Nichols hits Poussey up for a cigarette, assuming that Poussey works for Vee and Poussey is like “Nope, you are mistaken, I am not friends with Vee.” Nichols is like, “your friends are friends with Vee, so…” and then Poussey drops this gem, which further confirms my initial analysis that Vee assuming risk in the ciga-tampon racket is bullshit because she is self-serving and manipulative and clearly establishing a hierarchy wherein other people will ultimately take the fall for her:
“She’s using them to do her dirt while she counts the cash. You ain’t gonna find her hands in no contraband.”
Your truth-bombs are so dreamy
Nichols starts telling Poussey about this “thing that happens to lesbians in high school” where you fixate on your straight best friend and everything is cool until she gets a boyfriend. Then you irrationally hate the boyfriend even though he’s “probably a decent enough person.” Did this happen to people? I was like, pansexual in high school, so I basically fixated on everybody and hated everybody. Just kidding. Sort of.
Anyway, in this analogy, Taystee is the straight best friend and Vee is Taystee’s boyfriend. This is kind of weird because Vee is also kind of Taystee’s mother figure, but it’s just meant to imply that Poussey is in love with Taystee and feeling jealous absent her affections. Nichols is wrong, because Vee is not a “decent enough person,” because we have already established that Vee is terrible. Nichols suggests that Poussey needs to get Vee to like her in order to get back into Taystee’s good graces even though it is a terrible idea.
Bennett shows up empty-handed to Maritza, Blanca and Maria with the latest blackmail order (I believe they asked him to buy them gay porn) and states that he won’t be blackmailed any longer. Instead, he gives all of them shots and throws Maritza in SHU for super valid reasons. Just kidding, he throws her in SHU for literally no reason at all. Then he yells at everybody and it is mildly terrifying. GUESS WHAT: BENNETT IS NOT NICE.
I AM NOT NICE!!!!
We were supposed to think that Bennett was the “nice CO” last season but it is quickly becoming evident that there is no such thing as a “nice CO.” That, even if a CO intends to be “nice,” there is an inherent power imbalance between CO and inmate that makes it impossible to consider that relationship using the same parameters that you would a relationship in a non-prison context. Even the “nice” interactions are suspect because you can’t eradicate the fact that, ultimately, COs have the power to do something like what Bennett just did.
Exactly.
Which sums up Daya and Bennett’s problematic relationship in a nutshell: You can’t remove that power imbalance from their interactions, but everybody seems to want to, which weirds me out.
Coincidentally, the next scene is Caputo calling Piper into his office to ask her to portray the COs as “human” in the Litchfield newsletter while creepily tending to his plants.
What is with your character and the creepy plant tending, is that supposed to symbolize something?
OH GOOD A LARRY SCENE, I REALLY MISSED LARRY AND HAVE BEEN WONDERING WHAT WAS GOING ON WITH HIM. Just kidding, nobody cares about Larry. I forgot that he was even on this show. Polly shows up and slaps him and then fucks him, but not in a fun way.
nobody cares
The Litchfield riot grrrl zine is still underway, but starting off a little tense. Vee is still collecting her stamps for her stamp collection ciga-tampon empire. Cindy doesn’t have any stamps for her, since she has traded all of her cigar-tampons for personal favors. Vee takes her ciga-tampons and gives them to Poussey, who says she’ll think about selling for Vee.
Autostraddle Saturday Morning Cartoons
Soooo many letters to write once I retire on the funds from my ciga-tampon empire
Flashback number three! We’re back to Cindy taking her little sister out for ice cream. By the way, the little sister wants bubblegum ice cream, which is gross and terrible.
I’m only nine so don’t make fun of me for not knowing that bubblegum ice cream is gross and terrible
I don’t want to “yuck” anyone’s “yum,” but I think we can all agree that bubblegum ice cream is a travesty to ice cream dates everywhere. You know what else is a travesty to ice cream dates everywhere? Saying that you’ll take somebody out for ice cream and then doing something completely different, like making them wait in your car while you go hang out with your friends. Which is what Cindy does to her little sister.
Fig is married to somebody who is trying to become a senator and he is (spoiler) clearly having a secret gay affair with somebody named Gavin who is working on his campaign. We all deduce this immediately given the fact that he won’t sleep with Fig coupled with his Gavin bedroom eyes.
