The ladies of Normaism are still trying to work out the tenants of their faith. Leanne’s new thing isn’t just commandments, but also like maybe they could get the same haircut or an armband or some other Nazi-type thing. You know, for excluding people. Poussey really has had it with Leanne hijacking the movement, and so has Norma. She scrawls “KINDNESS!” on her notepad and Leanne sighs and rolls her eyes.
Flashback! Leanne is wearing secular teenage people clothes under which is a wire the FBI is using to record her scoring drugs from her Amish campfire friends. She doesn’t want to do it, but it’s that or jail, so she doesn’t really have a choice. She returns to the cranker flock and explains that she couldn’t deal with all the Rules when she went back home, so she has returned to get high and stare into the fire some more. The main drug guy, he hooks her up.
Ruby Rose is standing around naked in the bathroom complimenting Piper on — honestly, it doesn’t even matter. Piper masturbates to the voice memos she leaves for herself on her iPhone. It doesn’t matter that Ruby Rose is naked or flirting or a genuinely nice, thoroughly underdeveloped character. It matters that she thinks Piper is awesome. It’s a thing Piper also thinks. A person willing to celebrate the wonder of Piper is going to get into Piper’s pants. It’s her favorite foreplay.
Alex and Lolly are working together in the garden when Lolly trips and smashes into a window in the toolshed and cuts her arm. Also she apparently stashes a sword-sized piece of glass in her shirt or something because Alex mentally reassembles the shattered glass with her mind and freaks out when she discerns that a piece is missing. Lolly doesn’t know what she’s talking about. There’s no glass sword up her sleeve. She’s not going to use it to cut out Alex’s heart while she sleeps.
Leanne takes Norma’s advice of KINDNESS and goes to Soso’s bunk to apologize. She opens up about her Amish roots, and Soso and Chang think it’s the funniest thing they’ve ever heard in their lives. Chang calls her “Harrison Ford in Witness,” which is a really clever little writing thing because Chang assuming she knows everything about being Amish because she saw an ’80s movie about it is the same thing Black Cindy did with Annie Hall and being Jewish. Guess how well their ridicule sits with Leanne? Ding, ding, ding! It sets her blood on fire! She tosses out a racial slur and jets, returning to Norma to tell her Soso just doesn’t want to be a part of the group anymore.
Flashback! Leanne’s Amish community is shunning her because the kids she busted for being dealers were all Amish, so now everyone’s teenagers are in jail and she’s not allowed to have any cake. After the picnic where everyone jeers and hisses at her, Leanne overhears her mom and dad talking about how her mom should not have let her eat in front of everyone because it’s her fault their kids are in jail and you know that means her parents have to publicly starve her. It’s in the Bible. Leanne’s mom says she’s not going to not feed her own kid, get real, but Leanne’s dad says it’s that or their store is going to go out of business.
Leanne goes back to her room and decides the best thing she can do for her family is to run away. And so she does.
In the cafeteria, everyone is getting turned away for kosher meals, except Sister Ingalls. She says she passed the test because all Abrahamic religions are pretty much the same until you get to Jesus. Red has just had it. She climbs up onto the serving table and hollers out to everyone that she is not responsible for this food! “THE FOOD YOU EAT DOES NOT HAVE EVEN A PIECE OF MY SOUL IN IT,” is what she says, and I guess that philosophy explains why she thought she could eat that magical chicken and absorb its powers back in season one.
Maureen bebops out into the yard to sit with Suzanne while she writes, which: is adorable, but no, girl. Writers can’t write when you crowd in on them like that and talk to them and look at them. If you’re going to fall in love with a writer, prepare to spend a lot of time listening to her say stuff like, “I can see the words but I can’t them obey me” and then going to sit in a room by herself for three hours to stare at the wall. Oh, but Maureen is so into her, y’all! My heart is full to bursting watching how into Suzanne Maureen is! Suzanne’s writing makes Maureen feel like she’s not alone, and she tells Suzanne that if anyone ever felt the way Sunflower feels, they’re also not alone. She says this while snuggling right up next to Suzanne and leaning against the tree with her, and it freaks Suzanne out so bad that she grabs her notepad and pen and runs away like she’s got to go take a quiz.
Piper meets with Cal. The business is going well. Super well. Piper is so pleased with her genius that she spontaneously orgasms right there in the visitation room while eating a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos.
Sophia calls Michael and finds out it was him, not Bennie, who instigated the hate crime on the gay kid who ended up in the hospital. Bennie, in fact, ran away because he didn’t want to be a part of Michael’s bullshit. Ruh-roh. Sophia goes to the kitchen to apologize to Gloria, who is in there giving Red a pep talk about how she needs to stop acting like a defeated little baby and Red-up and take control of this slop situation, but Sophis changes her mind at the last minute. I don’t know why. Maybe because if she admits out loud that Michael is the problem, she has to face some facts about herself as a parent that she’s not ready to handle.
Pennsatucky and Coates stop at the duck pond to feed their mallards some donuts and things get real rapey real fast. It’s all cute and she’s a puppy and whatever, and then he throws a donut and forces her to go fetch it from the mud with her mouth, after which he slams her up against a tree and kisses her grossly and forcefully while she doesn’t respond at all, not even a little bit. He pulls away and “apologizes” and her face is just fucking heartbreaking. It’s like she already knows what’s going to happen, and she has absolutely no power to stop it.
Alex pretends to read a book while watching Lolly watch her, and when Lolly finally leaves her bunk to go to the bathroom, Alex creeps on over and rifles through her shit. Inside her cabinet is a notepad. Inside the notepad are details of every move Alex makes. Alex doesn’t have a girlfriend with whom she can talk about this horrific revelation because Piper is so high on Piper’s Panties that she stops by Ruby Rose’s bunk to see if Ruby has anymore super flattering things to say about her. Ruby does. Ruby does. She’s also got some ideas to make Piper’s business even more successful and make Piper even more rich. And so Piper kisses her right on the mouth.
Alex needs a new religion. I hope she chooses Sunflower Rodcockism.
