Not many series resist seven seasons, Orange Is the New Black came to an end not only with much dignity but with the feeling, for its viewers, that the story could continue. Because, as in Cortázar's story, the title marks a transcendent and significant but provisional end, the characters' life continues, and the series created by Jenji Leslie Kohan confirms this. There are no definitive endings when the story is about the life of characters as well constructed as those of OITNB, and more, because those characters, with their particular signs, were actually representing stereotypes, in the good sense of the word. That the script of the series is based on the facts that tells the biography of the true Piper Kerman always contributed to the texture of the characters and the situations that were narrated.
Far away were the shell of Piper (Taylor Schilling) and his adventures of middle-class girl, white and cis. Life in the women's prison in Litchfield opened the possibility of telling many and very different stories and the fan opened until the end. This last season even surprises with the incorporation of new stories and new characters. A very contemporary form of marginality in the United States, state policies with immigrants, allows us to open up - vague contradiction - even more the limits of jail and confinement.
Part of the melancholy - well processed in this finale - for its viewers is to discover the amount of lives we have seen parading these years. Lives that, I insist, are unique but representative. And we have the certainty that our characters will be replaced indefinitely by similar characters, in the same and increasingly worse situations of marginalization and abandonment of the State. The force that was charging the series throughout these years also had to do with this, on the monster platform that is Netflix we saw dissent in quantities that we are not accustomed to.
The variety of the psychologies of the characters and their social constitutions, most of the time very well deepened, was a force for OITNB that completely transcended the screen. In fact, the series ended but the Poussey Washington Foundation is a reality that aims to channel the impact that fiction had when showing disadvantaged and marginal groups for the most diverse reasons. Women, lesbians, trans, immigrants, unemployed, poor, victims of family violence, religious, cultural, gender, the series knew - escaping most of the time of the morbidity that we can see in other fictions such as the marginal - portray dissent of all kinds . And it allowed us as spectators if not to bring down, at least, question prejudices and fears regarding the various forms of "lx otrx". And, how important, in addition, to watch streaming bodies of all kinds, of all possible colors, shapes and textures. In addition, women's bodies, not heteronormated, real.
OITNB was never a comedy but it made us laugh. With a realistic aesthetic he played with magical realism and with the stylization of human misery. But the background and the structure were always anguish: institutional violence of all kinds, a system that harms everyone, no matter if they were or not inside the prison, that was the issues that allowed the series to grow and reach this final. Without spoiling: the stories do not close. There is an epilogue for each of the most important characters, but no definitive closures. And this produces an important unease: nothing is resolved because the conflicts that crossed the lives of the characters were not the extraordinary, but quite the opposite, they are the constitutive.
It is true that some characters have closures a little "happier" than others. It is devastating to see how inequality leaves many characters "broken" hopelessly, and few in the process of "redemption." We are not sure that this is possible, but if something showed the series, also realistically, it is precisely this: life goes on. These women have continued despite and thanks to the difficulties that have touched them in luck, which in no case are personal karmas, but of class or gender, race, religion. The forcefulness of the characters resided in that, they are not isolated beings, they are beings immersed in a society and a culture that molded and defined them. And, starting from there, each unx does what it can with the time it has. Never alone, because the only way to go is always collective.
The novelty of this last season is to see Piper out of jail and the series is not afraid to show that, even if you are blonde and well-off middle class, once the system defined you as a criminal nothing will be easy for you. Of course, much more than Taystee (Danielle Brooks), Red (Kate Mulgrew), Maria (Jessica Pimentel), Daya (Dascha Polanco), Doggett (Taryn Manning) or Suzanne (Uzo Aduba), but even then he won't be able to resume his life "As it was." Because prison changes, diving into marginality is not something that unx comes out unscathed or without consequences. The most interesting questions that are asked this season are whether this "punishment" is deserved or not, if the confinement and isolation are the way to reform, if there is the possibility of getting out of marginality seriously. It seems that the answers are all "no." Because, precisely, and although these women have committed crimes, they have all been - long before they ended up in jail, perhaps since they were born - subjected to the enormous number of capitalism and its inequalities.
With all the mainstream that can be a Netflix series, the series has been quite disruptive. What is most appreciated is the representation of dissent and gender issues: a video (about the foundation) is circulating in which some women and others tell what the series meant in their lives. The video is very moving, and the testimony that particularly caught my attention was that of unx chicx that told what he felt when he saw himself - perhaps for the first time - represented by a character. That a fiction with mass circulation such as OITNB has achieved something like that seems worthy of respect, minimum.
Everything has an end, everything ends, the production of the series has also changed the lives of actresses and those who participated in it. I am not exaggerating, the power of the representation of dissidents in fictions helps us as a society to open our eyes and begin to let in, at least a little, what is always outside the margins. The last chapter is sad and very moving, we see, at least a few minutes, those and those who have gone through the seven seasons. We are allowed to know not that they are "good" but, at least, they are, that they follow. And there is something hopeful about that. There is even a participation - as a flashback - of one of the most beloved characters, Poussey (Samira Wiley). Nicky (Natasha Lyonne), Aleida (Elizabeth Rodriguez), Lorna (Yael Stone), Gloria (Selenis Leyva), Blanca (Laura Gomez), Alex (Laura Prepon), Maritza (Diane Guerrero), Sophia (Laverne Cox), La Flaca (Jackie Cruz), all of them and more remain in the heart of the followers of the series. Cast and music may have been the most perfect and endearing. We ended up with a lot of mucus, but thank you.