Orange Is The New Black: 5 Ups And 5 Downs From Season 3

7. The Flashbacks - Up

The flashbacks aren€™t always the strongest part of the show, which isn€™t a problem restricted solely to Orange Is The New Black (see Arrow€™s third season). They take you out of the current narrative, and can at times be too distracting or simply not entertaining enough. This year judged the time of the flashbacks pretty well, with longer ones at the beginning, and limiting them more as the season moved towards it endgame. They generally served their purpose well, i.e. getting the audience to know and understand the characters better, and were mostly enjoyable in their own right, with one or two surprises and the odd moment of heartbreak. No one, for example, saw Chang getting a backstory, yet that€™s what happened in episode 6 and all of a sudden a character mostly known for not talking was fleshed out much more and became far more interesting to watch. Similarly the backstories of characters who were already popular - Pennsatucky, Big Boo, Nicky - added more depth to them, and helped viewers care for them even more.