Okay I know I’m insanely late to the party on this but I’m just catching up on the latest season of Orange Is The New Black.
First of all I don’t like this season, it’s a drag, a whole season for just a few days of a Prison stand-off and it’s dragging, but let’s put that aside and talk about something else; Suzanne Warren aka “Crazy Eyes.”
Obviously from the start of the show the character was not emotionally balanced. Eventually we learn her story of why she was in prison, and through the telling of the story, I had to ask and wonder, why is she in prison?
Yes I get that technically she was “responsible” for the death of a child, and that whole scene was quite tragic, but how responsible, in actuality, is she for what happened? It seemed very obvious she has serious issues, I don’t know what exactly, a form of autism? Mental delay? Other things? Bottom line is that obviously she was not capable of caring for herself or being an adult and I have to wonder why she was left alone for a weekend by her sister? I mean Suzanne was 28 her family obviously had to know that she was not capable of caring for herself, yet it seemed like her little sister was solely tasked with looking after her which seems odd …
Obviously in the scene where the child died, there was zero malice intended, just a child in an adult’s body who didn’t understand that what she did was kidnapping, didn’t understand her own actions. It seemed like the white family who raised her was comfortable middle-class, and yet by the fact that she ended up in prison and seems to receive no psychological care other than some drugs she is on also makes it seem like she was shafted at her trial and her mental limitations not taken into consideration. Unfortunately our system is shit (in real life) and a lot of people like Suzanne do get railroaded and not diagnosed or cared for properly, but again, it seemed like she grew up in a family that could at least afford a mediocre lawyer better than court-appointed, so you would think she would have gotten a better trial. I don’t know, I’m side-eyeing the writers, and I’m hoping that underneath there is a rational explanation for how Suzanne ended up railroaded in prison for her “crime” but I also know it could simply be sloppy writing and that scares me. Ever since “Lost” I get so suspicious of fly-out-of-my-butt writing on television shows.
IT JUST BOTHERS ME OKAY? 🙂
Kell Frillman - Author 