Honestly her S1 flashback was one of the weaker ones at the time and didn't paint her very sympathetically. I thought this one did a better job of making her feel like a fully-rounded character. This was the first flashback in a long time that actually felt vital.

I thought her flashback in S1 covered it. She fell in with the wrong crowd and wound up taking the fall for a robbery, right? (It's been a while since I've seen that episode.)

Agreed, and considering Season 4 tried so hard to ground itself to serve as social commentary, it's a little bit of a jarring shift.

I'm only a few episodes in but I agree that the tonal inconsistency is a real problem. In past seasons OITNB has managed to straddle the comedy/drama line by mostly playing like real life - there were times were action was lighter so the show could afford to be more comic, but it always knew when things got "real" and…

The format for the OITNB reviews is terrible. Everyone is at different points so there's no centralized discussion of the show happening anywhere. I really hope this isn't the new format going forward for Netflix shows.

Can I say that I think this new review format is terrible? Everyone is at different points so there is no centralized discussion anywhere. Please don't do this going forward.

So far Season 5 is messy but interesting. Season 3 was consistently decent but kind of boring. So it really depends on if you prefer consistency vs. ambition.

There were definitely way too many plates spinning in this episode, both in terms of plots and tones. It makes sense given how last season ended…that's hard to jump back into, but the fact that the season apparently hangs around in the aftermath for the entire season definitely makes me nervous.

Yeah Snapchat was a thing in 2014 (not as huge as it was a year or two later, but still used widely enough) and I guess we'd be in like late 2014 by now so that isn't necessarily out of the reign of possibility…but there have also been lots of references to post-2014 pop culture and news so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.

I liked this season of Americans more than a lot of people did, but I do consider it a slight step down from Seasons 3 and 4, which I thought did a great job of combining the action and emotions. I don't think it was a "bad" season but considering the show (arguably) topped itself every year in the first 4 seasons I…

Oh man, I'm so sorry :(

So with the OITNB reviews in, there sure have been a lot of disappointing seasons from returning series this year. Fargo, The Americans, OITNB, Kimmy Schmidt, arguably Master of None….

I thought 3 was the weakest season but also not like, "the show is going downhill" weakest, just slightly less non-stop great than the first two seasons. Still felt fresh & funny.

When they mentioned Morey's Piers by name (not to mention the "I'm from Metuchen" line last season) I knew someone on the writing staff had to be a Jersey kid.

Agreed. This season was very funny, the jokes were as non-stop as usual, but Season 2 really went to some weird, deep and dark places and I was disappointed this season seemed more surface-level. A lot of people seemed to dislike S2 and love this season though so maybe this is a more crowd-pleasing direction, but I…

Between the NJ jokes (I'm from NJ and unlike most lazy Jersey jokes, these felt tailor-made for me) and the Dionne Warwick impression, this may have been the funniest episode of the season.

That sounds like the fandom of every single show ever. Seems unfair to single out OITNB.

On one hand, Netflix guaranteeing nearly every show at least 2-3 seasons was kind of cool.

You pretty much summed up my feelings on all of the UKS "controversial" plots better than I could. I genuinely don't think they necessarily mean anything about Fey or Carlock's views. I do understand why people get upset about them though and I think their satire is sometimes sloppy, but I think it's almost always…

I've always felt 30 Rock's message was basically "terrible people like Jack Donaghy are running the world because people like Liz Lemon are too flighty and weak to take them down."