Orange is the New Black – What do I have to lose?

Orange is the New Black:  2x11 Take A Break From Your Values.

Part of the special nature of Orange is the New Black as a show that gets released all at once is how overwhelming it is to be able to follow all the stories in that way. Watching it all at once made it grander, an intense experience working towards a sense of catharsis at the end of it. It’s hard to capture that feeling in episode-by-episode recaps. The show sometimes recognizes its own nature very subtly – Suzanne performing Shakespeare last season, for example – but I still remember that moment after the final episode ended, the grandiose finale after all those scenes that felt like getting punched in the gut. Somehow, all those grand themes are realized without losing track of who the characters are as people. They don’t stand for ideas, like empty vessels, more concept than person – but there is one exception. Vee is a clear-cut villain, beyond any deeper analysis. She is driven by wanting power. She doesn’t have a backstory that goes back further than when she was already fully formed. She is what she functions as in the show, someone who creates the situation that reveals who everybody else is, what their weaknesses are, how strong they are and how true to themselves they remain. 

But for now, the show is still gearing up towards that point. A storm is brewing outside, while the different factions inside assemble and get ready for the battle. There are two fronts here, one is Vee vs Red – with Red’s side uncertain to an extent (in this episode, she reveals the traitor amongst her ranks and leaves her out to bat for herself, knowing fully well she will not be granted a place in Vee’s group), and some people on Vee’s side still struggling to accept what it means to be on her side. Taystee is asked to completely forsake Poussey, who continues against all odds and against all reason to remain true to herself. Being robbed of everything – her best friend and the woman she loves, the space she felt safe in – she does not gives in, but fights back all the harder. If Litchfield allows for heroes, Poussey is that, and with zero support from anyone else. 

The second front is the other terrain that Orange is the New Black has always been aware of, it’s inmates and their welfare, their very survival, their ability to lead a reasonable and decent life, against an establishment that either entirely disregards their needs, or depletes their resources for its own enrichment. Fig has been stealing and plundering from what is rightfully theirs, but she is also seeing the walls crumble, with Piper both talking to a journalist who is investigating the budget and publishing a prison newsletter, and Brook  finding more support for her hunger strike against the unconscionable circumstances of incarceration. 

Brook’s movement is diverse, has a politically conscious core concerned with issues of welfare, the horror of SHU being used as punishment, and randomly at that, and a fringe that voices its personal concerns without the structural unfairness in mind (Leanne and Angie care about food and stuff). Brook struggles to find consensus, but is admirable for her attempts to give equal opportunity to everybody to be heard. The downside to this approach – democratic and fair, modelled on occupy – is that the procedure gets co-opted by Sister Ingalls, who was previously hesitant to join in but now has something to prove to everybody else. 

This is Sister Ingalls’ episode, with flashbacks dating back to her first day at the convent, and the slow process in which she realizes that she god would not communicate with her but being recognized and the centre of attention was a good replacement for that silence. In the absence of god talking, Sister Ingalls made sense of things herself – which ended up being a sin against her church (which excommunicated her) and the protest movement (which demands authenticity). Sister Ingalls is a story about faith and devotion vs wanting, or a very selfish (but also compelling) demand to be heard and seen. In a way, the episode argues for Sister Ingalls, even though it so precisely documents her personal shortcomings, because without that drive and need for personal gain and attention, Brook’s movement would have never succeeded. It takes someone like Sister Ingalls to be heard in a system like Litchfield, which disregards its inmates entirely. Case in point: in the aftermath of the false Pornstache reveal, Fig gets the guards riot gear – to be able to deal with potential riots if the prisoners should ever revolt against being exploited and abused. Elsewhere, Healy is the sole person attempting to help the inmates with his safe place (now more popular because he is offering perks, like reducing the shots) – but Healy is ill-equipped for all of this because he has neither the training not the personal qualifications for it, and is so blind to what is going on in Litchfield that he doesn’t even realize why Poussey cannot share her pain and anger with the group once Suzanne infiltrates it for Vee. This is the best attempt that anyone there can come up with, and it fails utterly. 

Poussey: Did it ever occur to you that we don’t want to get in touch with our feelings? That actually feeling our feelings would make it impossible to survive in here.

There is a current that goes through the episode, in which in his initial dealings with the strike, Caputo attempts to make it seem like the strikers are powerless while pacifying them by meeting their demands – by arguing that it is a coincidence that Janae is released. Structural change is impossible, and the inmates have no stake in anything that is happening inside – to the extent that they will never know if events are connected or random, if their fate is tied to policy or to random institutional acts. Piper more accidentally than not publishes Brook’s strike demands (she thinks Healy will shoot it down once he gets the proofs for the newsletter, but he overlooks it, happy to see his advertisement for safe place published) – and that in addition to having spoken to the journalist puts her on Fig’s radar. A couple of days later, Healy tells her that she is on a list of inmates to be transported to Virginia. It might be an institutional coincidence, part of everyday procedure, transporting prisoners, dealing with being over capacity and underfunded, or it might be Fig, fighting back, abusing her power. 

Which possibly connects back to the question of doing the right thing and doing it for the right reasons: does it really matter? Does it matter that Sister Ingalls protested mainly because she enjoyed the attention, that she wasn’t doing it in the right spirit? Does it matter what her intentions are in co-opting the protest and including the issue of “compassionate release”, something none of the other girls had even thought about, if her eloquence is what forces the regime into action? Does it matter if the even uglier side that is eventually revealed is one of the ultimate transgressions against the bodily integrity of a human person, force-feeding, to break the spirit entirely? Like Nicky says, the system does not have a conscience, and that is what everybody in Litchfield is up against. Vee is a classic villain, ruthless, loyal to nobody but herself, but as classic and theatrical as that central conflict of the season is, the true monster lurks somewhere else. Yoga Jones summarizes it: the people who call for humility, who consider it a virtue, are usually the people in power. 

Random notes:

Caputo: This shameful sexual violation is really working out for you, isn’t it? 

Fig: I’m just happy that we have helped to start a dialogue! 

Brook: Thank you Chapman. History will remember for this, although I still don’t trust you personally. 

Angie and Leanne are gold in this episode. “We’re just smelling it, that’s allowed.”

Larry and Polly are the worst. 

Piper puts Alex on her call list and finds out that she is in New York, worried for her life because the drug kingpin that her testimony was meant to put in prison is still going free, and probably looking to have her killed. And Piper clearly, clearly still cares a lot (but being transferred to Virginia means she won’t get a chance to see Alex – and not being able to see her might be the least of her worries, since she’s “going South”). 

Also, Alex being outside is an interesting switch to how it usually works, with inside Litchfield being contrasted with being free, on the outside: she is just as trapped as Piper is. 

“…and overthrowing the Sandinistas was not his only objective.”

Red’s invisible grey army springs into action but does pretty horrifyingly badly.