I don't think I've ever seen more persuasively gritty cinema about prison life. There is no sentiment here, no clichéd brutality, nor any propagandizing about reform (much as reform is needed), or anyway none beyond a supervisor complaining about the "policy to take good jobs from honest people and give them to rapists and murderers for 37 cents an hour." Strong as the writing is, the visuals do the heavy lifting, with scene after scene of grown men bent over sewing machines.
Nor have I ever watched a series where fornicating meant so much. Without it, there would be no plot. The prison employee Tilly (Patricia Arquette) is driven by it, and her complicity becomes the motivating factor for the two prisoners who are her consecutive lovers, David Sweat (Paul Dano) and Richard Matt (Benicio Del Toro). With a little help from her, they get the tools to tunnel out, and the seven-episode series doesn't rush us through what for them was a punishing, nerve-wracking, and time-consuming plan. We wallow with them in that prison, and under it.
Meanwhile, Tilly has the freedoms that they risk everything for, but she is so miserably self-pitying that even a full-time job overseeing lifers doesn't register. Arquette garnered the most praise for her role, but I didn't think the screenplay did her any favors, giving her one dimension: an utterly insufferable shrew and chronic liar who even victimizes her son. I applauded when Richard played her like a fiddle, luring her to help them with promises of a threesome in Mexico where they "worship blondes."
It was even plausible that David, living in enforced celibacy, stopped wanting Tilly anywhere near his zipper. Superb though Del Toro always is, it was Dano who impressed me most. Cast against type as a thug, with his soulful eyes and thoughtful mien, he brought David to life, the most fully realized character in the series, and the solid center of an unstinting and resonant look at America's underbelly.
