Cut to the laundry room. Pennsatucky got an alternative lifestyle haircut and Soso thinks Leanne and Angie should stop bullying Pennsatucky and embrace the light.
This is how lesbians have sex? You’re sure?
Pennsatucky says she doesn’t need Soso’s defensive assistance:
Pennsatucky: You know, I can take care of myself, you Ching Chang China doll!
Leanne: She’s Japanese-Scottish, you ignorant dumbass.
Angie: Ignorant dumb-ass dyke.
Well that’s nice.
Oh yeah if I’m such a raging dyke how’d I manage to make it off the set of Crossroads without fucking Britney Spears?
Leanne tells Pennsatucky that nobody showed up to Healy’s Safe Space Cadet Fantastic Feelings Show and also she stole all his Russian cookies. This clearly makes Pennsatucky feel sad because she’s not dead and only a dead person or Vee wouldn’t feel sad about that. Also Soso needs a friend:
Soso: Everyone in this place is sad and mad. I mean I get it. We’re in prison. It sucks. But we should be leaning on each other, finding support in our fellow criminals so we’re not isolated. I need a friend.
I have an idea for a new friend for Soso: 
I wonder what’s going down in the luxurious visitor’s lounge? Perhaps heaps of gleeful schoolchildren are singing selections from Into the Woods and snacking on peanuts and cracker jacks! Maybe a lion is singing a roary rendition of “Roar” while stealthy astronauts get their toenails painted! Maybe Alex Vause and Piper Chapman are enjoying a lovely afternoon date!
Okay, I’ll get the pancakes, you get the frittata, and we’ll split them both. How’s that?
Alex has selected a soft grey sweater and a homespun nametag for this meet-up, whereas Piper’s gone with the traditional tan jumpsuit. Piper observes that Alex’s sweater is very soft. Then they yell at each other.
Alex: I thought you were gonna tell the truth!
Piper: And I thought you were gonna lie!
Alex: Jesus, we are like a fucking O. Henry story.
Then, silence — no. Then, laughter.
You know this part, right? I mean, we know this part. The turning point in a relationship with somebody where you’ve really just fucked it up beyond repair. Like there is no coming back from the things you’ve said to each other and the shit you did to each other and the extreme emotions you’ve made the other person feel. Like if you wanted to fix it, where would you even begin? And how do you build that trust back when it’s been shattered so many times that you’re embarrassed to even tell yourself that you’re giving “trusting her” another go? But you love each other. It’s ridiculous and demolished and now you’re two girls who survived a natural disaster together, full of rage and hopelessly still in love.
You said you’d never try anal with ANYBODY, Alex.
They dig in:
Alex: It’s good to see your face.
Piper: I don’t know what to say.
Alex: You have every right to be angry.
Piper: I don’t know if I’m angry. I’m confused… by you.
Alex: I’m confused by me, too. I’m pretty much the master of handling things completely wrong.
Alex is lonely which makes her seem a little vulnerable, almost, but this isn’t so new either, is it? “I’ve dug myself into this hole, look at me down here in this hole, don’t you feel sad for me.”
Alex: I’m a fuck-up. And now I get to be a fuck-up in a shithole apartment in Queens, too afraid to even open my curtains. I’m really fucking lonely, Piper.
You would not believe the things Babeland has sent me since I signed up to review sex toys for Autostraddle.
Alex’s scared to leave her crib ’cause of mild agoraphobia JUST KIDDING I WAS TALKING ABOUT MYSELF IN 2007 she’s scared to leave her crib ’cause she testified against a drug lord and now she doesn’t wanna get murdered and thrown into a ditch or whatever. Also, her probation officer is named Davy Crockett.
Seriously? They sent you a We-Vibe Tango and you’re complaining about being stuck in Jackson Heights?
Alex admits she needed to see Piper today ’cause when she leaves this very room, she can’t ever come back for a visit. It’s like the Hotel California.
Piper: You can’t leave me.
Alex: Piper, I’m in danger.
Piper: But I don’t have anyone left.
Alex: I’m sorry, Piper. I’m sorry for all of it. I know that my track record is shit but I really do love you.
Piper: Yeah, well, I hate you.
Alex: No, you don’t.
Piper: No. No, I don’t.
:-(
Back in the barracks, Big Boo is using candy wrappers to build a necklace that will give her special powers like the ability to see through walls and fly into outer space. Just kidding! She’s doing it ’cause she’s bored.
