In the days lead­ing up to the high­ly antic­i­pat­ed pre­mière of the sec­ond sea­son of Netflix’s Orange Is the New Black, I noticed some­thing that wor­ried me: Sev­er­al men in my life appar­ent­ly thought they weren’t sup­posed to watch it. These were not ran­dom, ter­ri­ble, sex­ist men; they were guys I quite liked. It was just that, if you men­tioned OITNB, women would light up, and men would sort of polite­ly watch the con­ver­sa­tion hap­pen. If pressed, they’d say that they thought the show was ​“meant for women.”

Watching Orange is the New Black is a pleasure, and should be a pleasure for just about anyone, because these characters—just like real people—aren’t simply their identities.

Well, I’m not sure what men need in a show (it’s hard to please all 3 bil­lion of them at once). But what­ev­er that is, OITNB prob­a­bly has it. Sea­son 2 con­tains the fol­low­ing: Sex, drugs, guns, gang­sters, bank rob­bers, attempt­ed mur­der, actu­al mur­der, fist­fights, sex con­tests, poo jokes, death curs­es, cuss words, dead­ly pow­er strug­gles and boobs. Lots of boobs, actu­al­ly. I’m not say­ing all men like all of these things, of course – again, there are 3 bil­lion of you guys, and I imag­ine you can find cause for dis­agree­ment amongst your­selves – but the show is hard­ly a knit­ting cir­cle. (I mean. There is a knit­ting cir­cle. But they have an alarm­ing ten­den­cy to shiv peo­ple.) Unless you con­sid­er beat­ing some­one to death with a com­bi­na­tion lock to be the height of del­i­cate fem­i­nin­i­ty, the action on OITNB is not all that stereo­typ­i­cal­ly ​“girly.”

Of course, not every show needs to cater to men. I think women are enti­tled to enter­tain­ment that pri­or­i­tizes them, that tries to speak pri­mar­i­ly to their many iden­ti­ties and expe­ri­ences. And Orange is the New Black does, actu­al­ly, work to do that: Not only through the much-praised diver­si­ty of its almost-entire­ly-female cast, but through its frank, fun­ny dis­cus­sion of taboo expe­ri­ences (mas­tur­ba­tion, menopause, tran­si­tion; this sea­son, there’s an entire sub-plot devot­ed to a debate about ​“which hole” pee comes from), and its gen­uine (though some­times prob­lem­at­ic) attempts to take each and every one of those women seri­ous­ly. But the fact is, OITNB’s most fem­i­nist qual­i­ty is not sim­ply that it fea­tures lots of women, or that those women are rough­ly as diverse as women in real life tend to be. It’s the fact that it’s just a good show — replete with all the vio­lence, graph­ic sex, moral­ly gray pro­tag­o­nists and shock­ing plot twists you’d expect from more ​“uni­ver­sal” cable or pay-cable dra­mas—that hap­pens to give women the key roles.

