Is The Real Larry Bloom As Awful As This Guy?

According to some of the fans of Netflix's Orange is the New Black, if you think anyone is worse than Jason Biggs' character Larry Bloom, then you're a freakin' idiot. In their eyes, Larry is the scum of the earth and should rot in hell (sorry, Biggs). And guess what? They totally have a point. Larry might play all doe-eyed and meek when it comes to Piper Chapman's incarceration, but he knows what he's doing — he's a player if there ever was one. The thing is, now that we officially know that Larry is a total dumb-dumb, does this mean that the man he's based off of is also a jerk?

Meet Larry Smith, the inspiration for OITNB 's not-so-leading man. Save for his writing aspirations, ring-in-plastic-baggie wedding proposal, and his first name, Smith is a far leap — okay, a medium-far leap — away from the Larry we've come to shake our heads at. Well, at least that's what it seems like according to what he had to say about his whole my-girlfriend-went-to-prison-for-drugs-and-left-me-by-myself ordeal. After reading his personal essay, which was published on Medium, it's reasonable to believe that the real Larry doesn't have the same lack of morals and wealth of impulses (oh hai, Penny) that OITNB's Larry has.

Based on Smith's essay, here are some of the biggest differences between the Larry that the Internet loves to loathe and the man that stood by Piper Kerman's (real-Piper's) side:

1. "...I told her I loved her. I told her we’d deal with it. I told her we’d get through it together."

Uh, we seem to recall Bloom saying pretty much the same thing. Too bad Smith was the only Larry who could keep his word.

2. "I may have become an angrier person during Piper’s time in prison, but I also became a more patient one."

Zero for two, Bloom. He might have been somewhat patient during Season 1, but come Season 2, he ran as soon as things got too sticky.

3. "When I couldn’t make it because I took a trip to a sandy beach in Mexico with six people who didn’t get involved with an international drug ring, I felt guilty."

Hey, Bloom — did ya feel guilty when you were coppin' a feel over at Penny's place?

4. "...I had one job: make Piper feel that there was an outside world waiting for her."

Once again, Bloom did a decent job of helping Piper during Season 1, but by sleeping with her best friend (ugh, he seriously is the worst), he definitely didn't make her feel like there was a world for her to come back to.

5. "A little over a year later, on the 10th anniversary of our unexpected hookup, we were married."

Oh, Larry — you silly man. (However, it should be noted that this could still totally happen on the show version. But it should also be noted that we do not want this to happen post-Litchfield.)

6. "I stuck by Piper because it never occurred to me to do anything else."

Something Bloom probably said to himself: "I would have stuck by Piper... but... uh... sex."

In the end, no matter how much OITNB-Larry Smith actually has buried inside himself, we can always have faith that he'll never be as Larry as Larry is. Fuckin' Larry.

Images: Linda Kallerus, Barbara Nitke/Netflix; tayjschilling/Instagram