Pete Freedman
The New Season of Orange Is The New Black Is Straight Obsessed With North Texas Music.
There's an argument to be made that binge-watching is a dangerous, ill-advised way to consume television shows.
But, whatever, we all do it. It's just the way it is.
And with the second season of Orange Is The New Black now a week into its availability on Netflix, there's a better than good chance that you've been up to some bingeing of your own of late.
If you have, you might've noticed a weird trend, too: For whatever reason, North Texas music is stamped all over this season — in at least four different, notable instances.
Below, let's take a look at each. Don't worry, though: If you're not up to speed on this second season, we're not going to be spoiling anything for you with these reveals.
• The middle of OITNB's second season includes an arc about prison worker Joe Caputo's after-hours band, Sideboob. Far as we can tell, there's no real connection between Sideboob — a real band, turns out — and North Texas. But when Caputo invites some co-workers out to check out a Sideboob gig, there's a connection worth noting on the other side of the bar. Tending bar at the venue in the fifth episode is the ever-theatrical, Denton-sprung and currently New York City-based former Polyphonic Spree member, Corn Mo.
• In the sixth episode of the season, fast-talking trash-talker Poussey, mid-rant, slams a fellow inmate for looking like an “old Erykah Badu,” referring to Dallas' own Queen of Neo-Soul.
• In Episode 12, a rain storm exacerbates plumbing concerns at the prison and forces the inmates to spend the night together in a upper-level room, all together and out in the open — an occasion that one new inmate decides is as good as any for a little summer camp-style singalong action. The song the inmates end up singing together: '90s classic “Stay” from the Dallas-bred Lisa Loeb.
• In the Season Two finale, an officer wanting no part in a conversation between two inmates turns on the radio to drawn the talk out — only to find it playing the '90s smash “Breakfast at Tiffany's” from Dallas-based one-hit wonders Deep Blue Something. Says the officer before turning up the volume: “I love this song.”
There's an old rule they teach you in journalism school, that three individual actions are enough to consider something a trend. But it's tough to say whether there's any water to that argument here, given that, Corn Mo's appearance aside, the rest of OITNB's second-season references to Dallas music come by what could arguably be Dallas' three biggest musical exports of the past two decades.
For his part, Corn Mo believes it's all just dumb luck.
“Just coincidence,” the performer told Central Track earlier this week when asked if there was anything to these connections.
His own cameo, he said, was the result of his having collaborated with OITNB scribe Nick Jones on another project — a musical called Grizzly Adams
“He got me the gig,” Corn Mo shares, matter-of-factly.
So, OK, it's all just random. All the same: It's still pretty cool.
