If you're like me, you've already finished binge watching the new season of "Orange Is The New Black" in its entirety. If you haven't, you'll want to read this after you've finished it, because it contains spoilers. Also, this article is dedicated to all the victims and families of the Orlando shooting. That being said, let's get started.

OK, where to start? This season was...a lot to handle to say the very least. When I first started watching this show, I though it was a well-written, diverse show with strong female characters. Many of these females are in the LGBTQ+ community and it made me uneasy that the airing of this season came right after the Orlando shooting. Back in season one, the writers killed off Tricia, a recovering drug addict, who was a lesbian character. She was given a bag of Oxycontin pills by one of the prison guards who then locked her in a supply closet with the pills and she overdoses. Upon finding her, the guard, George Mendez, also known as "Pornstache," put a rope around her neck and boosted her into the air, making it look like she committed suicide. This death was one of the first red flags I had about this series paralleling to real life.

Flash forward to the season four premiere on June 17 this year, I didn't know what to expect. I forgot many plot points of season three, since it had been a whole year since watching. Season four picks up right where season three left off; all the inmates are swimming in the lake after escaping through a hole in the fence. The new warden, Joe Caputo, decides to call in for higher security after a staff walk-out. Meanwhile, a bunch of new inmates arrive, including Judy King, who is a cooking show celebrity. She is a mixture of Martha Stewart and Paula Dean, both of whom get poked at through this character. For example, on the news, it shows old Judy King footage of her having a stereotypical African American character puppet and she says offensive things. The news then accuses her of being racist. In prison, King receives special treatment from the guards for "extra protection." There is a line in one episode which calls out King for getting extra backup from guards. Last season, Sophia, an African American transgender woman portrayed by Laverne Cox, was beaten up by other inmates because of her gender. Instead of getting extra backup like the rich, white Judy King, Sophia gets sent to solitary confinement, where prisoners go for acting out in regular prison. This season deals with how the prison tried to cover up Sophia being in there, while she didn't commit anything other than her original offense of stealing to get into prison.

When the new guards entered, we got to meet them. Most of them did not take their jobs seriously and got drunk and high on their breaks. One guard, Humphrey, is overwhelmingly sadistic. When inmates are being questioned on a death on prison grounds, this guard forces two inmates to full on fistfight each other, one of them being a mentally ill, lesbian woman of color. Her name is Suzanne, also known as "Crazy Eyes," and he first refers to her as a "black retard" to one of the racist prisoners to start the fight. This inmate refuses to fight her and another one volunteers. Suzanne refuses to fight and says she does not like to fight people. She is provoked by the other inmate who is her ex-girlfriend, telling her that she will always be the person that everybody laughs at. Suzanne then cracks and begins to punch the other inmate and she immediately regrets it and goes silent for the next following days. Humphrey doesn't stop toturing the inmates here, though. At lunch, two characters, Maritza and Flaca, are playing a type of "would you rather" to amuse themselves. Flaca asks Maritza, "Gun to your head, would you eat 10 dead flies or a live baby mouse?" Thinking nothing of it, Maritza says a live baby mouse, because it would be similar to a jelly bean. Humphrey was listening to the conversation and commented how that was an interesting choice. Maritza is the driver of the prison van and drives the guards to their on-campus houses on their breaks. Humphrey forces Maritza into his house and brings her to his kitchen table containing 10 dead flies and a live baby mouse. He indicates that it's just like her game. He proceeds to hold a gun to her head until she chooses to swallow the live baby mouse. She is later seen throwing up by two guards who comment on how it may be morning sickness and how Humphrey could have raped her, but they decide to just let it slide. This is the second occurrence of guard/inmate rape.

Last season, the inmate Tiffany Doggett, also known as Pennsatucky, was raped by a guard named Coates. This season, he apologizes and claims that he thought it was OK because he said he loved her. She accepts his apology and if it was left as that, fine, she made peace with herself, but that's not what the writers did. They made her start to kiss him and had him say, "You don't know how bad I want to [expletive] you right now." This only showed his rapist mentality even more but the writers still wanted us to sympathize with a rapist. This also parallels the real life Brock Turner case. His family has been trying to make people sympathize with him by claiming he is a "good man" while blaming his victim, similar to how Tiffany's rape is handled. They showed her flashbacks in which she had a history in prostitution—which is not an excuse to rape somebody, nor is the phrase, "I love you." They wanted you to feel sorry for both Tiffany and Coates, which is totally not OK.

The last problematic story line with this season was the overly advert racism it contained. The season started off with the main character Piper "accidentally" starting a white supremacy group containing a character named "Skin-Head Helen." Piper convinced all the guards to profile the Latina inmates for random body checks and turned a whole group of white inmates strictly against the minority inmates. She did all of this because one of the Latina characters, Maria, started her own used panty business that was now competing with Piper's. How dare she? The Latina characters eventually captured Piper and branded her with a hot spoon in the shape of a swastika. Not only was this entire plot point extremely offensive and racist, but it served absolutely no purpose for the season. The entire season could have happened without this subplot, and it not only would have been better, but it would have still made sense.

With all of the racism in the entire season, the last few episodes focused on the Black Lives Matter movement. Disclaimer: as a non-person cf color, I wanted to get the opinion of my friend who is a woman of color and fan of the show. The next paragraph contains her thoughts in addition to my own.

In the second to last episode, the inmates hold a peaceful protest by standing on the tables of the cafeteria and refusing to move until the head of the security (who is just as sadistic as the rest) resigns. The security guards then go on to drag the inmates off the tables in an aggressive manner. Suzanne then starts to yell that she "did a bad thing," referring to the fight and one guard yells to take her to psych, a scary place for mentally ill inmates. A character, Poussey Washington, then asks to talk to Suzanne to calm her down, and she is forced to the ground by an officer and held there with his knee. She then exclaims, "I can't breathe" and is killed by suffocation. The prison did not want to be held responsible and left her body there for over 24 hours before calling the police. There was even an entire seen where they tried to find dirt on her to push forward that she was violent and this act was self-defense, but after not being able to find anything, they decided to villianize the officer who killed her.

The writers then gave the officer's flashbacks to make us sympathize with him after he knowingly held Poussey to the floor while she lay there helpless. When the announcement was made of Poussey's death, they did not say her name and then proceeded to say how the officer was "such a good guy" and how they would not fire him from the job. This entire plot was very emotional and also disturbing. The writers decided to kill off yet another LGBTQ+ character for "shock value." After the Orlando shooting, this scene hurt me especially, being part of the LGBTQ+ community. This scene was more than that, though. It was to "teach" non-POC people about how the media is portraying these POCs being killed at the hands of police. Poussey was picked because she was a lovable character who was adored by people of all races. She was respectable and intelligent and was never portrayed as a "stereotypical black woman." Writers decided to use her as the teaching tool but did it in an unnecessary way. Race will be an important issue whether or not they killed off a loved lesbian WOC or not.

This season of "Orange Is The New Black" took plot points to an extremely uncomfortable and offensive place. I have to say I was really disappointed with this season. The death of my favorite character was disappointing just like the rest of the season. I know the show started to go downhill in season three, but season four may have turned me away forever. Most of it was unnecessary and badly written.