OITNB​’s sec­ond sea­son is, I think, an improve­ment on its first. It seems to be writ­ten as a con­scious response to some of the crit­i­cisms the first sea­son faced: that it under­played the dan­gers incar­cer­at­ed women face (in the words of New York Times crit­ic Mike Hale, the show ​“essen­tial­ly treat[ed] prison like a bad day in high school”) and devot­ed far too much of its time to its most priv­i­leged char­ac­ter, Piper Chap­man (Tay­lor Schilling), a blithe­ly nar­cis­sis­tic WASP who finds her­self doing time in Litch­field prison after car­ry­ing a suit­case of mon­ey across inter­na­tion­al bor­ders for her drug-deal­ing then-girl­friend. Some also rolled their eyes at the fact that every sin­gle woman in Litch­field seemed to have com­mit­ted her crime by acci­dent, under duress, or in exten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances so dire that you won­dered why they hadn’t been hand­ed a Con­gres­sion­al Medal of Hon­or rather than a prison sen­tence. This sea­son demon­strates what the show can be when it answers those cri­tiques: Life at Litch­field gets more vio­lent. It’s nev­er been great — even last sea­son, Tri­cia (Made­line Brew­er) over­dosed and Pennsat­ucky (Taryn Man­ning) and Piper made cred­i­ble attempts to kill each oth­er — but the sheer num­ber of shivs, slocks, show­er beat­ings and attempt­ed stran­gu­la­tions seems to go through the roof here. There are inmates who’ve done gen­uine­ly ter­ri­ble and vio­lent things. The crimes become more severe in this sea­son: Miss Claudette (Michelle Hurst) may have killed a sex­u­al preda­tor to pro­tect a young girl, but this sea­son, we meet a woman who bit off her girl­friend’s tongue and swal­lowed it. And once you learn exact­ly what Morel­lo (Yael Stone) did to get into Litch­field, well, it changes things. (Although, as you’d expect from a show that wants to chal­lenge your pre­con­cep­tions, the inmates who’ve com­mit­ted the scari­est crimes are usu­al­ly the ones who seem the most harm­less — and even they com­mand sym­pa­thy.) And, last but not least, after a sea­son pre­mière ded­i­cat­ed entire­ly to her char­ac­ter, Piper Chap­man takes a back­seat to the real action.

In this sec­ond sea­son, the show shuf­fles its char­ac­ters like a deck of cards, bring­ing new play­ers to the top, and mak­ing some beloved char­ac­ters all but dis­ap­pear: Sophia, the trans­gen­der inmate played by break­out star Lav­erne Cox, is reduced to a bit part, and Alex (Lau­ra Pre­pon), Piper’s drug-deal­ing ex and main love inter­est in Sea­son 1, only appears in four of 13 episodes. Porn­stache (Pablo Schreiber), the sex­u­al­ly preda­to­ry and also drug-deal­ing prison guard who served as one of last season’s main antag­o­nists, is also absent for much of the pro­ceed­ings, although I doubt that any­one miss­es him as much as they miss Lav­erne Cox or Lau­ra Pre­pon. But even though we lose track of inter­est­ing sto­ries, that re-shuf­fling brings much-need­ed focus to a new set of char­ac­ters — name­ly, the black women of Litch­field, who didn’t have back sto­ries or star­ring roles last season.

Although Piper is still around and car­ry­ing major plot­lines, the real pro­tag­o­nist of the sea­son is Poussey (Sami­ra Wiley), who’s grant­ed a trag­ic, com­pli­cat­ed love sto­ry — her unre­quit­ed devo­tion to her best friend, Taystee (Danielle Brooks) — and a hero­ic quest: bring­ing down a prison smug­gling ring. To play oppo­site our new hero­ines, we get a new vil­lain: Vee (Lor­raine Tou­s­saint), a woman who, in the out­side world, pro­vid­ed a home to orphaned and des­per­ate chil­dren, in exchange for mak­ing them move her drugs. Taystee was one of Vee’s ​“girls” on the out­side, and now that Vee is locked up in Litch­field, she intends to rope Taystee back into the fam­i­ly business.

It’s no sur­prise that Wiley and Brooks can car­ry the show; approx­i­mate­ly 97 per­cent of the Inter­net fell in love with one or both of them by the time the end of last sea­son. Wiley, in par­tic­u­lar, is giv­en all sorts of meaty, com­pli­cat­ed scenes to play, and she knocks each and every one out of the park. But Tou­s­saint is also won­der­ful: Vee could be impos­si­bly evil — a pro­fes­sion­al child preda­tor whom Poussey describes as ​“a pedophile with­out the sex” — but Tou­s­saint makes her con­vinc­ing, three-dimen­sion­al, even strange­ly admirable: a mas­ter manip­u­la­tor who is dan­ger­ous pri­mar­i­ly because she can con­vince just about any­one of just about any­thing. In one of the season’s more upset­ting twists, Vee befriends and nur­tures the lone­ly, men­tal­ly ill Suzanne ​“Crazy Eyes” War­ren (Uzo Adu­ba), remind­ing her that she’s a ​“smart, strong black woman.” The rea­sons for Vee’s ​“friend­ship” won’t become entire­ly clear until the last episode of the sea­son. But the unqual­i­fied trust Suzanne offers Vee, and the many ways that trust is betrayed and abused, are intense­ly hard to watch.

