This morning, while doing the dish, I realised that I didn’t mention my favourite character from Orange is the New Black. Instead of adding a paragraph by the end of my previous post, I thought that this modern-day hero deserves a post of his own.

If you haven’t seen the TV show, let me tell you who Luschek is and why I love him so much… First, you have to know that most of my heroes are underachievers like Ferris Bueller and Parker Lewis. That’s maybe because I never targeted the shiny first place, the top of the podium, it’s by far too much spotlight and too much pressure. I’m more of a “Let me sit at the back of the classroom and wake me up when it’s over” kind of person.

In that very specific category, you have Joel Luschek. He’s a jail guard at Litchfield and he doesn’t care too much about anything else but himself. He doesn’t want to hurt anyone but he’s not gonna invest himself more than just what he has to.

He is constantly broke and needs no convincing to start smuggling in phones or drugs to round up the end of the month. When he finally manages to make some extra cash, instead of fixing his financial situation, he prefers to buy himself a pair of Back to the Future Nike and nothing less than a DeLorean. (image source: Reddit)

That’s why, as a tribute, I added the quote “What would Luschek do?” to the list of the random descriptions of my blog.

A few years ago, when I was on burnout for 5 months and our apartment was destroyed and we had to sleep on the broken concrete in the freezing winter without heating and people in my family were dying, a few things kept me from completely losing my mind, one of them was Orange is the new black.

When Inge got sick with what was probably Covid-19 for 3 creepy weeks of isolation and fear of contamination, the show we watched nearly every day was Orange.

So, I don’t know why we always turned to OITNB in those moments, especially for the two horror fans that we are, but these girls have been an awesome source of entertainment for us in 2 of our most not-so-funny-moments.

The thing that I love the most about TV shows is character development and Orange is incredible at doing that. After 7 seasons, we really had the feeling to have been living with the girls, sharing their stories, so much that, when the show was over, we both got super emotional (even space marines have feelings, y’know). You know which other TV show had us super emotional by the end? Star Trek Voyager, which also casted Kate Mulgrew… Coincidence?

I enjoyed practically everything in the show, but what I found amazing was the retrospectives of the girls’ lives before jail, especially the episode about young Red in Russia, which ended with this super awesome song by Mumiy Troll:

Another thing that I loved about the show is that, even if it’s filled with humour, it doesn’t always ends well, it even gets sometimes really unfair, sad and dark.

The final credits gave me the blues, not because of the story, but because it really felt like a farewell and I already miss them. Who will cheer us when everything goes wrong now?

So, I’ll conclude with the wise words of Nicky Nichols: “Everything is a dildo, if you’re brave enough”.