Well, if you must know, the ones on the right are for Now, and the left tassel is for Later
Nicky shows up to harass Big Boo about snitching on Red, thus causing Red to get her face bashed in, and suggests Big Boo makes it right by telling Nicky where Vee stashes all her toys for grrls and bois.
Elsewhere, Suzanne’s losing it because Vee has destroyed her psychologically! It’s really hard to make jokes in this recap y’all because SHIT IS SO DARK. Taystee tries to talk Suzanne down, but Suzanne is just hooked on the idea that she attacked the Russian lady. She doesn’t remember it, but thinks maybe she just blocked it out because she does that sometimes, she blocks things out. But Vee is lying to you, Taystee tells her.
Suzanne: “She is a truth-teller, she told me that.”
Fucking hell.
SOMEBODY’S PLAYING MAROON 5
Suzanne says Vee warned her about Taystee potentially approaching her to mar Vee’s pristine reputation because OF COURSE SHE DID.
Taystee: You poor crazy fool!
Suzanne: No. I am not crazy. I am unique.
This is what I am
Out in the wild fields of Litchfield, Daya’s chatting with her boyfriend the tool. Specifically, she seems to be confessing that she’s the only person in the history of the universe to think “yeah, I can see that happening” while watching I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. Because that’s her big plan — pretending that she didn’t know she was pregnant until it comes out. She wants Bennett to man up and turn himself in, but Bennett says he can’t turn himself in ’cause he needs a raise/promotion.
Daya: “I love you, Jon, but you’re a pussy.”
Did you know dolphins are just gay sharks?
In the kitchen everybody’s talking shit about Fig and her nice shoes and also Maritza’s gonna get a diamond for her bellybutton.
You put your right arm in you put your right arm out, you do the hokey pokey and you shake it all about
Norma’s doing her best to make apple poison arsenic, but Gloria knows better — there are other ways than slaughtering an orchard in cold blood to kill an evil monster who’s gonna get Suzanne put away for life in a maximum security hell-hole.
Out at Occupy Litchfield With Nuns, O’Neil’s arguing that babies can’t be born with original sin ’cause of that time the leopard didn’t eat the baby baboon but instead sheltered it and protected it from hyenas.
The four apostles? John, Paul, George… and Ringo?
Sister Ingalls is surprised the nun brigade rallied in her honor… but she’s craving biscuits. Also, she once masturbated to an erotic photo of Jesus.
Jesus, those Westboro folks just don’t give up, do they
Then Red delivers sage wisdom regarding dancing with the man-meat.
Red: But there’s a part of me, a part of every woman, I think, that doesn’t want nice. That’s the problem with married sex in general. No more fear.
Sister Ingalls: Fear is good?
Red: Fear is very good.
Obviously she is referring to the classic ’90s flick Fear, which I watched one million times in the ’90s.
Sister Ingalls denies the nurse’s meager offering of sandwich and other nutritious goods ’cause she can’t stuff her muff with 100 nuns outside starving to death in her honor! Red’s shocked Sister Ingalls still cares what her friends think — and, well, Sister Ingalls is shocked that Red’s plotting revenge “like a gangbanger” and actively refusing to turn Vee in. So Sister Ingalls says she’ll eat a muffin if Red admits to the authorities that Vee socked her with a tick-tock clock.
Oh hello Mr Turkey Sandwich hiiii there turkey friend
Meanwhile, Uzo Aduba is winning an Emmy in the interrogation room!
You’re really trying to tell me that this is an eighth, dude? This is a gram AT MOST
Suzanne’s fraying in all directions — those grounding techniques she learned in therapy, the literature that falls out of her mouth, that clear certain way of talking she’s developed in a world where nobody listens to her quite hard enough. Was she there? Did she do it? What is anything? Who are we? Why are we here?
Really? You want ME to tell you how lesbians have sex?
A white man in a suit re-reads Suzanne’s record, which’s full of assaults and “incidents.” It sets her off in a cacophony of yesses and nos. She chants and confuses as the man scratches “Suzanne Warren: Primary Suspect” on his notepad.
Glad “primary’ has been specified because otherwise I wouldn’t know where Suzanne fell on this obviously extensive list of potential attackers
Pages: 1 2 3 4See entire article on one page
“Watson and Black Cindy finger Suzanne, as instructed, but they don’t seem happy about it.”
BAHAHAHAHAHA. I am a child.
Okay serious comment about the Fig scene: I know we’re supposed to be like YAY CAPUTO YOU COERCED A WOMAN INTO AN UNWANTED SEXUAL ACT WITH YOU but I have a huge problem with that scene. It just made me really uncomfortable- anyone else?
