Warning: This obviously includes details about the fourth season of “Orange Is the New Black.” Major spoilers ahead.
Unlike Season 3, which ended with the inmates joyously cavorting in a nearby lake, Season 4 concludes on a tone that’s equal parts somber and defiant.
Here’s our recap of the last three episodes:
Episode 11: People Persons
The prison goes on lockdown, forcing everyone back to the dorms. Alex talks strategy with Piper, Red and Frieda, who anticipate that at least one of them will be called in for questioning. The real concern is Lolly, who is looking for wax paper for her DIY time machine in the prison laundry room (Crazy Eyes told her she was using too much tin foil).
Healy asks what’s going on and is told, to his horror, that “they found a guard’s body in the garden.” Realizing he is sitting on an actual confession from Lolly, he quietly leaves Litchfield. Caputo is called to MCC headquarters in Utica and informs the guards that they should hold down the fort overnight until the FBI arrives to investigate the murder. Because no one knows that the guard in question was actually Kubra’s hitman posing as a guard, they’re even more angry that Caputo doesn’t know the identity of the guard. The guards who are veterans are especially disturbed that Caputo had no idea that a guard was even missing.
“The worst reaction is an overreaction,” Caputo says, ordering the guards not to interrogate the inmates until the feds arrive — an order Piscatella promptly disregards. When Coates questions Piscatella, he is sent out to the garden to guard the creepy crime scene. In other grudging work assignments, Luschek is sent to guard Judy King.
Advertisement
In Utica, Caputo finds out that he’s being briefed on what (not) to say to the media. “I should be at the prison,” he tells his MCC supervisor Jack Pearson, who assures him his time is better spent being coached by a PR flack, who might also be needed for what awaits Jack outside: his son Danny, who shows up with Crystal and a printout of Caputo’s photo of Sophia in the SHU.
Tensions run high as the inmates called in for questioning wait to be interrogated by Piscatella. This includes Red, Crazy Eyes, Maria and Kasey Sankey, the white pride-advocating inmate known for her frequent verbal attacks on inmates of color (read: not a good mix). Crazy Eyes, cautioned by Taystee to give Kakudio some space after her broom closet stunt, refuses to talk to her. Red plays dumb when Piscatella calls her in. “You’re head of the garden club,” he tells her. “I find it extraordinary that you wouldn’t have any useful information for me.”
Another consequence of the lockdown: Nicky is unable to get drugs. Pennsatucky comforts her as she again goes through withdrawal symptoms — eye spasms and all — letting her puke into the basket she impressively weaved from unraveled old socks. It would appear that the only people not suffering during the lockdown are Judy, Luschek and Yoga Jones, who are holed up in Judy and Yoga’s room and, unlike Nicky, able to get drugs. Somehow, Judy convinces Yoga and Luschek to take molly. And in what may be the most ridiculous “OITNB” plotline ever, the two inmates and the prison electrician have a threesome.
Advertisement
The inmates are told little about what’s going on, and some of the newer correctional officers amuse themselves with cruel tactics. When Taystee asks a guard when Crazy Eyes will be back, he stomps on the watch that Caputo gave her. In the interrogation waiting room, Humphrey pulls a chair out from under Kasey’s head while she’s resting and she lashes out at Crazy Eyes, who laughs (along with everyone else). Humphrey orders Kasey to fight Crazy Eyes but she declines. Still smarting from her latest rejection, Kakudio volunteers.
It’s a brutal fight. Crazy Eyes does everything she can not to engage, but loses it after she’s egged on by Kakudio and multiple guards. In the end, Maria and Ouija have to pull Crazy Eyes off of Kakudio, whose face is so bloodied she’s beyond recognition. “Well, I just made $20,” Humphrey says as Crazy Eyes sits in the corner crying and being comforted by her fellow inmates.
Elsewhere, Healy, who has been wandering around town and sampling frozen yogurt, continues to ignore calls from Litchfield. He ends up on a beach, where he calls Katya, his estranged mail-order wife. He leaves her an apologetic voicemail, explaining that he has tried really hard to be good at his job, but things only seem to get worse. He drops his phone in the sand and wades slowly into the water. Healy hears his phone ring as he’s chest-deep into the water and, despite his racist and misogynistic tendencies, it’s hard not to root for him and hope it’s Katya calling to essentially save his life. But that isn’t at all characteristic of Healy’s sad life: It’s Litchfield, calling again.
