As a Massachusetts native and proud New Englander, I couldn’t be more disappointed in the character of Madison Murphy (played by Amanda Fuller) on Orange Is the New Black this season. Actually, I couldn’t be more disappointed in Season 6 in general, but we won’t get into that. This is about “Badison.”
Yes, her nickname is “Badison,” the least imaginative moniker possible for a prison inmate named “Madison.” OITNB has never been the best written show on TV, but at least it knew how to keep things interesting. Season 6 has seen a significant drop-off in quality as the medium security Litchfield characters are sent off to a Max prison after the riotous events of Season 5. Badison is a big reason for that drop-off.
The max storyline was a chance for the show, created by Jenji Kohan, to finally get dark. OITNB has seen a few character deaths over the years, but it’s a very tame prison experience overall. Setting the show in a maximum security prison could’ve introduced some seriously gnarly girls and sent the series into compelling dramatic territory.
Instead, we get Madison, a garden-variety bully with a horrid Boston accent who terrorizes her fellow inmates by… putting cheese in their ears. Wow, how intimidating! How creative! How disappointing.
Fuller, born and bred in California, joins the long list of actors who’ve butchered New England accents in movies and on TV. For every Cliff Clavin (the comedy bar setter), there are three Badisons — characters who give Boston a bad name.
Boston doesn’t need it! Everyone already hates the area because of Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, and Ben Affleck! Plus, the accent doesn’t help. Like New Yorkers, New Englanders are usually seen as outsiders, “yankees,” by most of America. The loud-mouthed, city reputation precedes us, true or not (it’s not). We don’t need another California actor making things worse.
You can then throw in the fact Badison (still cringing about that nickname) is written about as well as a Progressive commercial. She actually starts off well. The guards ominously tell one another, “Badison is back” when she returns from solitary, and it seems like we might be meeting someone of stature. She even smashes Piper’s (Taylor Schilling) face “as a favor” so Piper can get into medical and see if her fiancé, Alex (Laura Prepon), is there. It’s a dirty thing to do, and evidence of a potentially good new villain.
Unfortunately, Badison is all downhill from there. We learn in flashback she was sent to boot camp and bullied herself as a teen, but she exhibits none of the classic traits of a true prison intimidator. She’s just a spoiled kid who comes from a good home and made a mistake. Her background only makes you hate her more. No scars, no tattoos (save a tiny one), no eyepatch, or bulging muscles — she couldn’t be any less formidable. And then… she speaks. That “Boston” accent comes stumbling out and you just pray for her to leave the screen.
Badison turns out to be decidedly weak and boring once we get to know her. She cowers in the face of the real boss, Carol (a great Henny Russell), and proceeds to merely bother the other inmates like a mosquito. Not only does the obnoxious one “prank” Piper (Taylor Schilling) with the “hilarious” cheese in the ear trick, she also comes up with a brilliant scheme: defecate in the prison driers. How impressive. It’s like the writers have just given up. The revelation she “blew a lesser Wahlberg” also shows how lazy they are. She’s from Boston, right? She must know the Wahlbergs and “pahk the cah at Hahvahd!!”
So, to Jenji Kohan and OITNB, please spare us all the Boston jokes we’ve heard before. It’s not helping. Please spare us characters like Madison Murphy — thinly sketched stereotypes that never feel like real people — she’s an insult.
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