Hello and welcome to the eighth recap of the second season of Orange is The New Black, a show about what happens after the entire cast of Pretty Little Liars finally gets busted. You might notice that I’m neither your fantasy girlfriend Kate Severance, nor our fearless leader Riese, nor musical heartthrob/ice cream feelings crying cut-offs little dog enthusiast Mal Blum!
Instead you might recognize me, Lizz, from the pages of Pretty Little Liars, or Glee or idk your cousin’s bar mitzvah a few years ago. In other words, we’ll have a variety of recappers filling in for OITNB over the next few weeks, but this episode is devoted to me and my new bff Rosa.
We open we do every episode to the sweet sounds of Regina Spektor and the faces of incarcerated women. You guys don’t know this because we don’t live together, yet, but I actually sing along to the opening theme every single time. I also sing along to the opening of Big Bang Theory but that’s neither here nor there.
We actually open on Miss Rosa sitting in Healy’s office wearing a nightgown, hoodie and a generally unimpressed facial expression.
This isn’t what I ordered. I ordered crispy duck. This duck is NOT crispy.
In case you haven’t been furiously watching all of OITNB without stopping, or even if you have, I will remind you that Miss Rosa is the bad ass who let us know that “No one fucks with cancer.” Those, I suspect, are words to live by.
So Healy tells Miss Rosa that her doctors say she needs a bilateral salpingo oophorectomy which is a fancy way of saying she needs her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed. Unfortunately the prison isn’t going to pay for it.
At this point in the episode I’d like to make a disclosure.
There just isn’t the money and my tiny animal figurines aren’t gonna pay for themselves.
Disclosure: I am a medical student and am therefore very likely unable to discuss prison medical treatment from an unbiased standpoint. To make matters worse I don’t know anything about prison medical care other than that the US Supreme Court has ruled that inmates must be provided with standard of care medicine.
In other words, I imagine that Miss Rosa’s treatment accurately reflects some prisoner’s experiences and doesn’t accurately reflect others. I have no idea.
Eh? C’mon Lizz. You couldn’t even take the time to educate yourself?
Healy: I’m your counselor. I’m here to help you through it.
Miss Rosa: There is no through this. I’m going to die.
We flash back to Miss Rosa as a young woman and all do a private little celebration because, is it just me or is this the moment we’ve been waiting for forever and ever? Like forever.
They’re Chanel bitch.
Rosa and her husband Marco sit in the backseat of a car chatting about who has spinach in their teeth. Then Marco hands Rosa a gun. So that’s where we’re at. Marco tells Rosa that everyone is nervous their first time and then they start to enjoy it. We all side eye and whisper “That’s what she said.”
But never in the middle. #BDSM
Marco tells Rosa, “We kiss before and we kiss after” before sharing a big sloppy kiss.
Compulsive heterosexuality!
So, like then they and their friends proceed to rob a bank. NBD.
That poor blonde chick. This bank heist is really doing a number on her hair.
Things go south towards the end of their heist, and when Rosa goes to shoot a guard it turns out, womp womp, her gun isn’t loaded. But actually this is great news because instead of this being the end of Rosa’s story and her getting put away for killing a cop or something, she and Marco run off and sit happily in the car. Smelling all that delicious money.
#VanillaSex
Rosa then suddenly realizes that Marco has a terrible gunshot wound to the back. Do we ever use the phrase “shot in the back” to mean the same thing as “stabbed in the back?” No? Okay just checking to see if there was a double layered metaphor here or something. I guess not.
The two go in for their “after” kiss, which they share before Marco promptly dies. This is not ideal.
You got ketchup all over your jacket! Where are we gonna find a dry cleaner at this hour?
Because my body is really really heavy
We hop in our time machine back to the 2010s in a little ol’ prison in Connecticut where Caputo is investigating all of Red’s plants in the Official Penitentiary Greenhouse. Caputo just loves the smell of fresh soil in the morning and wants to have a little space for “his own guys to bust out a little.” Gross.
And I’m gonna call you Khaleesi after my favorite character on Game of Thrones
Anyways Red is not so much wanting Caputo to be in the greenhouse, what with it being her entire base of operation for smuggling fancy things into the prison.
This is not ideal.
Caputo is all like, “Oh well see you in the AM for the next million billion years BFF Red!” Obviously Red is going to have to hatch a plan in order to end up on top. I mean it wouldn’t be Litchfield without Red hatching a plan. Or really bad food. Ironically you need both.