Healy returns to the prison, where he’s asked to deal with Lolly, who was clearly sold out by Red after guards found the keys to the greenhouse tool shed in Red’s office. Lolly is hiding in her time machine. “I’m just trying to travel back in time. Back before I killed that guy,” she tells Healy. With a pained look on his face, Healy takes Lolly down to the psych ward and watches tearfully from behind a gate as she’s taken to her new room. Lolly starts crying and calls for him, as another pysch inmate screams continuously.
Flashback: We see Crazy Eyes working at a department store. She happily greets everyone who walks through the door, including a few of her favorite customers: a mom and her three young boys. She’s excited when her manager informs her that she’s been named employee of the month, and even more excited to tell her sister, Grace, the good news. Grace has some news of her own — she’s going away for the weekend with her boyfriend, despite Suzanne’s repeated requests for her to stay. “It’s gonna be fine,” Grace says, noting that she’s printed out a schedule for Suzanne and stocked the fridge. “I am a young 28,” Suzanne says, but Grace reminds her that they spend all of their time together and suggests it’s time for Suzanne to make her own friends.
Advertisement
While Grace is away, Suzanne goes to the park and runs into Dylan, the youngest son of the family she greeted at her job. They bond over their shared love of trucks and Suzanne invites him back to her and Grace’s apartment to play video games. After hours of playing, Dylan announces that he should go home and tries to call his father. “You don’t have to stay all night as long as you promise to come back the second you wake up,” she tells him. Suzanne tries to get Dylan to stay a little longer, even rummaging through her cape collection, but she overhears him on the phone with a 911 operator saying he doesn’t know where he is.
“Dylan, you only call 911 in the case of an emergency,” she tells him. When Dylan runs to try to unlock the door, she becomes confused and angry: “Friends do not run away from friends!” Dylan begins to panic and runs through Suzanne’s room to try to go out through the fire escape. Suzanne runs after him and tries to pull him back in through the window, while repeatedly saying his name, but Dylan loses his balance and falls off. It’s a heartbreaking reminder that Crazy Eyes has the mental age of a child and doesn’t fully understand what she does wrong. It also explains her sad statement to Kakudio in Episode 1.“But I did hurt someone.”
Line of the episode: Confirmed: Linda from purchasing has never set foot in a prison. “It never seemed necessary,” she tells Caputo.
Advertisement
Episode 12: The Animals
Caputo returns to Litchfield the morning after the lockdown started. Waiting for him is Bayley, who tells him about Humphrey forcing Kakudio and Crazy Eyes to fight. Bayley also tells him that this was during the very interrogations that Caputo had ordered Piscatella not to conduct.
Back in the dorms, Crazy Eyes is basically catatonic following the fight. Taystee and Poussey do their best to comfort her and remind her that what happened wasn’t her fault. In an unexpected development, Kasey and Skinhead Helen visit the dorm and propose an alliance to take down Humphrey. “You know that psycho locked me in a room,” Helen says. “Made me tell him whether I’d rather eat my mom or my dad.” Poussey is confused: “Ain’t you guys the one tryna reinstate slavery?” Kasey explains that her hate for Humphrey outranks her hate for black people. “We’re in,” Taystee says. After a visit to the salon, Maria agrees to join the alliance.
Sophia finally returns to general population and makes her own visit to the salon, which has changed dramatically since she used to run it. Peering in from the outside, her eyes veer toward a transphobic sign on the wall. She later catches a glimpse of herself in the prison bathroom, her face tired and full of self-inflicted injuries.When Maria walks in and says, “You’re here,” Sophia responds, “Am I?” She makes it clear she’s not in the mood for pleasantries.
Poussey and Soso visit Lolly’s time machine, where they slow dance and talk about their future — together. Poussey reminds her that they’ll need jobs and Soso suggests they “search jobs for former inmates on the Interweb.” “I’ll shovel sh– and you’ll dig graves,” Soso tells her. Poussey visits Judy in her five-star accommodations, and thank goodness because Yoga is waxing apologetic on her wild night (“I’m a monster!” she says. “I betrayed everything I believed in for bubble and soft sheets. How am I going to live with myself. Everything is terrible.”) Poussey tells Judy that she really liked assisting her in the culinary class and wonders if Judy might help her break into the industry when she gets out. Judy happily writes down her office number and tells Poussey to call when she gets out.