No, I completely agree. That whole thing made me extremely uneasy.
You’re not alone, that scene really bothered me too.
Fig makes my skin crawl, but Caputo *blackmails* her into giving him a blow job. That’s indisputably a sexual assault scene — and an incredibly graphic one, at that. Can we recognize this scene as an opportunity to unpack how rape & the threat of rape are used to punish and control women (even evil women characters)? I want to see Fig get her just desserts too, but I find the Mean Girls’ quote as a response to a (undeniably repulsive) character’s sexual assault disconcerting, y’all.
Yeah, that was defiantly blackmail and assault. Caputo knew that she was only making the offer in exchange for his silence.
That scene upsets me a lot too. I get a really gross message out of it; a woman in power can be easily degraded into a (rightful?) position that makes her submissive to a man. Caputo gets to show he has all the power by sexually humiliating Fig. I have trouble with this whole situation.
Now, I’m sure that Caputo won’t be able to handle the prison bureaucracy any better than Fig and he’ll inevitably screw up – probably worse than Fig ever did. But I doubt Caputo will have to give his successor a BJ. If the tone of the scene had been different, it could have been an interesting comment on complicities of sexism and power. But as it is, we’re supposed to celebrate with Caputo and that’s just unsettling.
Also think it is especially unsettling not only because the direction does seem to see it as a moment of celebration for Caputo rather than further making him out to be disgusting, but it also means that all of Figs major humiliations are sexual in nature. She gets off for embezzlement and looks like she will continue to play the dutiful wife role to see her husband win office. She even gets a clean record and can resign instead of be fired. All of her narrative “retribution” or “comeuppance” is around the husband she has endangered her career for cheating on her with a guy and her being tricked into giving Caputo a blowjob.
I was so unbelievably uncomfortable with it. I scrolled through the comments specifically to see if anyone else was. I mean, she was awful, but she was so ridiculously vulnerable in that moment and he took advantage of that and then laughed at her despair. Plus, consensual sex is all about consent and she while she may have consented to a sex act with him to keep those files safe (problematic enough as it was) that was not his intent so he withheld information which negated her consent making that sex act non-consensual and therefore an act of rape. Pretty effing disgusting all around. Plus, just the idea of him getting off on that sad sad desperate and seemingly helpless human being, was disgusting and very disturbing.
Yeah I really hate feeling like me as the viewer is complicit in this. I felt like they were trying to manipulate us into rooting for Caputo in this moment.
Man, can we do series where we replace mark wahlberg’s face with our queer fan girl idols? Or just get Soso a nice button down?
Is that an Empire Records reference in an OITNB recap? I’m not sure my brain is able to process that much joy!
I loved Red and Sister Ingalls this episode, with their sex talk and sandwich toasting. That was a great thing to see on TV.
Also, I really want to see more of Maria and Yadriel and their baby next season. Their scene in this episode was beautiful.
This season had some things that worked for me, most of all being the show finally wising up (as Pretty Little Liars never has with Ezra) to the fact that Bennett is an abusive asshole. I really enjoyed the way his portrayal this season (threatening some of the incarcerated women, tearing the bunks apart, etc.) gave some perspective on the ways in which his sexual and romantic relationship with Daya isn’t OK just because “I love her” and in fact bears some striking similarities to Pornstache’s sexual relationships with some of the incarcerated women. Also everyone realizing what an annoying person Piper is and treating her accordingly.
Things that didn’t work for me: the “ultimate villain” and one of the only characters who isn’t even slightly humanized (hell, even Pornstache got more sympathy in his scenes moping over true love with Bennett) as a woman of color and a person who is incarcerated. People recognize that Fig, Caputo, Healy, etc. are not really good people but they still have traits one can relate to; by the end, Vee was just a cartoon. Even her care for Taystee and RJ was completely invalidated. And on that note, the end of this season was a fucking cartoon period. People have already pointed out that Moretti being allowed to drive when she’s incarcerated for attempted murder is ridiculous; turning the car over to Miss Rosa so she can drive off into the sunset and on the way, take someone out, reads like the end of a comedic movie. If Orange is the New Black is looking to go full-on comedy, it’s the showrunners’ and writers’ prerogative to do so, but it’s a shame to think of the potential wasted (and the ways in which the dramatic abilities of the actors will be wasted). It turned me off completely. As much as I love ladies fucking, this season also spent so much on that at the expense of other storylines highlighting the complexities and inequities of the prison-industrial complex that by the end I was tired of that too.
tl;dr While I followed this season’s arc hopefully, I’m really hesitant to invest in Season 3 given how this season ended.
