‘Orange is the New Black’ season 4, episode 2 review: Are the new inmates looking to blend, or looking for trouble?
One of the many reasons we love “Orange is the New Black” is because of the vast spectrum of characters we get to know deeper in time, much like real life. The writers have brilliantly figured out a way to present these women to us as flawed, but human. Considering some of the reasons why they are at Litchfield to begin with, this is no small feat. Episode 2 of season 4, titled ‘Power Suit’, starts off with a very long line for the bathroom. All women know how common this is, but even for the inmates this is too much. Maria, whom we know very little about other than her child being raised by her boyfriend in season 1, attempts to brush her teeth, but is pushed and shoved by the countless extra bodies who are there as a result of the prison privatization. She storms out to the cafeteria, where Gloria scolds her for using the kitchen as her bathroom sink. Maria has had enough of the new school.
Daya is scared about what will happen now that her mother’s boyfriend Cecil is in jail following a drug bust, resulting in her baby being placed in state custody. She blames her mother, Aleida, for the situation, because she meddled in the adoption process Daya had started with a very loving and capable woman. Aleida assures her that Cecil will be back out in a week, and everything will be fine. Daya doesn’t buy it, and neither do we.
Red has a big problem with her new bunkmate. Her snoring, due to her abnormally large uvula, is keeping Red up all night, and it is making her crazy. Red tries to come up with solutions to help her stop, and Piper pipes in with some useless tidbit about dealing with this same problem during her nights with Larry. Piper is playing Mean Girl to her own new bunkmate, who pushes back and gets her way despite Piper still feeling like she’s the HBIC. For someone as self-centered as Piper is, her lack of self-awareness is fascinating. Black Cindy is also struggling to co-exist with her new Muslim bunkmate, and refuses to let her keep her shoes on the floor since it’s Cindy’s territory. She goes over Cindy’s head and asks the guard for permission, which he grants her. Cindy tells her that she and Tova, Cindy’s Hebrew name she chose in Season 3 when she converted, have beef now. They trade religious insults, and we feel this is going to foreshadow some major racial and religious conflicts this season.
Caputo has gathered the inmates in the prison auditorium to discuss how he expects things to go in the new overcrowded world of Litchfield. He is accompanied by Piscatello, who he has asked to stay on as Captain of the guards. He informs them that porta-potties have been added to the yard as an additional means of “relief”, the upkeep of which will be part of the janitorial crew. His answer to the chaos is to give each woman a free pair of ear plugs, and teach them breathing exercises. This goes over as well as you would expect. Piscitello jolts the chatter to attention with his obnoxious air horn. We see Blanca smiling broadly because, as she points out to Maria, Dominicans are the majority now. In the first of this season’s series staple backstory reveals, we are given a glimpse of Maria’s life, beginning as a young girl celebrating her birthday by watching her father stir up a war with the Mexicans that they feel are intruding on their community and values. Her father gives a woman whose son needs surgery enough money to cover it. Maria sees this good deed, and it is clear she idolizes him.
Caputo lets Healy know about Judy King’s VIP accommodations, and he is not impressed. Caputo says like it or not, HQ says she needs to be comfortable. Because Healy pushes back a little, Caputo, in an act of muscle-flexing superiority–because Caputo craves respect the way most of us crave breakfast–places Healy in charge of finding a docile roommate for Judy who won’t ruffle any feathers.
Over at the phones, Gloria is whispering to someone to go tell Michael that his mother Sophia is in the SHU, and she did nothing wrong. This is the second time she has been mentioned this episode, so we expect to find out soon what has been happening to her. Tiffany ‘Pensatucky’ is outside watching the van pull up with Coates, the guard who assaulted her, smiling and joking along with his new driver, Maritza. He approaches her and asks how she is feeling since her seizure and that she should rest up to feel better. We feel so disgusted watching him try to talk to her after what he did, and we wonder if he feels guilt at all or just wants to be sure she stays quiet. We hope he gets his judgment day sooner than later. Frieda steps out of the Porta-Potty and watches them talking, which makes him uncomfortable and he walks away. Frieda thinks he’s hot and asks Tiffany if she’s noticed. She walks away and puts her hoodie over her head. The aftermath of the assault has left her permanently changed, the little spitfire replaced with empty eyes.
Healy and Judy King are discussing her living arrangements, and she says she would have been perfectly content with Poussey. Healy suggests she may not have wanted to room with black women, and she calls him out on it with a gleaming smile. She has gusto and confidence and nothing appears to rattle her. Healy goes further into racial stereotyping, but she cuts him off to say that when it come to a roommate, all that matters to her is whether or not they’re clean and considerate. Oh, except Nebraskans, fatties, or anybody with too much hair.
In the TV room the Latina women are watching soccer, and the two white women present complain that they want to watch a travel show about hotels. Blanca refuses, and as the women stand up to walk out, one of them makes a racial remark to her friend loudly so they all could hear. Maria is angry at Blanca and tells her to chill out and stop being obnoxious. Maria feels all Latinas are the same, regardless of where they came from. Blanca isn’t having it and says she has been pushed around for three years. Now that they have the numbers, she is not taking it anymore. This brings us to Maria’s teenage years, when she comes home from school with her pretty, young friend and they listen to her father talking to his friends. It’s clear that the idolization we saw in her youth has been replaced with disgust and embarrassment, which she expresses openly when her father makes an off-color remark to her friend. She confides in her friend that she is embarrassed because he acts like hes noble, but in reality he just sells drugs and lays around. They’re distracted by a police foot chase outside Maria’s open bedroom window, and see a guy they recognize running. He tosses a package into the bushes, chased closely by some cops. She heads down and sneaks over to the bushes, retrieves the drugs and tosses them into her window. The cops notice her when they can’t locate it, and they frisk her in an aggressive and sexual manner, but she has nothing on her.