Red, having been interrogated most of the night, is getting some much-needed sleep when Piscatella enters her bunk and orders her to go to the kitchen. “Do you know what inmates with illegal sets of keys don’t get to do?” Piscatella asks. So now we’re onto sleep deprivation.
Advertisement
Elsewhere, Caputo confronts Humphrey about other cruelties to the inmates. “An inmate’s in medical because of a fight you instigated,” he tells Humphrey, who responds, “An inmate’s in medical because an ape had a tantrum,” using a racial slur to refer to Crazy Eyes. Caputo tells Hump he’s suspended for a month without pay, but Piscatella enters and declares, “No one is suspended,” threatening to pull his entire staff. Piscatella gives Caputo an epic dressing-down:”With all due respect, sir, my men and I apprehended the murderer last night while you were, I don’t know, sleeping?”
Share this articleShareIn the prison library, Taystee, Maria, Red and Kasey meet with Hapakuka, who tells them that at her old prison in Hawaii, the inmates staged a peaceful protest and got policies changed. Hapakuka suggests that they stage their protest by dinnertime before someone tips off the guards, but things get contentious when the discussion turns to who will lead the effort.
Despite the in-fighting, word gets to the cafeteria, where Red’s crew discuss the odds of the inmates actually getting Piscatella or one of the correctional officers ousted. Piper says she’s in, despite Alex’s advice to lay low. Over at Taystee’s table, Soso and Janae pledge their tentative support, should the movement actually get off the ground, but the discussion topic turns to Crazy Eyes, who isn’t eating at all and keeps repeating variations of “I did a bad thing.” At the white power table, Kasey stuns her friends by saying, “Actually some of the ladies seem pretty nice,” adding in a few racial slurs for good measure. In the kitchen, Blanca tells Maria that they don’t need to work with anyone else and that she’s willing to put herself on the line for the cause. “You saw what they did to me,” Blanca says, before reminding Maria that Piscatella is also responsible for her increased sentence.
Advertisement
Meanwhile, the feds have set up shop in Caputo’s office and tell him they need a full review of Litchfield’s hiring practices — Kubra’s murdered hitman had four social security numbers attached to his name. Caputo conveniently decides to step out, but not before Taystee confronts him on how he plans to address the events of the prior evening. She shows him her watch, destroyed by a guard. “It still works, but it ain’t pretty and don’t make my a– point out the metaphor.”
On his way out, Caputo approaches Bayley with some advice: “This isn’t for someone like you. This place crushes anything good. It’s like a monster that’s grown too big for its stubby little legs and now it’s stumbling around crushing whole cities. You can’t survive it, Bayley.” Bayley, easily the most naive person on Litchfield’s campus, asks Caputo a shockingly insightful question: “Are you the city or the monster, sir?” His answer is telling: “Neither. Both…even if you’re the city now, one day you’ll be the monster.”
Speaking of monsters, Pennsatucky and Boo have been arguing about one of Litchfield’s monsters — Coates, who raped Pennsatucky while accompanying her on prison errands last season. Pennsatucky tells Boo that she misses her and that she’s been reading the Bible and hints that she wants to forgive her rapist and move on. “Do you know the difference between pain and suffering?” Pennsatucky asks. “Pain is always there because life is freaking painful, okay? But suffering is a choice. And you, my friend, it’s not my right to say, but you’re suffering.”
It’s revealed that Caputo has headed to his former sex buddy Natalie ‘Fig’ Figueroa’s house, where the two commiserate over the impossible nature of the Litchfield warden job. “They broke you too, huh?,” Natalie asks, casually mentioning the impending batch of new inmates headed his way. Caputo is stunned, unaware that the prison is slated to receive even more bodies. That dome the inmates have been building? It’s a new dorm. For the second time in as many episodes, Caputo says that he should really head back to Litchfield, but ends up making another catastrophic choice, accepting Fig’s invitation to come in for a glass of wine.
Advertisement
Back at Litchfield, the inmates eat dinner in the cafeteria, where they engage in the usual small talk. Lorna says she and Vince are planning to start trying for a baby, despite the fact that her incarceration makes that impossible and the fact that he thinks she’s crazy after she accused him of sleeping with her sister. But things strike a much more serious tone when Piscatella publicly chastises Red for sleeping: “It seems that somewhere along the way, everyone around here forgot the only thing that matters: You’re criminals and you deserve nothing,” he says before violently shoving Red to the floor.
