Orange Is the New Black

A beautiful moment occurs in the first few minutes of Orange Is the New Black that signals the viewer that this drama is more realistic than most. The night before she's to go to prison, Chapman gropes her fiancé, whispering to him that she needs to make memories to "spank" to. He responds lustily, whereupon she tells him to hang on, she needs to pee. The camera follows her into the bathroom where she sits on the toilet and cries. What a rare thing to see depicted on-screen; a human being in a non-glamorous, kinda stupid, utterly relatable bad moment. Made by the same minds who brought Weeds to life, Orange is like Weeds in that it has a lovely and vulnerable woman at its center, caught in a web of other women (and a few men) who are alternately menacing and loving. Also like Weeds, Orange has a simply incredible cast, filled with people you love and hadn't realized you'd missed. There also is a bevy of lesser-known actors with whom viewers will quickly fall in love, such as the touchingly vulnerable Samira Wiley as the lovelorn Poussey and wisecracking Danielle Brooks as her best friend, Taystee.

As viewers watch, they slowly realize that Piper's story is just an entry point into the stories of Litchfield's inmates, a sort of Trojan horse that draws in viewers before the series reveals its true aim: to explore the lives of characters the likes of which we don't often see on TV. Old women, fat women, women of color, lesbians, poor women, those who have made mistakes and regret them, those who have made mistakes because the deck was stacked against them. This is HBO-level drama, addictive, layered, and very, very funny. It's made for binge-watching, but most parents will want to reserve it for after the kids are in bed, due to the strong language, mature situations, and plenty of sexual content.