Orange Is The New Black‘s New Season Will Cover Only Three Days

Danielle Brooks was dropping gems like a clumsy thief during her red carpet appearance at the SAG Awards. She told E! News' Brad Goreski that she nearly turned down her star-making role in Orange Is the New Black. But that wasn't the only thing she said during her interview. She also told Goreski that the fifth season of OITNB would take place over only three days. “It will be very detailed, very intense, and you better get ready,” she told the reporter. “Get your popcorn, your tissues, everything.” Limiting the scope of a narrative can be a formula for highly successful storytelling. 24, obviously, takes place over the course of a single day in real time. From literature, we can look to James Joyce's modernist classic Ulysses for proof that a restrictive time frame can enhance the story. The last few seasons of OITNB haven't exactly lived up to the promise of the first, with draggy middle episodes carried by the binge-able structure of the show. Hopefully this shift will mean that problem disappears. Weeds, Jenji Cohan's other major success, was reliably terrible after a promising first few seasons. So the challenge will be for OITNB to avoid that fate. The show will return some time this summer.