Orange is the New Black creator admits season 5 wasn't their greatest

'We had lost a bunch of the original writers'

Orange is the New Black was once one of the most acclaimed shows on television, critics finding Jenji Kohan’s prison drama/comedy hard to fault.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator website, the first four seasons all hold ratings above 93%, the second — often held as the series best — reaching 98%.

However, season five couldn’t quite match those heft heights, scoring 74% on Rotten Tomatoes. Many writers from the original seasons had let to peruse their own projects, including Carly Mensch who created the Netflix series GLOW (Kohan produces the series).

Speaking to The New Yorker, Kohan and executive producer Tara Herrmann admitted the fifth season — which deals almost exclusively with a prison riot that breaks out after season 4’s climactic death — was a little pear shaped.

“We had lost a bunch of the original writers,” Herrmann told the publication. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault. It was just a new dynamic—people were attached to the characters as viewers, not as creators.”

Kohan added that some plots read like “fan fiction,” speaking with nostalgia about the show’s “O.G. writers.” Only two writers from season five have been rehired to work on season six.

Read our interview with Orange is the New Black’s Taylor Schilling here.