Maria helps Red get up, and the rest of the inmates take the cue. Blanca leaves the kitchen and quietly removes her hairnet, stepping once again onto the tabletop as more and more inmates follow suit. Poussey gingerly pulls Crazy Eyes up to stand on the table with her, and mouths “I’m sorry, baby” to Soso for telling her, a few scenes earlier, that a protest would never effect actual change at Litchfield. Pretty soon everyone is standing defiantly on top of their table and the inmates are officially staging a (peaceful) revolt. Piscatella declines to call for backup and orders the guards to forcibly remove everyone from the cafeteria.
It’s an ugly scene, and when Crazy Eyes sees Humphrey she starts up again. “No. No. No. I did a bad thing,” she says as she starts banging her fists against various cafeteria fixtures. Piscatella orders Bayley to take her to psych and he pulls her hands behind her back to restrain her. Poussey jumps from the table and volunteers to calm Crazy Eyes, but Bayley reacts quicky, throwing Poussey down to the floor, with a knee to her back and his hand on her neck. Despite her plea that she’s just trying to help, he continues to press her to the ground. “Stay down, inmate,” he says, as Crazy Eyes flails at his back.
Advertisement
This is the most heartbreaking scene of “Orange Is the New Black” to date. From across the room, Poussey’s best friend Taystee is being dragged out of the cafeteria and notices what Bayley has yet to realize: that Poussey has stopped moving. Coates runs over to pull Bayley off of her, but it’s too late. As the inmates gather around Poussey, Taystee runs in and sobs over her lifeless body.
Flashback: Bayley grew up in Litchfield. The episode opens with him as a teenager, climbing the Litchfield tower with three of his friends. They have just graduated from high school, and sit atop the tower drinking beers and smoking pot. “The prison almost looks, like, pretty at night,” Bayley says. “Doesn’t it almost look like school?” one of his friends adds.
A few minutes later, a police officer orders them down. They spend part of the evening in jail, where the sheriff tells them, “We got your friend, Laurel and Hardy, two cells down.” The reference is lost on them and Bayley looks terrified, volunteering that he’s a virgin. The sheriff tells Bayley to save his stammering for the judge, but comes back laughing a few seconds later about how scared they looked. “We can just go?” a stunned Bayley asks. “We had pot too.”
Bayley’s flashbacks show him in engaging in petty crime — stupid, peer pressure-fueled hijinks like giving away dozens of ice cream cones to attractive girls at the stand where he works, and later egging the house and neighborhood of the manager who fired him. The latter scene finds his story intersecting briefly with that of a Litchfield inmate when one of the eggs hits Frieda, raking leaves alongside other inmates. “You think that’s funny?” Frieda yells in an expletive-filled rant. “I’m a f—ing human being.”
Memorable scene: Gloria throws the younger Latinas out of the salon and helps Sophia fix her hair. “I don’t need your pity,” Sophia says. “Good,” Gloria replies. “Cause I ain’t got none to give.”
Episode 13: Toast Can’t Never Be Bread Again
As we are left reeling from Poussey’s tragic death, her murder at the hands of a Litchfield guard, we get flashbacks of Poussey Washington before she became an inmate at Litchfield. In a way it’s salt in the wound, as Poussey is a beloved character and her death is almost unbearable. But the episode is a reminder of why it’s such a joy to watch Samira Wiley, the actress who plays Poussey, in the first place. She commands attention in every scene that she’s in.
We watch as she spends a magical night in New York City — the type of night that the city is famous for. She accompanies her friends to a Roots concert only to find out that they’re seeing The Rootz, a pitiful cover band. She gets separated from them when someone steals her phone, and she spends a few hours with a couple of lively drag queens before being chaueffered back to her friends in Brooklyn by a group of monks, who turn out to just be very committed improv actors.
The flashbacks are interspersed with agonizing scenes of present-day Litchfield as the inmates grieve in their own ways. Taystee presses for answers that never come. Soso finds Poussey’s hooch, buried in the prison yard. Janae and Black Cindy are angry. And Crazy Eyes surrounds herself with Poussey’s books, later voicing her intent to hurt herself so she can feel what Poussey felt. Eventually, she ends up in medical alongside her forced sparring partner, Kakudio.