I don’t think Morello is supposed to be in for attempted murder given the length of her sentence and that it is minimum security, especially as it involved an attempt at a bomb. I think she may be doing these 3 years for the mail fraud. In some minimum security prisons inmates do do a lot of work, so her being allowed to drive while supervised if she is a non-violent offender (for this sentence at least) makes sense. Given the courtroom scene of her flashback, Christopher may have been a character witness against her.
As for Vee, I get why some people may feel it is problematic because she is shown as being a predator not seeking redemption. However, I also think it is a great portrayal of how much of a predator some people can be, and how they can draw vulnerable people in. She just doesn’t have the protections that privilege often offers. But she is a bad person who preys on people, and I think it is okay to portray her as such. The things she do, including selling heroin, harms people and communities. She is a standard ruthless bussinessperson who puts profit and power before all else. I think it would have been interesting for someone to comment on her being in prison but a representative from Phillip Morris being brought in as a special guest.
uugggh, *Morello, I fail at getting characters’ names right even when they are right in front of me. I like the suggestion you make about having someone comment on her presence but the Phillip Morris representative brought in as a special guest. And people like Vee do exist – it’s less the presence of her character that I have a problem with and more the fact that none of the characters in positions of greater power in the PIC are similarly portrayed.
Your comments about Morelli’s sentence make a lot more sense in the context of the prison world. I can’t remember from what they showed of her trial this season if it’s just Christopher who stands up talking about the bomb or if it’s the judge in the sentencing. On the other hand, Miss Claudette sure appeared to be in for murder based on how her story was presented, so it doesn’t seem like the internal universe has good consistency. I’m confused about that.
I get the impression Miss Claudette was in max security for a number of years and got down graded to minimum for good behaviour, so maybe not quite the same as Morello being allowed to drive?
It’s been a while since I watched it now and I can’t remember the finer details so well.
This final episode was everything.
1. I still think Soso’s backstory is going to be Morello-level out of left field.
2. I have always thought of Maria’s Silent Partner as one of my favorite characters. I mean, they are shown as the most faithful visitor, and they’re obviously a good listener. Also, I think the actor really showed their chops when they first found out about the transfer and were struggling not to cry while Maria talked to their baby.
3. O’Neill is full of so much win this episode, just so much win.
4. Doggett’s speech to Healey was a real heartstrings puller for me.
5. I found the ending a bit over the top, and given this show expect to have season three open with Vee alive, Ford fired, and Morello in SHU or at the very least with any liberties she might have restricted.
I agree I think that Soso is hiding something and I really enjoy Maria and her boyfriend Yadriel’s relationship. I just hope next season we get to see more of the Hispanic women’s backstories. I’d love to know how Maritza and Flaca met or just more of them in general ( which is partially due to my huge crush on Diane Guerrero)or more moments with Daya and Aledia. I have a feeling that the rules are going to get stricter in season 3 which is going to result in a riot. I mean that riot gear was foreshadowing something.
can we talk about how good soso looks in that tie though
like damn
good work, whoever made that happen
Loved this episode! The season as a whole wasn’t as good as season one for me mostly due to the lack of Alex and the Alex/Piper relationship which was what really kept me glued to the screen in the first season. So I was thrilled to see Alex will be back on her way to jail for season 3 and the visiting scene was absolutely heartwrenching. I think I literally squealed with joy when it was revealed Piper had saved all of Alex’s letters lol.
This last episode and that last scene was everything though. The middle episodes were really slow for me but the last few really ramped up the action and ended the season on a great note. Can’t wait for season 3!
You know Piper trying to sabotage Alex’s probation reminds me of when Miss Claudette stopped Trisha from planting drugs in Mercy’s cell. I will say one critique I have of this season is that I wish that there was a bit more foreshadowing in season one about Vee’s role. Maybe I’m being a bit nitpicky but certain things felt a bit rushed like “bam Taystee has an evil foster mother” or “bam Poussey is in love with Taystee” I also felt that the tone could’ve been handled a bit better. I mean the show goes from being a pretty campy show with dark moments to just a dark show. Vee is an evil villain but we don’t really know how she got to become so horrible to begin with and I had no idea that Taystee had a “foster” mother. Her role with Taystee makes sense and is interesting but I wish that she had gave us some hint about it in season one. Miss Rosa really shined this season though as well as Gloria and Poussey.
I’m crying because Rosa is perfection. PER. FEC. TION.