In the laundry room Baby Brook is telling everyone about how she just loves doing laundry for women. Making things clean and stuff.
And I got your boi shorts right here…
This leads Pennsatucky’s former gang to dropping hints to Baby Brook about deodorants and the importance of windows. Pennsatucky breaks the news to Baby Brook that actually, she just really smells. They all think she smells. While there’s an argument to be made that maybe everyone doesn’t need to spend so much time getting all up in her business to smell Soso, regardless, there is a smell problem.
It’s like a dutch oven in here
Soso is pretty mortified. I get that. Guys, promise me you’ll tell me if I ever have a BO problem. Seriously. You have to promise.
Elsewhere, Piper also discusses bathing: specifically the bathing of a senile elderly inmate and the things that may or may not grow in skin folds. That is to say, the Golden Girls are pretty worried about Jimmy following her “Compassionate Release” aka Dump-and-Run.
Give us a hand, we’re knitting snuggies that look like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles
Piper takes this as an opportunity to — surprise surprise — talk about herself. She tells the Golden Girls her grandmother is dying and how she loves her/will miss her/was inspired by her etc. etc.
Is it time to talk about me again?
Piper: She told me, “Go out and eat the world Piper. Don’t you get stuck at home with some man.” I may have taken that last part too literally.
The Golden Girls have a wealth of knowledge and insight.
Or you can just knit your own tampons
Taslitz: Your mother sounds like a twat.
Just then, Piper is pulled away into the hallway by Healy who has amazing magical news. She got furlough!! Why? Because favoritism/racism/classism/Healy’s generally confusing character development.
Classism!
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My girlfriend and I massively rock out to the opening song every time, headbang around the room, bounce on the sofa, fist waving, shout-singing along. Can’t help it.
So yeah :D
I love Fischer probably more than I should justifiably love any of the COs, so the screenshot of her article is very appreciated. And it possibly made me fall in love with her a little bit.
Oh yeah I have a total Fischer crush; despite my basically antiauthoritarian nature I have a perplexing thing for women in uniforms, and her many extremely awkward attempts to do the right thing feel very real and endearing.
My favorite scene in this episode is Nicky and Fischer. It helped me get over some of my squickiness about Nicky being so predatory this season.
I nearly flipped a table at Red’s pronunciation of “piroshki”.
I EXPECT PERFECTION FROM YOU, MULGREW.
PERFECTION!!
Yes wouldn’t it be “pirozhki”?? I and my extremely rudimentary Russian were befuddled by this.
No, it was the placement of the emphasis that was wrong. Red was saying it as “Pi-ROSH-ki” (like pierogy) instead of placing the stress on the last syllable. DROVE ME UP THE WALL.
You’re correct that it is spelled with a “zh” in Russian, but when pronouncing the word it can be easily swallowed to make it sound like a “sh”.
My interpretation is that Red was dumbing it down for Chapman, because she clearly can’t handle any non-American pronunciations.
Nope, actually saying it correctly wouldn’t be too difficult for an Anglo. The show has treated Russian language and identity ABYSMALLY so this is just par for the course.
Also, the fact that Red calls her son Vasiliy instead of Vasya makes it clear that nobody who actually speaks Russian was consulted for the script.
Unrelated to OITNB, I thought the texting exchange between Lizz and Mal Blum was really endearing. In my mind I like to pretend that the Autostraddle staff receive really odd questions from each other via text at all hours of the day and night and NO ONE QUESTIONS IT. When you guys come out with the 25 year anniversary coffee table book complete with full spread color pictures, I want a generous helping of examples of the weirdness.
We do that!! It’s real we really so!
Haha! I WAS GIVING YOU OPTIONS, I thought maybe you would pick one. I really appreciate that you picked all of them. Maybe the Autostraddle community would appreciate a video of you singing the OITNB theme song followed by one of your re-imagined Disney biology songs? Just an idea.
I will do it if you will back me up!
Fischer brought Morello a Heath Bar, which is toffee and milk chocolate. A good treat.
I would probably be willing to sit in a car for three hours for a cold Dr. Pepper and a Heath bar. Not as a prisoner, but as doing someone a favor – yeah, seems like a good deal to me.
Okay, this is like a year late but I am behind and am catching up so I can start season 3. If Brook is so unwashed that she stinks, why doesn’t she have greasy hair? Is there dry shampoo in prison?
Soso made me cringe throughout this episode…laying on the floor and shouting shit about peaceful resistance, really? Take. a. shower.