Orange is the new black

fwiw i didn't find the sex in the show to be of the titillating kind or about shock value - i found it was mostly used for humour - like the annoying girl who never stopped talking ever when someone was going down on her, or the ego battle of the two very sexual lesbians trying to prove who could get the most women.

i certainly don't think it would be wank fodder for blokes in any way in the way it was portrayed.

i think this may well come down to different senses of humour and comfort with sexuality and stuff than anything else.

exactly though - why would you compare it an award winning male centric show? does everything get measured to such a standard?

i'm not reducing women to their orgasm - i was pointing out that generally sex is portrayed about everything BUT a female orgasm or around a woman acting orgasmically over something that is clearly more orientated to male pleasure than female.

I think it is brilliant. Funny, interesting, great to see so many actresses get a chance to be something beside "hot girlfriend number 2". Amazing to see so many women of colour but also showing the racism inherent in the prison system and the way they end up being ignored. I don't think the fact that they are being treated like crap by one of the male guards is problematic. Men in power have often abused the women they are in power over. The women don't roll over in play dead do they?

i was confused as to why you wanted to constantly compare to very male centric shows.

So a long paragraph about a well written female and two mentions of a show I felt handled it much better and somehow I don't like watching females?

I'm not sure why we can't debate without getting personal but as it doesn't seem possible I will bow out and leave you to it. Must be the colour of my eyes or something....who knows

SPOILERS here

I am just enjoying watching something funny and gritty with a mostly female cast. I think the characters are well written, with the exception of the female prison governor, who was funny at first bit became a thin caricature as S2 closed.

The 'power hungry career bitch deserves a cheating gay husband' storyline was crap. The blowjob scene was crass and didn't fit with the way sex is handled in the rest of the series.

I also think the grim men in the series are very cleverly written.

err lesbians have sex - their sexuality is a part of who they are - it's a shame that irritates you and you see it as 'going on about it'. honestly it's interesting reading people's perceptions and how much it reveals about their internalised misogyny as opposed to what it says about the show.

it's a comedy. a mainstream comedy. i'm happy to see a mainstream show entirely centred around women as people rather than someone's girlfriend. i'm happy to see women having sex to have an orgasm and realistic portrayal of what it takes to achieve an orgasm. i'm happy to see women having complex back stories and being allowed to be morally ambiguous rather than just a madonna or a whore.

no it's not perfect but jesus it's an improvement on most.

i've no idea why we're comparing it to a male centric show like breaking bad. that's odd. maybe you just prefer watching men and don't judge men as harshly as you do women. who knows.

I'm not sure that not agreeing with someone's opinion of a portrayal of a character is grounds for making sweeping assumptions about their view of an entire gender... However...

Carmela Soprano is a wonderful example of a honest and non-apologetic portrayal of a deeply flawed woman who constantly balances her pious moral and religious beliefs with her love of wealth, her ego and her vanity. Beautiful and delicately managing or not, this conflict over the years, almost to the point of breakdown, selling part of herself over and over while still being a warm, multi-dimensional, complicated person.

OITNB like it or not is a comedy-drama which takes a character which has the potential to be similarly complex and layered and adds slapstick.

Without including spoilers I say up at the end of season 1 an thought actually we might have something here. Maybe they have been duping us all along (as season 2 breaking bad) and this is about to get real.....then back to season 2 a character that can barely get dressed or have a conversation without making some kind of slapstick funny.

Waste of opportunity and far from ground-breaking. I think the actress is doing a fine job with what she is given. The writing is appalling.

exascerbated exsaserbated i cannot spell it.

hmm i don't see her portrayed that way. they very clearly display her self indulgedness and narcissistic tendencies and privilege. she's a character not a heroine which i tend to like to see. i wonder why you see her as 'cute' whereas most see her as foibled and a bit of a twat but still watchable. it may say more about how you perceive women with faults than how a woman with faults is being portrayed imo.

who thinks she's cute? everyone is excasberated with her.

I cannot stand this bloody show.

Piper is clearly a very disturbed, emotionally stunted person with narcassistic tendencies and they portray this a cute and quirky and 'oh just so Piper' (little pat on the head for the pretty blond.)

It could be interesting of they went dark with it and explored a real person but no lets watch her trip and ditz her way merrily though prison with Ally Mcbeal like facial expressions, slapstick and comic music.

It's insulting to everyone that we are supposed to like this character for being cute, not for being complex a la Heisenberg in Breaking Bad.

And it's bloody worrying that so many people think she is just so great.

And lesbian sex scenes do not make a show edgy. Unless
your target audience is 12.

Hate hate hate this show. Sorry hit a nerve with this.

i've been thinking about the sex scenes again (sounds good doesn't it?)

what i like is they portray it actually takes a bit of effort and time to make a woman come. that's a good antidote imo to the world of pawn where you have some woman groaning orgasmically over giving a blowjob.

i pity the girls who are entering their sexual lives in that context with boys who have been led to believe that women's sexuality is purely about giving men pleasure.

I watched about 7 episodes and was just bored. The teenagers I teach watch it a well, so I felt a bit old for it.

However, I am currently watching Battlestar Galactica for the first time and enjoying that a lot more.

the sex scenes are of women actually getting women off - re: sex with the female orgasm at centre. i don't see that as a bad thing or soft porn nonsense of women groaning and moaning over sticking their tongues in each other's mouth.

definitely a lot of female characters and by series two lots of complex back stories to those characters and how they came to be where they are.

it's a yes from me.

I thought the sex scenes were pretty good. Not the usual soft porn, male POV stuff at ALL.

See, I think that the sex scenes are pro-feminist. As they're not the 'soft porn lesbians going at it' trope that normally gets trotted out for TV for scenes like these.
It's a bit more realistic- this is how women actually have sex.

Ultimately it's sex that gets the main protagonist in the situation she's ends up in. So it's integral to the story.

Nurse Jackie was an altogether brilliant show, but there was a definite nosedive in quality in series 3, I think. They started bringing in all this graitutious t&a for no reason. (Well, one reason) It irks me so I just started tailing off watching it.

Pulling was another great one, I think it only ran for one series though. Hilarious as I remember. 3 young women in a house share, getting pissed, shagging the wrong guy, fucking up at work, becoming social outcasts, that type of thing.

Neither of them explicitly feminist, but proper women characters driving the action and no cupcake and designer shoe references.

I'm on episode two. I was very disappointed by the explicit sex scenes in episode 1 as I didn't think they were necessary but episode two was far better so I'm hopeful. Piper, the main character, is a little annoying but I'm willing to hang in there with her.

too much

I'm dismissing it as a fairly silly drama with to much gratuitous male fantasy style girl on girl action. Most dramas are insufficiently feminist IMO but they don't all invite the jerking off quote so overtly. The alternative could be decent TV with female characters which both men and women could enjoy in the way they enjoy male dominated series, without the soft porn element?

By the way that sounds snarky but I don't mean it to be - genuinely wonder what the alternative is.

I want decent shit to be made with women in it. About women, for women.