Thoughts on “The Animals” (Orange is the New Black)

This is your official spoiler warning.  Massive spoilers for “The Animals” on Orange is the New Black (along with a bit of Sleepy Hollow’s “Ragnarok.”)

Needless to say, the penultimate episode of Orange is the New Black’s latest season knocked me out.  Poussey snuck up on me in mid-season one, and by the end of that season, she was my favorite on the show.  I’m devastated that she’s gone, and I’ll miss her dearly.  Her humor, her optimism, her earnestness, her bright smile – the show will definitely be bleaker without her in it.

However, I’ve been thinking about why, despite how sad I am to lose her, Poussey’s death works for me.  When they killed Abbie on Sleepy Hollow, I was sad, but I was also furious, disgusted to see how poorly the show did by their amazing co-lead.  There aren’t enough women on TV who are given leave to be wonderful, let alone women of color, and this year, many people have felt Abbie’s death was the unkindest cut in a season that seems particularly strewn with discarded characters who are female, PoC, and/or LGBTQ.  By all rights, Poussey, as a queer woman of color, could have been yet another in a long list.  But for me, she’s anything but.

With many of these deaths (I’ve talked about Abbie, but numerous other shows have had similar controversies over character deaths this year,) the prevailing sense is that 1) it’s such a waste, and 2) it’s trodding on a beloved character for the sake of cheap angst for the (often white male) characters mourning them.  They feel needless, a character of worth thrown away for shock value.  But here’s the thing:  Poussey’s death is needless, a waste, but not from an external show sense.  It’s needless within the story, and that’s the point.  Rather than kill off Poussey to prop up, say, Piper’s narrative, the show deliberate sets out here to tell a story about the senseless tragedies that happen in an atmosphere where people are dehumanized.  This grinding-down of the prisoners has been building all season, and it was only a matter of time before one of these women was crushed by the system that views her as less-than.  Given the current social movement speaking out about police violence, it rings particularly true that it’s a Black woman who’s killed accidentally by a poorly-trained guard during an intense situation.  This is the human cost of what Litchfield has become; it makes me furious and disgusted, not at the show, but at the real world it’s reflecting, where tragedies like this happen far too often.

As to why it’s Poussey specifically?  Honestly, because she’s the perfect person to put at the center of this story.  She’s almost universally loved, both within the show and among fans (although her death is mainly felt among the other Black woman, she had ties outside her own group, like Soso and Judy, and she wasn’t disliked by anyone,) meaning her death will have maximum impact.  I don’t know that there’s any other character on the show that would have provoked the same outpouring of grief from fans, and that’s important.  When we watch TV, we bring these characters into our homes and get to know them.  For some, TV opens a door to seeing Black people, queer people, or in the case of this show, criminals, as people rather than “groups.”  In losing Poussey, we’ve lost a friend, and while it of course doesn’t compare in the slightest to what the families of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, or Tamir Rice have gone through, it gives many a glimpse of understanding what tragedies like this are really like, and just maybe, when the next inevitably transpires, instead of asking, “What did they do to ‘provoke’ it?” they’ll ask, “Why does this keep happening, and how can we as a people stop it?”