GAVIN BEDROOM EYES
It’s so important to be open with your partner. If I end up with somebody like Fig, I will one hundred percent make sure to check in about hooking up with people named Gavin, and if they are like, “Nope. Hard boundary. No Gavins” I will be like “ok, bb, don’t worry, just keep embezzling money 4 me and I’ll stick 2 brets n trevors.” Direct communication, y’all.
I said NO Gavins. You have betrayed me.
Polly’s husband shows up to bro down with Jason Biggs, nobody cares. Jimmy’s dementia causes her to jump off a stage in the chapel mistakenly thinking that it is a diving board. She needs more care. She needs full-time care.
Vee wakes Cindy up in the middle of the night and you think it’s going to be for something scary, but she just calls Cindy out on hiding behind her humor and not working towards building a future. So, Cindy is basically in the middle of a surprise-nighttime-prison version of all of my therapy sessions. Except that Vee calls Cindy a loser, which wouldn’t fly in a therapy context.
Wake up, it’s time for the surprise-night-time-prison version of Mal’s therapy sessions
Which brings us to another flashback: Cindy’s mother is upset with her for keeping her little sister out until midnight and bringing her around “pot smoke.” They fight. We find out that Cindy’s little sister is actually her daughter. Cindy’s sister/daughter doesn’t know about this. Cindy’s mother insinuates that Cindy is not capable of raising a child and the look on Cindy’s face implies that she believes this about herself.
We return to the present, Fischer is listening to the inmates’ phone calls. Caputo makes a cameo with a tiny plant. Fischer overhears news of Daya’s pregnancy. Uh oh!
No, but really, why is this dude literally carrying a tiny plant for 90% of his life?
Everybody is an equal editor at the Litchfield Riot Grrrl Zine. It is non-hierarchical and very punk. They literally publish a piece titled “Guards: They’re People Too.” Caputo hangs it on his wall.
GIRLS TO THE FRONT
Oops, we sold out
Gloria asks Red to grow cilantro for her, which is as “black market” as Gloria gets. Vee is talking long-game strategy while playing chess with Suzanne when Cindy walks in. Vee has gotten into Cindy’s head and she’s ready to sort through used tampons and work at the bottom of Vee’s hierarchy.
If only there was some sort of obvious metaphorical vehicle we could put here to represent life strategy
During Cindy’s final flashback she states that she doesn’t have kids. We never learn what Cindy was ultimately incarcerated for during this episode.
Jimmy still needs full time care and has become a liability to Litchfield. Two corrections officers drop her at the bus station with literally no resources under a “compassionate release” policy. This is the final scene of episode 207. You are now weeping and not leaving your house tonight as you had originally planned.
“Compassionate” release
You, after watching this episode
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Can we actually get Soso to A-Camp? We could have a Litchfield party instead of a carnival. There would be handcuffs. And possibly a Kink 101 workshop..
And we KNOW she’s good at getting a sing-a-long going!
“Direct communication, y’all”.
I want all my lessons about relationships to be from Mal Blum via orange recaps kthx
that whole paragraph legit made me lol
OMG that picture of Mal and Bennett. I can’t.
If only Litchfield stocked the commissary with OB tampons, this whole violent mess of a cigarette subplot could have been prevented.
ok, NZ doesn’t have OITNB and I am not illegally scamming Netflix here…. so far….
so I am getting my fix on recaps alone. Yes, going on the smell of an entertaining fortnightly fix of an oily rag..
So what has prompted me to write in here as I haven’t seen the show and it is bugging me, people, is this
“Vee is talking long-game strategy while playing chess with Suzanne when Cindy walks in. Vee has gotten into Cindy’s head and she’s ready to sort through used tampons and work at the bottom of Vee’s hierarchy”.
Ok, this disturbs me as a human because used tampons, and cigatampons. Are we talking tampax here with applicators? Is the used applicator going into some lucky punters mouth?? Please no, but please clarify, because I am getting worried about future sub plots involving diminished quality of life scenarios because of vaginally (used tampon) orally transmitted (ciga tampon) stds in the future for Litchfields smoking population. Just a thought.
I watched the show and I can’t figure this one out and I’ve been wondering how they would make sure that there was no blood on the applicator. Maybe I’m just bad at using tampons, but I always get blood on the applicators (before I switched to non-applicator tampons, which I’m also bad at using).
