Season 4 of Orange is the New Black is on Netflix today. And, like any responsible adult, I'm binge-watching it on my couch. I know, I know. Lucky me.
But what's even more exciting is that we're in this together, friends. This is a safe space — a tree of trust. We can openly discuss anything and everything that's happened this season without worrying about spoilers. This way, your coworkers won't cut you off mid-sentence and freak out if you say anything remotely related to the show.
It feels weird to say it, but I've really missed Litchfield. I want to know if everyone just ran away forever after a nice swim in the lake. I want to hate-watch the will-they won't-they relationship between Alex and Piper. I want Crazy Eyes to say literally anything she wants. And most of all, I want to see what's gonna happen to Abe after he assaulted Doggett. Read ahead for my recap of every single episode of the new season.
Episode 1
When we last left the inmates of Litchfield, they were all swimming in a nearby lake, having run to temporary freedom after finding a hole in a fence. What a joy! Oh, and also a hitman undercover as a corrections officer was strangling Alex in the nursery.
About that: Lolly, the woman who believes she’s under constant government surveillance, comes to her rescue. She pulls the guard off Alex and stomps on his neck until he’s dead, then casually asks Alex if she’d like to go swim in the lake. As if she didn’t just kill a guy! There’s a really gross moment where Alex takes the hitman’s phone to text her former boss who wants her dead to tell him the deed is done. Except, he asks for a pic of her dead body — with her breasts out. It’s assumed she obliges, for her own safety, as Lolly offers to take the picture of her. “Dead girl porn,” she tells Alex. “Cosby dream shot.” They cover the guard’s body with a tarp and plan to come back at night to bury him.
Of course, when Alex returns to the greenhouse, she sees that the guard isn’t quite dead yet. And, left with no choice, suffocates him using a wad of toilet paper. She cries during it. I’ve had a hard time feeling bad for Alex throughout the series, but in this moment I ache for her. She might be a selfish jerk, but a murderer she clearly is not. Can you imagine having to do that?
The next morning, Alex and Lolly go to bury the body, but find Frieda there, who totally knows what they’re trying to do. She decides to help them and suggests cutting up the body into six pieces and spreading it out among six holes, instead of digging one six-foot hole. As she hilariously puts it, “That’s just murder math.” Somehow they do this without getting caught — at least not for now. I also am ashamed to admit to you that I love the phrase “murder math.”
What else is going on? Crazy Eyes finds out pretty quickly that Kukudio is unstable. It’s implied that she’s a special case, but we don’t get the full details on what that means just yet. Morelli got married, but her news is upstaged by all the tales from the lake. Healy’s wearing a fun shirt with too many buttons undone. He’s accessorizing with necklaces and a smoothie. Basically he’s like the guy from Office Space who no longer gives a fuck. Oh! And Judy King is here to serve her sentence. What a treat!
This episode touches very briefly on Doggett’s rape. Abe passes by her in the cafeteria and she makes a comment about how he “can’t help himself.” Later, we see Abe talking to another guard about how his lady is angry with him and he doesn’t know why. I’m so nervous about how this situation will play out.
And then there’s Piper, who’s bound to be as annoying as ever. She’s walking around the prison like she owns the joint. “I’m gangsta. Like with an a at the end,” she says. And when a huge group of new inmates show up, and one of them asks Flaca who’s the HBIC, she points to Piper. I guess we can expect a new clashing of the titans between Piper and the woman who was the Piper of her former prison. And just in case you missed that setup, Yoga Jones spells it out for us. “Overcrowding is dangerous. We’re already fighting over resources.”
Episode 2
So, Aleida messed up. She went behind Daya’s back and told Pornstache’s mom that the baby died during labor. Of course, the baby is just fine and was given to Aleida’s scumbag boyfriend Cesar. Cesar got arrested, and now the baby’s in foster care. Daya is rightfully pissed off about this.
“Kids that go into the system is like flushing a goldish down the toilet,” she tells her mother. “They don’t swim back up.” But Aleida is like, 99% sure, Cesar won’t get put away for his crimes. Except he does get put away, and Aleida sobs in Daya’s lap like a baby because she knows she really fucked up. I don’t know how Daya handles that woman.
Before we get into the heavier stuff from this episode, let’s talk about the roommate drama everyone’s having. Cindy and her bunkmate are in a very juvenile war over things like window space and where they can put their shoes. Sofia’s still in the SHU, so she has no roommate. Red’s roommate has a snoring condition so bad it’s keeping her up all night. Piper can’t seem to bully her new roommate into submission, so instead hires her as a bodyguard after Red suggests someone will come after her in pursuit of her power over the inmates. And Yoga Jones has been assigned to share with Judy King, which is basically as close to living a normal life as you can get. They have herbal tea. Judy’s learning Italian. What a world!
But at the heart of this episode is the tension between Dominicans and whites in the prison. That means we get a Maria backstory. Her father ran a drug ring and was insistent that their Dominican culture was the only thing that mattered. But Maria bristled at the idea that being Dominican meant selling drugs. If that’s all there is to it, she wants nothing to do with it.
That childhood experience crops up when Flores gets beat up by two white inmates in a stairwell. Now Maria sees she needs to embrace her identity again, because in prison there’s always a side to choose. She and her friends beat up the white women in retaliation, and she and Flores form a new friendship.
And, of course, there’s Doggett. She sees that Maritza has taken over driving the van, and she expresses to Boo that she’s afraid Abe will go after her. She looks for signs in Maritza’s behavior to indicate if anything’s happened to her, and she even approaches her to ask her how she’s doing. It seems like nothing’s happened so far, but it also doesn’t seem like Doggett will be able to avoid seeing Abe altogether. And it’s absolutely heartbreaking.
Episode 3
Alright, we need to get something out of the way and talk about Morelli and her husband and the weird imagination games they’ve got going on. I get that some people are into phone sex or whatever, but these two just had straight-up imaginary sex in the visitor room of the prison. There was an actual table between them. They weren’t even touching. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Another thing: Piper’s losing employees in her dirty-panties business. Some think it’s too dangerous now. Could get interesting.
Now, on to more exciting things. Taystee got a job! Caputo hired her as his assistant, and it makes me so happy for her. Remember when she won the job fair? Her friends think it’s unfair, though, since she has a desk and an arguably more cushy situation than, say, mopping floors. And as for why Caputo chose her, I’ll just quote what he said to Piscatela. “She’s the only semi-intelligent one that I’m only semi-attracted to.” Gross, dude. Just gross.
Speaking of Caputo — he went on a date! With Linda, the woman he jointly brainstormed about having veterans serve as COs and live on the prison campus. It’s so sweet it almost makes me forget about his comment regarding Taystee. Almost.
You know who’s really annoying? Brooke. She means well, but she almost means too well, like she’s constantly on a crusade about something. But even she couldn’t deny that she goofed big time with Poussey, who is pretty much her girlfriend at this point, though they decided not to put a label on it. Basically Brooke tells Judy that Poussey is too nervous to talk to her because she grew up poor and the daughter of a crackhead, where Judy is privileged and white. And obviously Poussey is really upset when she hears that Brooke spun that tale about her, mainly because it’s an assumption Brooke made based on the color of her skin. Brooke wins her back after pulling a Say Anything and holding up a radio outside of the library.
And finally, Lolly’s losing her shit. She can’t stop freaking out about the hitman they buried in the garden. She even grabs a shovel and starts frantically digging the body up because she thinks they should move it. Luckily Alex stops her and Frieda lies and says she already moved the body. But of course she didn’t. And, on top of that, she tells Alex: “We’re gonna have to kill her.”
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