Piper is gloating about how she’s one of the bad girls now sitting with Red and the ever silent Norma, and how far they have come since their early rivalry. Red warns her that her haughty attitude might get her into trouble, and that all smart rulers have people around them who are loyal to them to protect her. Red points out that people who are feared are also a primary target to be taken out, and she manages to get into Piper’s head. She tells Piper she needs to make everyone believe she’s stronger than she is. We expect a new mission for Piper to earn some recruits. Gangsta with an “a” wants her own gang.
Black Cindy and Red each continue to have conflicts with their new bunkmates, as does Piper, who is awoken by being lifted up and down in bed by the girls legs below her. When the girl calls Piper angry, we see the switch go off and we expect her to start kissing new girls rear end soon. Recruit number one. It happened sooner than we expected. Piper tries to make amends with her new roomie and offers her a job for her panties business. She declines. Shortly thereafter, she convinces her to be her Secret Service, shadowing her every move. For now. Red learns from Sister that if she attached something to the girls back so she couldn’t sleep in that position it may stop the snoring. It seems a better plan than murder. In the cafeteria, Pensatucky and Boo watch Maritza and Flaca chatting at lunch and wonder if Coates has attacked her. For a second she looks distraught, but she was just playing around.
Daya and her mother have words with Blanca and Maria in the kitchen, and Daya is not holding back her disdain for Dominicans. Again Maria tries to calm Blanca down, but Daya digs the knife deeper with a racist comment about their hair clogging the sinks. We go back in time again to Maria approaching the boy whose drugs she recovered. She shows him she has his stash and tells him to fight her for it, landing a punch to his face. He likes that she’s feisty, so they hang out and she tells him her plans to be a dental hygienist before they share kisses.
Back at Litchfield, Sophia’s wife Crystal shows up to confront Caputo about her being in SHU. He tell her she was violent and needed to go there, and Crystal threatens to get the ACLU involved. He asks her if she really knows her wife, and that people will do just about anything to survive in there. She tries to hold his attention, but he leaves for an important meeting.
Judy King is still segregated superstar style with her earthy, crunchy roommate Yoga Jones. Yoga voices her discomfort being part of the 1% and feels it’s unfair. This season is touching on social and economic injustice, and we are enjoying watching these important issues currently happening in real life play out in Litchfield. If Yoga was expected to be docile, she defied expectations and calls Judy out on her fraud schemes to make her money. Judy thinks she secretly enjoys the perks. They agree to co-exist peacefully. Judy offers her steaming hot herbal tea and Yoga can’t resist.
Caputo has a meeting with HQ about the state of affairs at the prison. He assures them he has it under control, and they tell him he better–as 30k per head from the feds is prize money. He is adamant that they need better security. They talk about getting money for hiring veterans, and double if they are physically disabled (they certainly aren’t going to win any humanitarian awards). Caputo likes the idea, and tells them about the abandoned houses on the grounds that could be used as free housing. Caputo gets the praise he thrives on, and lights up like a Christmas tree.
Pensatucky sees Maritza and tries to figure out if she’s been harmed by Coates by asking her questions about things she used to do with him. Maritza and Flaca think she is brain damaged from her car wreck. We feel sad seeing how wounded she is. In the stairwell, Blanca is confronted by the two white girls from the TV room, who spew more racist comments and attack her, causing her to fall down the staircase just as Maria walks in and sees. The new Dominican girls try to chase after them when they flee, but Maria wants to plan the revenge with cool heads. In another flashback to Maria’s life outside the prison, we see her confront her father about his distaste for her Mexican boyfriend, and Mexicans in general, when he is doing the exact things he says make them bad people. She can’t take the hypocrisy and doesn’t back down, renouncing her heritage. This causes him to throw her out of his house.
Crazy Eyes laments her unlucky love life with Black Cindy, who assures her that her twin soul is out there somewhere. They spot a soda on Cindy’s half of the window sill, and she ignores Crazy Eyes suggestion that they do a good deed and return it. Cindy decides to drink it anyway, and it explodes everywhere when she opens it. The feud with her roomie has now escalated. That night, Daya hears her mother sobbing and goes to check on her. Cecil is going to be in jail for a very long time. Daya comforts her and assures her that they have each other. Red’s roomie falls off the top bunk on to the floor face first. Covered in blood, she heads to medical. Is it the end of Red’s sleepless nights? Maria and the rest jump the girls who attacked Blanca with nobody noticing. Soso and Poussey notice their injuries and wonder what may have happened. Soso likens them all to chickens in the same cage, eventually pecking chunks out of each other. We have a bad feeling about that statement. Maria joins the Dominican ladies for a game of dominoes, and lets them know she is ready. There are a new group in charge, and they are ready for change.
We really enjoy the themes of the season, and that they confront issues head-on that we are facing at present. Economic inequality, racism, both personal and systemic and the cult of celebrity. We have a foreboding sense of doom ahead, and we hope there are no casualties with the women that we have grown to love, but we know that OITNB writers like to shake it up when we least expect it. The cast continues to shine this season and there is really no weak links, and in a cast this size that is an amazing feat. Expect to see the racial tensions building and the overcrowding making everyone behave at their worst. Since they are prisoners (a fact we sometimes forget getting so caught up in their day to day lives), we expect it will be extreme. This episode is setting the pace along nicely. Episode grade: A
What did you think of this episode of “Orange is the New Black”? Leave us a comment below and share your thoughts on the season so far.
This review was written by Michelle Wilmot and if you’re not already following her on Twitter you can do so at the link here.