Review: Orange is the New Black

Don't take the time to read this whole post before you sign yourself up for Netflix and watch Orange is the new Black.

But be prepared to have a messy house and hungry family, because you'll sit down for the first episode and find yourself five hours later, still mesmerized. I was.

I cannot stress enough how unbelievably amazing this made-for-Internet TV show is.

The writing, the character development, the production values, the acting (oh, the acting!), it's supremely superb, easily the Very Best Thing I have ever watched on television, ever. Better than Mad Men, better than the Sopranos. Seriously.

The cast is mostly women, the plot follows a privileged New Yorker sent to prison for a year ten years after she was a money mule for her then-girlfriend's drug cartel. The rest of the cast is also women, also locked up, and their stories are told with a mixture of flashback and narrative, but thankfully, no narration. It's funny and scary and sad and angry-making, all at the same time. In a four-second closeup, the lead actor, Taylor Schilling can convey betrayal, lust and the develop of her own revenge plot, without so much as an eyebrow raise. The rest of the performances, including those of Kate Mulgrew as a Russian mob worker who now runs the prison kitchen, are truly amazing.

I don't know how the writers managed to put so much comedy in the midst of so much drama and angst, social commentary and people behaving badly; I can only marvel at the supremacy of their work. The layers, the references are truly magnificent.

SO good. You will not regret one minute of the 13 episodes. You'll only regret that season two just started production last week, which means it will be a while before you find out what happens to Piper next.