Flashbacks are essential and
integral to Orange Is The New Black.
They are part of the make-up and fiber of the show. They’re useful to not only
provide three dimensional shading to a character, but they help prop up the
show’s themes and point of view. Orange
is about showing us the inequalities of race and class within our country, and
about how prison is the great equalizer. The prisoners are a purposeful melting
pot, and by bringing to light the backstories of multiple individuals, the show
is able to bring taste and color and richness into the dish. Outside of the Piper
and Vause backstories- which the story has rightfully steered away from as it
chugs along- getting to know where different characters and where they came
from and how they existed outside of the Litchfield prison walls helped shape
them when you saw them inside the walls. Unfortunately, as the cast of Orange gets bigger and bigger, and the
need for side detours gets smaller and smaller, the flashbacks have become a
distraction. Further, the writing for the flashbacks have become weaker as the
show has progressed.
Within the show’s first two
seasons, we got flashbacks of prisoners like Watson, the runner who just wanted
to fit in, Red, the would be crime boss trying to rise through the ranks, and
Morello, the woman who wants to be loved by Christopher. These flashbacks were
well fleshed out which in turn gave the audience a deeper understanding of who
they were watching. For the most part, these flashbacks were also
mini-vignettes with their own arc and storylines that just happened to be
spread out over the course of a single episode. Therefore, when the flashbacks
ended, they provided their own emotional weight and punch. Unfortunately,
that’s just not the case anymore.
We saw cracks in the flashbacks
armor when it came to Flaca’s flashback in Season 3 about how she sold fake
drugs to her fellow high school students. The flashbacks itself didn’t help
alter your opinion on Flaca in any way, shape, or form, but at least the theme
of “perception is reality” were parallel in both the flashback and present day.
The kicker that Flaca sold “drugs” to avoid being a seamstress, only to get the
coveted job in prison of being a seamstress, was also good. But Flaca’s overall
backstory was pretty weak. Now in the show’s fourth season, the show either
stopped trying or doesn’t care.
Five episodes into the show’s
latest season, and we have a flashback of Maria, Soso, Healy, and Maritza- none
of which have added any additional shading or gave us a new perspective on
these characters. Healy’s was somewhat interesting as we learned more why he’s
such a woman hater, but nothing in his flashbacks told me anything new about
him that I didn’t already pick up on during his very brief flashback in Season
3’s “Mother’s Day”. We already knew Healy’s mom was mentally unstable, and his
flashbacks did very little to provide any more dimensions to him. Brooke’s
flashback was absolutely worthless, as it neither told us anything new about
her nor was it a very good parallel to her situation in the present day. Sure it
was factually similar, but so what? I also feel like there was another
flashback scene where the sex offender found out she lied after he told her the
truth about himself that was cut for time. Maritza’s flashback and parallel
present day story told us that she’s willing and able to go along with a
devious plan, and that she’s secretly funny, but provided no context to who she
was as a person and gave us nothing about the human condition. Further,
whatever developments happen in the present day as a result of her assistance
smuggling out used panties feels like
it will be irrelevant to her plan to steal Maserati’s.
The closest flashback in the
early parts of the fourth season to being somewhat decent was Maria’s, as we
got a sense of where her nationalistic attitudes came from (which is becoming a
major theme of this season) and how she met Yadriel, the father of her baby who
we’ve been introduced to. Yet still, we’ve seen other ladies, mainly Aleida and
Daya, who are in Litchfield for drug related crimes, and, like those previous
flashbacks, we get nothing new about these characters via their flashbacks. In
fairness, the show has always been extremely weak when it came to the
flashbacks of its Hispanic prisoners (the only semi-successful one was Gloria’s)
and two out of the four flashbacks this season has been of Hispanic prisoners,
but that still doesn’t excuse the poor quality of the flashbacks so far.
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS OF ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK AND ITS FLASHBACKS? LET US KNOW ON OUR FACEBOOK PAGE!
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