Again: This isn’t unique­ly ​“girly” stuff. There’s a drug deal­er cor­rupt­ing and abus­ing her young appren­tice in order to facil­i­tate her own rise to pow­er. There’s a smart and ambi­tious woman enter­ing her family’s crim­i­nal busi­ness despite her desire to go legit­i­mate. There’s a young hero risk­ing her life to save her unat­tain­able beloved from cer­tain per­il. Those are also, respec­tive­ly, the plots of Break­ing Bad, The God­fa­ther, and most Arthuri­an romances, if you’re keep­ing track. But they work just as well, and gain added dimen­sion, when they’re the sto­ry of Vee and Suzanne, or Taystee and Vee, or Poussey and Taystee. The drag­on, the knight, the princess in the tow­er: All are women. And, more than that, these four are women of col­or, none of whom got so much as a flash­back last sea­son. The show trusts us to fol­low them as they car­ry the plot.

The Lati­na char­ac­ters also get a bit more time, this year; Rosa (Bar­bara Rosen­blat), a woman with ter­mi­nal can­cer who bare­ly appeared last year, becomes one of the sea­son’s leads, and Glo­ria (Sele­nis Ley­va), the hard-bit­ten chef, gets a par­tic­u­lar­ly well-done flash­back episode.

Sure, along­side all of this, there is plen­ty of fare that may par­tic­u­lar­ly please female view­ers: digs at misog­y­nists, sly pro-fem­i­nist and pro-social-jus­tice state­ments, an episode in which the homo­pho­bic Pennsat­ucky is con­vert­ed to ​“the gay agen­da” when promised that it large­ly means the over­throw of men and the estab­lish­ment of total matri­archy. (Straight women will be allowed to keep men around for sex and menial labor in this Utopia, Big Boo (Lea DeLar­ia) explains, but they have to promise to cru­el­ly dis­card said men after sex­u­al grat­i­fi­ca­tion has been achieved.) The show is also con­tin­u­al­ly will­ing to explore the harsh­er parts of wom­en’s exis­tence: There are plen­ty of sto­ries about domes­tic vio­lence, abu­sive par­ents, racism, and homophobia.

But the accom­plish­ment isn’t sim­ply that a lot of rel­a­tive­ly diverse female char­ac­ters exist on a TV screen, or that the writ­ing often makes fem­i­nist points, or even that the female char­ac­ters them­selves they’re treat­ed with some lev­el of dig­ni­ty and com­pas­sion. It’s that they’re not pre­sent­ed as some dour, grudg­ing, eat-your-veg­eta­bles exer­cise in rec­og­niz­ing that women or incar­cer­at­ed peo­ple exist. Watch­ing Orange is the New Black is a plea­sure, and should be a plea­sure for just about any­one, because these char­ac­ters — just like real peo­ple — aren’t sim­ply their iden­ti­ties. They’re giv­en real, com­pelling, inter­est­ing sto­ries that chug along at such a rate you don’t even real­ize you’re learn­ing some­thing until you’ve already watched eight episodes in a row.

​“The ten­den­cy of inno­v­a­tive lit­er­a­ture is to include the hith­er­to exclud­ed,” wrote Mar­garet Atwood, ​“which often has the effect of ren­der­ing ludi­crous the con­ven­tions that have just pre­ced­ed the inno­va­tion.” You could say the same thing about great TV. If Orange is the New Black does any­thing, it’s not to give view­ers a high-five or a gold star for being will­ing to admit that women are a diverse group of peo­ple, or for being will­ing to hear women’s sto­ries. It sim­ply makes it seem all the more ridicu­lous that so many shows aren’t telling them — or that we could ever think of them as rel­e­vant only to girls.