Orange is the New Black - The second you’re perceived as weak, you already are.

Orange is the New Black: 1x02 Tit Punch. 

One of the things that Orange is the New Black does well is portray the people the characters were before they came to prison, and how being inside affects them, how they change through the experience, which of their features help them or prove to be a burden. They all operate within the structures of the prison, and we discover them through Piper’s eyes – the way power is distributed between guards in inmates, the positions of privilege within the prison hierarchy, the rules of tribes, the odd rituals that keep everybody sane, the small comforts of individuality that everyone carves out for themselves. Tit Punch is about the two sides of a conflict that started in the first episode: Piper is struggling because after insulting the food, she is being starved out, and we see how her opponent in that uneven struggle, Red, landed in prison in the first place, and why she is so conscious of the power that running the kitchen gives her. 

The hierarchy Red moved in before she came to prison ironically did not allow her the kind of freedom that prison does. She and her husband used to run a café, and all attempts to find an in into the higher ranks of the Russian community in New York failed. Regardless of how hard Red tried to fit in with the wives, they frowned at her clothes, her hair, the fact that she worked for a living – and compared to her husband, Red is too proud to take these kind of beatings forever, so she crosses a line, breaks the rules, and it eventually lands her in prison. 

Mr Reznikov: Why did you do such a thing?
Red: Because they left me out. Because they made fun of me. Because no matter how hard you try and how much we want it, there’s the people who serve the bread and the people who eat the bread, and for once it would be nice if you were on my side.

The interesting moment is that in prison, being the person who makes the food means being privileged, having power, while outside, it created the untouchable wall between her and the group of women she could never belong to. She runs the kitchen, she is a substitute mother to many of the other inmates, she makes the rules because a regular and reliable source of food means peace in prison, and she is also the one with access to the outer world, through the deliveries to the kitchen, which will be important in future episodes. Privilege still exists in prison, but it works differently from the outside, because here, being the one who cooks doesn’t just mean that she gets to punish Piper for her transgressions, she can also manipulate the guards into doing what she wants, because they know what happens when things go wrong in the kitchen. 

The lesson that Piper learns is that all the nice rules about good behaviour from the outside don’t apply here. When she apologizes to Red for insulting the food, Red seems sincerely moved (“You seem sweet. You really do, honey.”), but also tells Piper clearly that the respect she shows her (“I appreciate everything that you do here. I can’t imagine how much work it takes. And since we are clearly going to spend some time together… I can tell you take pride in what you do. And I so respect that.”) and the apology she provides means absolutely nothing in a system that relies on barter, on debts being paid immediately. If she forgave Piper, she would show weakness in front of the people who respect her, and it’s a precarious balance anyway. Piper learns that she doesn’t have the luxury to rely on the rules she thought were true before, but this also teaches her that she does have her own strengths, which maybe she didn’t even perceive as such. Red has a back-ache. Piper used to work in “artisanal bath products”. The solution she finds to gain back her food privileges is simple once she puts the two things together, and actually getting there, collecting all the ingredients she needs to make a cream for Red, is the first time she proves how strong and resourceful she is. 

The episode is also about the importance of small things in an environment that relies on scarcity and deprivation to get results. The visits of family and friends are a small comfort but they also force the inmates to trade two hugs (no touching otherwise!) for a cavity search afterwards. Alex tries to help Piper (not that her motives are ever that simple, but that’s definitely one of them) by providing her with a piece of cake. Suzanne breaks the rules of barter by offering Piper a gift (which actually helps saving her), but then it does become a trade when she expects comfort and intimacy, the most precious goods in prison, in return. Both of these gestures have an almost endearing naïve quality to them, but it’s the only thing that prison allows them in terms of expressing their feelings. When Piper asks Larry not to watch Mad Men without her, he doesn’t take it seriously, because he still hasn’t understood what it means to lose all those small comforts at once and so completely – so he munches away at his mini pretzels while Piper learns to appreciate simpler forms of entertainment (Mad Men vs. silly slapstick is a perfect contrast). She’s not quite there yet, but she’s catching up. 

Random notes: 

Kate Mulgrew is so great, between this and Warehouse 13, it’s an interesting television season. 

Suzanne!

Very good moment at the beginning of the episode when Piper goes to Healy to complain about how she is treated by Red, and then has a moment where her perception finally shifts and she realizes that the lines are drawn differently now, that she will only get into more trouble is she relies on him rather than her own strengths. I think this is the moment that Piper really arrives in prison, when she starts to identify the man (who was nice to her, even if it’s in his creepy way) as being on the other side rather than her own.

The orientation video is hilarious as well, and fits in very well with Piper’s idea of her sentence as a sort of absurd spa holiday – and not at all with the actual realities of prison. 

Small but meaningful insight into how prison works: Taystee trades information on prison drama for candy. Small comforts. 

Aleida Diaz: Oh from here on out, this place will hit you for me.

The episode portrays different kinds of resilience – Diaz charms Bennett into giving her gum, even if it means that he admits he likes her. Power works in strange ways in prison (and it’s even more complicated when actual feelings are part of the mix). In a weird parallel, Alex tries to help Piper by giving her a piece of cake, which Piper, who has understood the rules now, throws away, because she wants to win this in her way, and breaking the rules wouldn’t gain her anything – but it does land Alex in the exact same spot Piper was in, starved out by Red. 

Nicky totally has the Piper/Alex situation figured out, and will spend the next episodes endearingly fascinated by the whole thing. Also it’s just fabulous that Nicky is always Nicky, not Nichols.