‘Orange Is The New Black’ season 3, episode 10 review: Doggett in danger, Suzanne’s romance
Now that Piper has cheated on Alex with Stella during a dark time for Alex, will she be able to forgive Piper, or will this be the end of these two for a while? This is not the first time that Alex has been going through a tough time and Piper abandoned her as we saw with Alex’s mom’s funeral, but this is not the outside world and life is a little different for the ladies in prison.
We haven’t had a Doggett episode in a while, but now that she is developing this strange, creepy friendship with Coates, it makes sense to learn more about how she works when it comes to men. After hearing the birds and the bees talk her mother gave her as a child, and how men treated her as a young woman it’s easy to see why she has problems with men. Coates apologized for his behavior and told her that he has feelings for her and it seems that she is enjoying his company too. After going on a few more ice cream and donut runs, Caputo notices that Coates is late for everything and puts him on probation. When Doggett tries to be friendly with Coates, he’s angry about being put on probation, blaming her for everything and forces himself on her.
Alex’s day takes a turn for the worse when she sees Stella and Piper getting friendly in her bunk. When Alex confronts Piper and Stella and it only pushes Piper into Stella’s arms and Alex goes further down the rabbit hole. She confronts Lolly about stalking her for her former boss and she finally comes clean, but it’s not what Alex thinks. Lolly thinks that the NSA is after her and that Alex is part of the organization.
We haven’t seen Mendez since last season and we miss his special brand of sleaziness, so when we got an appearance from him (without his trademark mustache) we couldn’t have been happier. He learns that Daya’s baby isn’t his and takes the news about as well as he would… he goes into complete denial and is convinced that the baby is his and that they will be a family once he gets out of prison, because it’s the only thing keeping him sane (well as sane as Mendez can be). His mom sees how much this means to him and approaches Daya about adopting the baby even though it’s not George’s and after thinking about it, Daya agrees.
Suzanne has a little blossoming romance happening with one of the new girls when she is given an invitation to take their friendship to a physical level. Suzanne hasn’t experienced a physical relationship with anyone, so she goes to Lorna for advice, but when the time comes, she is still too nervous to go through with it. We really like the idea of Suzanne having a romantic relationship and wonder if it will smooth out some of her crazy side.
There were a few other small tidbits this week including Lorna sending one of her new pen pals over to beat up Christopher and the ladies figuring out just how much cash Piper is making off of her underwear business. Over all a really great episode, but difficult to watch since Doggett is such a tragic character that we really want to see get a bit of a break from such a crappy life. Episode grade: A –
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