They sort of just store the cigs inside the applicators, inside the wrappers, to disguise them because (in theory) COs aren’t going to be checking individual tampons for contraband. And if I recall correctly Vee was asking Cindy to get to work on cleaning applicators for that purpose. Still very icky, but at least you’re not, you know, putting the applicator itself in your mouth, and hopefully as part of the cleaning staff they have access to disinfectant and stuff.
Yes, plus the plastic of the applicator and the wrappers acts as a water-repellent so that the cigarettes won’t get soggy and spoil the tobacco.
thank god, I was worried, and although I am still grossed out, I am relieved there is some attention to infection control measures. In NZ the tampon applicator comes in two options: shiny soft cardboard, and plastic. There is so much in the way of flora and fauna living on a used tampon, though its probably more of a jungle on the cardboard option.
I love Soso and I have celiac so the scene when she was told “prison is gluten” for laughs I was pretty disturbed. The show has pointed out how unfairly prisoners are treated in terms of getting appropriate medical care, and making a joke out of someone not being able to have a potentially medically necessary diet bothered me. I mean, I know many people these days think gluten free food is hilarious but wow, it really made me think about yet another way in which people who are incarcerated can be abused by the PIC.
Bennett looks like an alien (or maybe Benedict Cumberbatch) when he’s angry. I’d be terrified.
cindy is my favourite (she’s just so blunt), and although her backstory re: her daughter bummed me out, i still loved the montage of her being The Actual Worst in the airport, stealing a payday and giving zero fucks.
“…but because of the shot quota, Litchfield is like SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS SHOTS EVERYBODY.”
Thanks, now I’ll forever associate that song with this show.
YOU GUYS. A few hours ago I was sitting in an airport waiting for a connecting flight reading this recap and thinking about Black Cindy and her back story and riding through the airport being the worst. AND THEN I GOT ON MY FLIGHT AND LEGIT ADRIENNE C MOORE WAS SITTING ACROSS THE ISLE FROM ME AND I TOTALLY CREEPED ON HER.
And then I got her signature and she was totally awesome and sweet and I died of happiness and my ghost came back to write this comment.
oh my god WHAT
Thank you so much for the Bennett rant. To be honest I prefer Daya when she’s with her mom and want that relationship to be explored more. The power dynamics between Bennett and Daya prevent me from shipping it. They kind of ignored it in season 1 and treated their relationship as more romantic so I’m glad that they touched upon it more in season 2 however I felt like they kind of brushed it under the rug towards the end. I will say that I find the actor who plays Bennett to be attractive, also Black Cindy’s antics as a PSA agent were hilarious. It sucks that she ‘s distant from her daughter though.
That compassionate release thing…i think thats how we get a lot of our dementia patients tbh. Have you guys ever given an 80y.o lady you dont know from Adam a bath? When they think youre stealing house keys they dont have in the stockings they are wearing that have roaches cause no one cared or looked after them. Guys. Its sad. So sad.
honestly, bc I don’t live in the US, what does “compassionate release” mean? When I was reading Mal’s comment I thought that the woman was released from prison, but then who cares for her if she is mentally incompetent? Surely a social worker has sorted some care out for her so that she can get the level of care she needs for quality of life and safety. Or maybe not. Maybe she is released into the wild, at the nearest bus stop. This episode is bringing out all sorts of health concerns and questions.
yeah no that’s why it’s so extraordinarily fucked up–they just kinda leave her there all alone.
oh my god, thanks for explaining Jane. Does this really happen? (and I am asking a serious question) – it does, doesn’t it?
I so wanted that picture of nighttime creeping Vee to be captioned ‘I am the ghost of Christmas Past’!
I love Vee, by the way. You know how some people have an absurd love for Cruella DeVille even though she wants to skin a hundred puppies? I have that with Vee, that glorious sociopath.
Piper is the worst, but I love her facial responses to the officers, particularly Caputo, so much. Perfect mix of blank and you’ve-got-to-be-fucking-kidding-me.
I actually enjoy season 2 Piper a bit better. I’ve been really enjoying her moments of toughness and sarcasm, like when she confronted Polly and Larry or that little speech she made to Brook. Granted she still has her flaws but it’s nice to see this new version of her. I also really enjoy the fact that she’s taken a backseat and we get to explore other characters a bit more, like Taystee and Gloria really shined this season and of course there’s Suzanne.
oh man. poor Jimmy and that so-called “compassionate” release thing. :( thanks for bruising my feels, Jenji! >:( + :'(
Probably my favourite line is Piper talking about how even Paul McCartney would be all up in the tuna salad…lol Soso is hilarious