OITNB's 'Crazy Pyes' Food Truck Draws Controversy

Crazy Pyes Truck in NYC [Photo: @OITNB/Twitter]

Not everyone is lining up to score free pie and ice cream from Orange is the New Black's promotional food truck Crazy Pyes: As the truck, named for the Netflix series' popular character Suzanne "Crazy Eyes" Warren, rolls through Los Angeles this week, some argue the truck's name and overall premise is offensive, as it glazes over the issues of mental illness and interracial relationships often tackled on the show.

Op-ed columnists have singled out the truck's chocolate-and-vanilla-swirl ice cream dish, a reference to the "Crazy Eyes" character's imagined relationship with the protagonist (a white inmate), as problematic. "I can understand how [it] could be seen as offensive," writes the Latin Post, "but in this case, I don't think it was meant to be purposely malicious but tied in with the character." But in a piece published on Salon.com, Daniel D'Addario argues that the truck's free cones results in "poor taste when you turn characters' most central characteristics into wacky joke fodder." (The truck name itself, he points out, is "a cruel appellation other prisoners gave an actually mentally ill person.") Meanwhile, lines at the roving food truck have been long, with fans eschewing the debate in favor of free pie and ice cream.

· OITNB Food Truck Serving Up Tasteless Fare? [Latin Post]
· Netflix's OITNB Tie-Ins Are Tastelessly Missing the Point [Salon]
· All Orange is the New Black Coverage on Eater [-E-]