Orange is the New Black season 5 episode 3 review: The Linda backstory no one asked for
The ladies of Litchfield are finally getting organized on Orange is the New Black, but even though they are putting together a united front, we still don’t know exactly what the end game is here. We know they want changes, but what exactly is it that they want? We saw them taking humiliating photos of their hostages to send to the negotiators in hopes of letting them know that the situation is serious enough to be taken seriously. Now they just have to collectively come up with their list of demands and see if anyone is willing to meet them halfway.
We have mostly seen the aftermath of Poussey’s death on the inmates and how it’s affected everyone there, but the one person we haven’t seen much of this season is the guard (Bayley) who accidentally killed her. It’s hard to have sympathy for him since he is responsible for Poussey’s death (and now we have no more Samira Wiley on the show) which could’ve been avoided, however this is taking a hard toll on him as well. He was a new, untrained guard in a situation he didn’t know how to handle and it ended in him accidentally taking the life of someone he never intended to hurt. How does he live with something like this? He can’t and after seeing the video that Taystee released, he takes himself to the Litchfield police station to turn himself in for murdering Poussey. Because he is so drunk and mostly babbling, the officers throw him in the drunk tank.
Piscatella wants to get a small team together and take back the prison, but once the higher ups hear that Judy King is still inside the prison (and the picture of the hostages gets out) he is ordered to stand down and wait it out. They don’t want a media circus around the prison, especially if something happens to King. With that in mind, Piscatella announces to the inmates that they are ready to hear their demands and resolve the situation.
So what do the ladies want? Taystee’s group wants Bayley locked up for Poussey’s death, but since they are not the only ones in this prison with demands, they decide to find out what everyone wants as a group. While there are some demands brought up that focus on better every day living for the ladies (like replacing the guards with properly trained ones, reinstating the GED program, better healthcare and the arrest of CO Bayley), Gloria wants to get amnesty for all that were part of this riot as long as there are no egregious felonies.
We expect that they will get some of what they are asking for, but a lot will depend on if the guards/hostages can find a way to take back the power. After putting all the hostages together in a room and locking them up, they start exchanging information with the most valuable piece being that they don’t think that the inmates have the gun anymore. Are they going to try to take back the prison?
For some reason we had backstory on Linda in this episode and if you’re wondering why anyone cares about Linda’s back story then join the club. There are a lot of other inmates that we want backstory on or even inmates that we want MORE backstory on over Linda and her time as a fraternity sister that lied about the death of one of her sorority sisters. What we want to see more of is Soso and how losing Poussey is really effecting her. Yes, we’ve seen her depressed and becoming withdrawn (which is how many would deal with something like this), but what we want to see is her pain over this whole thing evolve into something more and have been hoping that she would come out as a leader in avenging Poussey’s death. Episode grade: B
What did you think of this episode of Orange is the New Black and what do you think of the season so far? Leave us a comment in the box below with your thoughts.