1.4 Imaginary Enemies

'In the morning when I wake up, there are these few seconds before I realise where I am.'

This episode only increased my sadness at the human condition. The dehumanising alarm, at the sound of which all the inmates have to lie face down on the ground. The coerced 'volunteering' to be felt up by Pornstache.

The whole screwdriver thread is absolutely nerve-racking - so much so that bathos is the only way for it to end. Double bathos in fact.

There were compensations - the moment shared by Alex and Nicky, Piper telling Miss Claudette what's what, the resolution of the 'Mercy leaving' thread against expectations, and Miss Claudette and Piper's reactions to Mercy's departure.

I was surprised to find that this episode made me cry real tears, and that hasn't happened since I was living through my own version of Sophia's back story. It seems my soul wasn't pickled in vinegar after all.

1.3 Lesbian Request Denied

Piper's rueful nod at the question 'Does that really happen?'

Of course I followed Sophia's past and present story with interest. Even in British prisons it's a full-time job getting your prescriptions.

The flashback to Piper and Alex's first meeting reminded me strangely of the flashback in Buffy to Spike and Drusilla's first meeting.

It's true though isn't it. 'You carried that bag. No-one put a gun to your head.'

A gradual widening of perspective so that we have more and more non-Piper threads.

I have to say, my friends, this show is compelling, but it's filling me with a vast sadness for man and woman's inhumanity to woman. What is it Jack Kerouac says about 'jails and iron sorrows'?

1.2 Tit Punch

'He called you "inmate".'

I didn't find this one quite so distressing as 1.1. The naked malice of the starvation campaign is upsetting at first, until Red explains she couldn't accept an apology even if she wanted to. She's as much a victim of the oppression machine as Piper is.

Piper goes along with the code of omerta by refusing to take the food offered by Alex. In one sense she's collaborating in her own oppression - in another, she's avoiding a worse moral compromise.

The broad Rrrrussian flashback comedy a little too broad for me.

I suppose Healy's prurient interest in lesbian sex is holding a mirror up for the prurient audience to look into.

The Mad Men binge-watch references both amusing in relation to my own undertaking here, and as a metaphor for infidelity.

'Everyone saw how hard you worked.' That crystallised an uneasy 'practice level' feeling I had. It reminded me of that video game where you have to trap the rat to put in the stew to get the cook sacked to get his job to get paid the pieces of eight. But on the other hand I really wanted Piper's plan to work.

1.1 I Wasn't Ready

I watched the first 15 minutes separately, because my lunch was cooking, and that bit was upsetting enough by itself. 'They'll call me "sweetie"'. I liked the way the monstrous power of state oppression showed its first claw with the phone bit.

I thought the 'you do not have to have lesbian sex' joke was a bit obvious, but I did enjoy 'You studied for prison?' That was the first bit that made me react with anything other than sadness and fear.

The different levels of flashback were well handled. I particularly liked the way we worked our way back round to the shower breast compliment aftermath point, and then continued with the 'present' timeline.

Some of the jump cuts between past and present were predictable. I saw the initial shower one coming immediately. I didn't expect the cliffhanger though.

As I say, I found this episode really, really upsetting, and I watched all of Game of Thrones without turning a hair. That, of course, is because I don't really expect to be tortured by Ramsay Bolton or dismembered by the army of the dead, but there are lots of ways I could end up in prison, so I can't prevent myself from identifying with Piper.

My friend with the modern telly was quite right though, there are lots of reasons not to like her. I can see why people wouldn't. In some respects she's shallow and foolish, and as they said at the breakfast table, she does think she's fancy. If I wanted to detach myself from the action by refusing to identify with Piper, I'd do it by focusing on those attributes. But there's more to her than that.

I'm doing a watch-through and react to Orange Is The New Black on a forum, and I'm posting my posts here first for copyright and permanence purposes.

To Hancock, With Love

There is a Hancock episode called The Blackboard Jungle (Nov 1955) which is a parody of the film of the same name. Never having seen the film, I assumed that it was in turn an adaptation of the novel To Sir, With Love in which a black teacher wins the respect of London hooligans by making them speak politely to one another.
But I discover that the film can't be an adaptation of the novel. The film is from 1955 and the novel was published in 1959. Additionally, the former has an American setting whereas the latter takes place in London. I was misled by the fact that the Hancock episode is also set in a British school. I didn't allow for the fact that Hancock almost always takes place in Britain.
Yes, I know West has an American accent, but Bill Kerr does the same voice when he's playing a Teddy Boy in the previous extant episode, The Bequest. I assumed that was how British kids talked in 1955 when they wanted to sound cool.

Nineteen Ninety-four

I've been listening to Nineteen Ninety-four, the dystopian Radio 4 comedy from 1985. Pitched somewhere between HHG, Brave New World and The Prisoner.

What stops it being just another laboured string of Week Ending style 'Sellingfield' gags is Robert Lindsay as the everyman hero Edward Wilson. There's a sequel, Nineteen Ninety-eight, which has David Threlfall instead, and it's not nearly as good. Both Edward Wilsons are complicit in their own exploitation but at least RL's version makes a token resistance.

It's interesting how different NNF (broadcast 1985) and NNE (broadcast 1987) are in tone. They make a fine example of the cultural atmosphere in the two halves of the Eighties. Later 80s concerns about US imperialism and early 80s concerns about riots and everything just falling apart.

Btw I do wonder if Lance Parkin was thinking of NNF when he wrote the scenes with Colin Baker and the personal organiser device in Davros.