Bayley arrives and twitchily explains that he can’t do the Piptoria’s Secret smuggling anymore, but Piper doesn’t care because she’s still feeing awesome and fuck everyone. Alex has no advice for her because Alex has had it with Piper’s shit, for real. Which is the most accurate lesbian thing ever on this show. How having sex with someone covers a multitude of sins and then you finally break up and you’re like, “Oh shit, she was like a literal monster.” And your friends are like, “WE’VE BEEN SAYING THAT FOR THREE YEARS.” Stella, however, does have advice and it’s for Piper to give Bayley a BJ because he’s obviously so young and inexperienced that he’s never even seen boobs in real life. Piper appreciates Stella’s insight, but mostly Piper appreciates Stella being willing to put Piper’s problems in the center of her world. It’s exactly what she needs in a girlfriend and maybe they should go to movie night together, after all!
Black Cindy really makes this season bearable, y’all. It’s so heavy and she’s so perfect. She’s jogging around the track when she notices Freida asleep in the garden like the beginning of a fairy tale, so she sneaky-creeps on in there and takes a bunch of Red’s corn. They feast on it at lunch time, talking about Sophia having a hate crime perpetrated against her. Red finds them, of course, and threatens a lot of things they know she can deliver on, so Taystee hops up and speaks with her privately and does some bartering. They’ll be the wait staff for Red’s fancy dinner and do all the dishes and clean up the kitchen before and after and never steal her vegetables ever again. Red is satisfied, but only if she can also have Poussey’s hooch.
Aleida returns to Daya’s bunk and she is in even more pain than before, so of course Aleida thinks it’s the perfect time to process their relationship. For example, she’s always been kind of selfish and probably it wasn’t cool of her to sell off her daughter’s baby on Craigslist. Daya agrees that these things are true, but the admission of them doesn’t make her any more in the mood to talk to her mom on account of she’s in labor. She’s actually so much in labor that she doesn’t realize she’s bleeding all over the place. As soon as Aleida sees it, she demands an ambulance to take Daya to the hospital and the guards finally fucking call one.
She flashes back to the time she picked Daya up from camp and Daya’s hair was done like her counselor and all she could do was talk about how much she loved her counselor and her counselor said she could be an artist and her counselor said reach for the stars, and of course Aleida knows that reaching for the stars doesn’t put dinner on the table in the real world, and also, honestly, she’s jealous. She’s so jealous that when she gets Daya home, she throws her whole stack of artwork away in the trash, and instead of being upset about it, a switch flips in Daya’s sweet little head and she decides that her happiness isn’t as important as her mom’s happiness.
Aleida: So you want to be an artist?
Daya: Nah, I want to be a mom.
Piper sneaks into the guard’s office to offer Bayley the BJ, but Stella sneaks in after her and tells him he doesn’t need a BJ, what he really needs is a lot of cool stories to tell his dumb dudebro friends to impress them. Bayley agrees that’s exactly what he needs. Y’all are so dumb. All three of y’all are so dumb.
Sophia goes to see Sister Ingalls to ask for prayer and also just because she needs a friend right now. Sister Ingalls holds her hand and tells her to love her enemies and that she’s going to overcome this thing like she overcomes all things. Sophia wants to believe it’s true, but the systematic oppression that is pushing down on her is more layered than it is for anyone else in this prison, and she’s afraid she’s always going to be viewed as an outsider, no matter what she does. They’re saying goodbye also, which is a thing they don’t talk about but a thing they both silently know.
Red is stressing about what she’s going to serve at her farm to table diner because her corn is gone, but lo! Some corn arrives as if by a miracle, right in her kitchen! Actually, it arrives because Healy went to the grocery store on his way to work and paid two dollars for it and brought it inside the building and now thinks he’s like fucking Superman or something. And apparently so does Red. GRRROOOSSSS. But at least she has her corn and also Poussey’s hooch, and so everyone has a delicious drunken dinner!
Stella: How’s your heart re: Alex Vause?
Piper: I mean, you know how some relationships never die no matter how many times you try to axe murder them?
Stella: Yeah.
Piper: That’s how it is with me and Alex.
Stella: But we’ll still scissor in the interim, right?
Piper: Oh, yeah, for sure.
Outside, Caputo and O’Neil are walking around the yard and talking about their union and bitching about rede] velvet cupcakes or whatever. O’Neil stops to take a whiz on the fence, and Caputo finds himself face to face with Red’s chicken! He comes out of the frame and squeals and dances and chases after it, which is how he finds a hole in the fence and also Chang’s stash of tangerines. Ruh-roh.
Aleida calls Mary Steenburgen and tells her she can’t have Daya’s baby because Daya’s baby died during birth. Mary Steenburgen is pretty upset, but consoled by the fact that she gets sexier and sexier the older she gets, and is now the hottest 62-year-old woman on earth.
But Daya’s baby is alive and she’s a little girl and Daya loves her and she cries and Maxwell is standing at the door talking about, “Maaaan, my job is weird.”
It’s movie night! Taystee comes to the startling realization that she’s the mom of the group when Freida shows up asking her to deal with an issue she’s having with Watson, and Suzanne leans on her to deal with the fact that people are writing fan fiction* about the Time Hump Chronicles, and Poussey shows up to drag her away because she found Soso passed out on the floor in the library because she took those ten thousand pills she nicked from the MCC doctor.
*Best dialogue of the episode:
Suzanne: They go through a worm hole and when they come out they meet sexy vampires. Vampires. are. derivative.
Taystee: Look, if bitches is copying you, it’s because they like what you did and they don’t want it to end, so they made it they own shit. It’s called fan fiction.
Black Cindy: Kind of like the New Testament, am I right?
Taystee: You don’t wanna be throwing shade at other folks’ religion.
Black Cindy: They get bacon and Christmas. I think they can handle it.
So, anyway, Taystee goes with Poussey to the library to see if Soso is dead. She’s not, thank goodness, so they carry her away.
Aleida confesses that she sent horrible Caesar after Daya’s baby.
Pennsatucky and Big Boo knock out Coates with the dog tranquilizers, but can’t go through with raping him. In a wholly heartbreaking moment, Boo says she wants Pennsatucky to be able to work out her rage, and Pennsatucky says she’s not angry, she’s just sad.
And not because she deserves it and not because it’s legal and not because it’s fair, but Sophia gets carted away to the SHU. Laverne Cox crushes this scene and my whole entire soul with her performance. She’s terrified. She’s heartbroken. She’s angry. She’s literally beaten and bloody. But she holds her head up and she walks to the SHU on her own two feet and when she sees Gloria she meets her eyes and keeps on walking.
Meanwhile, Piper and Stella hold hands because poor old Piper’s life is just so dang hard and unfair.
Next time: Black Cindy warms even the coldest parts of your cynical, guarded heart.
