Get ready for some information about some things that are leaving Netflix on Thursday, and what exciting stuff will be replacing them. You have about 36 hours to use this information for maximum benefit, so make your choices wisely.
The Killing has been cancelled as many times as it has seasons. Thanks to a weirdly aggressive cultural conversation surrounding the first finale, and total dead air thereafter, it's safe to say few of us can accurately say whether the show got better, worse, or really any other adjective.
She's brassy! She's sassy! She speaks truth to power! She doesn't take any guff or kiss celebrity ass, because she's got nothing to lose (except limitless integrity)! And now she's signing a bajillion-dollar deal with a trendy, emerging media outlet to do talk shows, one-hour specials every five minutes, and become a face of the brand! What could go wrong?
Here is what love is not: scissoring, any use of the words "peg leg" or "newsletter" or "caribou," or comparing someone unfavorably to Hillary Clinton. Love is saving a stool for someone. Love is correcting someone's spelling. Love is a penis cookie. Love is knowing yourself. Love is loving that you know yourself.
A couple of outside investigators show up to investigate the attack on Red, sidestepping Caputo and anybody else who tries to actually help them, because they are there to get marching orders from Figueroa, who is of course the worst.
The heavily foreshadowed hurricane finally arrives at Litchfield, forcing everybody into various absurd, scary, or mortifying configurations as they batten down the hatches. Meanwhile, Figueroa finally notices her hot gay husband is gay, and Piper takes her shot at bringing the monster down.
Everyone keeps using the word "change" on OINTB, on "Mustachioed Little Shit" specifically, but the behavior feels much more like oscillation given to frightful extremes. Everyone is someone else, too.
Piper's grandma's funeral turned into a surprise wedding for her brother while their parents frowned before them and Larry's flaccid penis sat in the front pew remembering its earlier scolding. And also! Bennett went absolutely insane very briefly and it was terrifying. And also! Red and Vee are apparently acting out a years-long vendetta of misunderstanding, as both women keep assuming that if the other would only listen, they would finally hear. And also! Mendez is fucked.
Young Rosa was surprisingly terrible, wasn't she? Also her Spanish* was weird. Also every man she touched with her tongue later died. No joke. Every one. Birth, Rosa's tongue, death—with some merry robbing in between. Meanwhile Old Rosa, our Rosa, is dying, as she has been since we first met her. Then there's this kid:
I think "Comic Sans" was probably a very good episode for Men's Rights Activists, who as a hegemony tend to consume images and narratives uncritically and without nuance and oh, look here is the story of Black Cindy, formerly a power-mad airport security worker who, when she wasn't straight-up stealing things, sexually assaulted men.
Let's go lesbianing together!
Season Two of Orange Is The New Black is premiering at 3 a.m. EDT tonight on Netflix—exciting! But between the accumulated plot twists in the first season's final hours, the multiple timeframes of the flashback structure, and the complicated power games going down on both sides of the Litchfield bars, it's easy to forget where it ended last summer (or whenever you watched it).
Orange Is The New Black's splashy debut last year seemed made as much of stories-about-stories than about the story the show was actually telling: A four-quadrant product with as many angles as there are journalists and bloggers, it hit all the flashpoints. For media writers, it was a show about the future of Netflix and streaming video against the aging ratings dinosaur; for culture critics it was a show about the nearly all-female, richly diverse cast, or about Laverne Cox's brilliant and intimately personal performance; for everyone else it was a show about class, or gender, or prison recidivism, or redemption. Every niche filled.