The episode also brings a series of infuriating developments: MCC instructs Caputo not to call the police until they can properly spin the situation. Poussey’s body lies on the floor of the cafeteria for hours, as MCC bureaucracy goes to work trying to justify Poussey’s death. The PR consultant goes through her Facebook account trying to find a menacing photo of a woman who weighed 90 pounds.
The more well-intentioned Caputo works another angle, asking Taystee if Poussey provoked Bayley in any way. “What are you asking me? If she deserved to die?” Taystee says. Halfway into the finale, it’s revealed that Caputo has yet to call Poussey’s father to inform him of her death. (He does so right before a press conference announcing what happened at his prison.) And in perhaps the most infuriating reveal of all, we learn that Poussey was in prison — alongside gang members and murderers — for less than half an ounce of marijuana.
In other disturbing developments, Coates and Pennsatucky share a moment. “I think we’re cool right,” Pennsatucky says. “Toast can’t never be bread again. But I like talking to you,” she adds before kissing him. He gives in for a moment, then pulls away, but makes it clear that he wants to do more with her: “But I don’t want to be what I was to you, and I don’t want to ruin where we are now.”
Meanwhile, Judy’s high-powered attorneys manage to arrange their client’s early release. As part of the deal, Judy is supposed to pretend that she was never even at Litchfield during Poussey’s murder. Yoga urges Judy to call the police or use her profile to speak to the media, but Judy is focused only on getting the heck out of Litchfield. “I didn’t see anything. It was a sea of bodies and screaming and chaos and then my friend was dead.” “You could refuse to leave, you know,” Yoga says. “Oh, f— that,” Judy replies. “I am getting as far away from this place as humanly possible. They kill people in here.”
MCC is typically heavy-handed as Caputo prepares to address Poussey’s death in a news conference. By now, the narrative has shifted from Poussey as villain (not even MCC could make such a falsehood work) to Bayley as an untrained guard who went rogue. The consultant hands Caputo a photo of Bayley wearing a bandolier. “He’s dressed for Halloween,” Caputo says. The consultant also advises Caputo to order the inmates back to the dorms, to ensure that they have no access to the press. Watching from outside Litchfield is the newly-released Aleida, plus Healy, who has checked himself into a mental treatment facility.
At the press conference, Caputo goes off script — not to honor the young woman who died in his care (or lack thereof) but to defend Bayley. “My officer fulfilled his duty and I defend his actions.” This sets off Taystee, who has managed to stick around Caputo’s office. She runs through the halls announcing what she just heard: that Bayley will not be fired. “They called him the f—ing victim,” she screams, kicking the walls. Arriving back in her dorm, she tells everyone, “They lettin’ him off. They didn’t even say her name!” She picks up a chair and throws it, leading the inmates into the halls, yelling, “There’s no justice!”
The inmates from the other dorms join in the protest, filling the halls with an angry sea of khaki and orange. The inmates come to an intersection as Judy King is being escorted out by correctional officers McCullough and Humphrey. One of the inmates pushes Humphrey as he removes his gun from the holster and is slides across the floor. Daya picks it up and hesitates as Maria asks her if she knows what she’s doing. Daya orders McCullough onto the ground and points the gun squarely at Humphrey, as the inmates — black, white, Latina and “other” — encourage her to shoot him.
This is the cliffhanger ending to an incredibly powerful season of “Orange Is the New Black,” but the show gives us one more heart-rending glimpse of Poussey, who looks directly into the camera and smiles broadly.
Memorable scene: Norma, who doesn’t speak because of her severe stutter, sings to Soso to comfort her in the wake of Poussey’s death. As we learned during Litchfield’s Christmas pageant a few seasons ago, she has a beautiful voice. It’s such a stirring moment.
Review: ‘Orange Is the New Black’ returns darker and more relevant than ever
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZLumw9JomKuso2Kur7CMnqWtnaKprqq6zJ6lrWenpXxzfJBvZmluX2eAcLDOp5xmr5mptW670ZqloJ1dnsBuwMeeZKedp2Kvra3CpGSsnZGovK95k2ajnqyjYsGiuMpmmJunpal6qsCO