime failed to open their gates, she took the horse to Netflix. Kohan’s timing was perfect: New to developing original programming, the service granted her a lot of leeway. Brought to bear on her expansive vision at a critical moment in the rise of streaming, that freedom yielded a series that smoothed the transition from cable’s 2000s golden age to the vibrant and diverse, if fragmented, era that’s come to be known as Peak TV. More than a bold experiment in representational sleight of hand, _Orange_ became the most influential show of the decade.  A still from Netflix's 'Orange Is the New Black' JoJo Whilden/Netflix Six years may not seem like a long time in the history of TV. _Friends_ ran for a decade; _The Simpsons_ is about to turn 30\. But it would be hard to underestimate how much has changed on the small screen since 2013\. Netflix launched its first high-profile original, [_House of Cards_](http://entertainment.time.com/2013/01/31/review-house-of-cards-sinks-its-sharp-teeth-into-washington/ "undefined"), that February. Hulu and Amazon were also dipping toes into the original-­content pool, though the latter was essentially crowdsourcing and neither had produced a signature series. (Amazon’s [_Transparent_](https://time.com/3204275/transparent-a-breasted-development/ "undefined") arrived in 2014\. Hulu lacked a big hit until [_The Handmaid’s Tale_](https://time.com/4732788/handmaids-tale-review/ "undefined") premiered in April 2017.) As such, the phrase “binge watching” was just starting to gain currency when the first season of _Orange_—all 13 hours of it—showed up on Netflix. Viewers who now regularly consume a full season’s worth of a given series within 24 hours still weren’t sure that they could get used to this new form of couch potato–dom. Kohan’s show played no small part in [converting skeptics](https://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/the-great-orange-is-the-new-black-is-suddenly-the-best-netflix-binge-watch-series-yet/ "undefined"). I remember marathoning the season in a weekend, spurred on by my impatience to know everyone in _Orange_’s tremendous cast of characters. For better or worse, bingeing is now so common that a term for watching one episode of TV at a time would be more useful. Despite a consensus that we were living through a small-screen renaissance, casts were still depressingly homogeneous in 2013\. [Shonda Rhimes](https://time.com/collection/firsts/4898572/shonda-rhimes-firsts/ "undefined")’ shows were exceptions that proved the rule: When it debuted the previous year, _Scandal_ became the first network drama with a black female lead since the 1970s. With an Outstanding Drama short list consisting of _Mad Men_, _Game of Thrones_, _Downton Abbey_, _Homeland_, _House of Cards_ and winner _Breaking Bad_, the 2013 Emmy Awards were glutted with nominees that both starred and catered to white people, most of them straight and affluent.  Laverne Cox on the cover of TIME, 2014 Photograph by Peter Hapak for TIME _Orange_ broke that mold in just about every conceivable way. When it came to representation, this wasn’t merely the first prestige show since _The Wire_ built around poor and nonwhite people—or the rare program intended for a general audience that featured [more than a token queer regular](https://time.com/5630333/orange-is-the-new-black-queer-revolution-tv/ "undefined"). It also endowed each of these characters with stereotype-­defying specificity. In 2014, when this magazine declared that America had reached a “[transgender tipping point](https://time.com/135480/transgender-tipping-point/ "undefined"),” Laverne Cox’s breakthrough role as trans inmate Sophia Burset made her the face of that moment. For once, women whom mainstream society habitually ignored were being represented in pop culture as individuals with virtues and flaws, rather than as a monolithic mass of degenerates or vixens. The show’s mix of gallows humor and high tragedy disrupted genre categories to the extent that the Emmys moved it from comedy to drama between Seasons 1 and 2\. And over the years, its unflinching depiction of the American justice system has both mirrored and catalyzed intensifying debates around mass incarceration, private prisons, systemic racism, economic inequality and police violence against people of color. Some of these story lines have been controversial: Kohan got blowback for having a guard kill Samira Wiley’s bighearted Poussey Washington at the end of Season 4\. Maybe the point was that even Litchfield’s gentlest inmate could be a casualty of police brutality, but many fans just saw another black body sacrificed in service of a plot twist. Still, the conversations that have come out of _Orange_’s perceived missteps have felt as vital as the ones around its successes. If the show no longer generates as much attention as it enjoyed in its first two or three seasons, it’s likely because TV was so quick to absorb its innovations. The past five years have been defined by both a spike in scripted programming—­one driven by the Netflix content factory _Orange_ helped build—and a related boom in shows that represent marginalized communities. Now series as different as [Donald Glover’s virtuosic _Atlanta_](https://time.com/5454751/best-tv-shows-2018/ "undefined") and the hit network comedy [_Fresh Off the Boat_](https://time.com/3694113/review-fresh-off-the-boat/ "undefined"), going into its sixth season, center characters of color. [_GLOW_](https://time.com/4838692/review-netflix-glow-wrestling/ "undefined"), a lighter dramedy about lady wrestlers from executive producer Kohan, features another big, diverse cast of women. Before Jeffrey Tambor’s #MeToo problem, _Transparent_ followed Kohan’s lead in honoring every letter of LGBTQ; [_Pose_](https://time.com/5296664/ryan-murphy-pose/ "undefined") revolves almost entirely around low-income queer and trans people of color. Nonbinary actor [Asia Kate Dillon](https://www.thecut.com/2019/06/asia-kate-dillon-billions-john-wick.html "undefined") had a role on _Orange_ before making history as a nonbinary character on _Billions_. _Orange_ has served as a veritable binder full of talented women of all identities. Wiley now stars on _The Handmaid’s Tale_. Uzo Aduba, who won two Emmys for her deeply humane portrayal of mentally ill inmate Suzanne Warren, will [play Shirley Chisholm](https://thegrapevine.theroot.com/uzo-aduba-to-portray-shirley-chisholm-in-fxs-mrs-ameri-1834776902 "undefined") in an FX drama about the Equal Rights Amendment. Dascha Polanco, _Orange_’s Daya Diaz, shined in DuVernay’s [_When They See Us_](https://time.com/5592163/when-they-see-us-netflix-ava-duvernay/ "undefined") and will appear in a film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s [_In the Heights_](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1718572-1,00.html "undefined"). [Danielle Brooks](https://time.com/collection/american-voices-2017/4549564/danielle-brooks-american-voices/ "undefined")’ powerful performance as Poussey’s best friend Taystee Jefferson led to a Tony-nominated run in _The Color Purple_. After _Orange_ reinvigorated Lyonne’s career, she co-created and starred in her own idiosyncratic Netflix dramedy, [_Russian Doll_](https://time.com/5509932/russian-doll-netflix-review/ "undefined"). It’s one of [the year’s best new shows](https://time.com/5588923/best-tv-shows-2019-so-far/ "undefined"). While _Game of Thrones_’ disappointing final season generated more fanfare, it also felt like a requiem for a kind of series—epic, expensive, built to dominate the cultural conversation—that the quirkier, more fragmented and politicized streaming era can’t sustain. From HBO’s [_Westworld_](https://time.com/4512789/hbo-westworld-review/ "undefined")to MTV’s short-lived _Shannara Chronicles_, no attempt to produce the next _Thrones_ has drawn nearly as many viewers; its most likely successor, [Amazon’s _Lord of the Rings_ prequel](https://time.com/5022296/lord-of-the-rings-amazon/ "undefined"), isn’t expected to premiere until 2021\. By Netflix’s own metrics, even [_Stranger Things_ ](https://time.com/tag/stranger-things/ "undefined")has failed to generate as much interest as _Orange_—and there was never anything especially revolutionary about the former show anyway. One of my favorite dramas of the 2010s, [_Mad Men_](https://time.com/mad-men-history/ "undefined"), represented the fullest realization of the previous decade’s white-male-antihero-heavy golden age more than a new paradigm for TV. Another, _Twin Peaks: The Return_, is simply too singular to replicate. _Orange_ is the most important show of the decade in part because it wears its import so lightly. Though the moment when it felt truly audacious has passed, it just keeps experimenting. Devoted entirely to a three-day inmate uprising, Season 5 was as exhilarating as it was exhausting. More past-their-prime shows should jump the shark with such wild abandon.  Taryn Manning, left, and Uzo Aduba in 'Orange Is the New Black' JoJo Whilden/Netflix In its uneven but mostly satisfying final season, on Netflix July 26, _Orange_ applies its fluid attentions to immigration, in yet another unprecedented, if rushed, story line. A bit too much time is devoted to a newly paroled Piper’s relationship with Alex, who is now her wife, and rough transition back into bourgeois-bohemian New York City life. Yet elsewhere, beloved characters get endings that feel right even when they’re crushing—ones that don’t reflect justice so much as the harsh calculus of privilege, savvy, drive, luck and social support that governs outcomes for incarcerated people. But my favorite plot imagines how prison might look under progressive leadership, with classes in restorative justice and an end to solitary confinement. While these reforms can’t put an end to the problem of mass incarceration, they’re a step in the direction of affording inmates the human dignity that the show insists they deserve. Like _Orange Is the New Black_ itself, the new Litchfield Max isn’t perfect—but its innovations pose a radical threat to the status quo. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5631804/orange-is-the-new-black-season-7-legacy/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5631804/orange-is-the-new-black-season-7-legacy/"},"headline":"Forget Game of Thrones. 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