This is a recap of episode 312 of Orange Is the New Black, a Lifetime movie based on the novel Dolly Dingle, Lesbian Landlady.

After eleven hundred years, Daya is finally having her baby! She’s in labor and it’s excruciating and she doesn’t even have any Tylenol. Everyone’s crowding around giving her advice about breathe like this and squat like that and moan such and such way and eat this can of pineapple. That last one comes from Aleida and so Daya does not accept. In fact, she tells her to skedaddle because she kind of hates her because Aleida kind of tried to sell her baby for commissary gift cards.

I just feel really sick and like super betrayed.

I told you not to get invested in another Ryan Murphy show.

Aleida Flashback! Tiny Daya is playing with a used condom in the backyard, a thing she just found lying around, while Aleida tells her friend there’s a free summer camp for low income families upstate and she wants to send Daya to it. Her friend thinks it’s the worst idea she’s ever heard of because she’s not into accepting charity and she’s also not into Daya’s cultural influences and heritage being whitewashed away (which is a super valid concern; I worked at a camp just like this when I was in high school and college, and that’s exactly how it goes). The condom-as-balloon thing really seals the deal, though, for Aleida.

Back in Litchfield, Red’s farm to table diner is so popular that she’s had to instate a lottery for tickets to attend. The line is basically wrapped around the entire building. Piper and Stella are not queued up because they’re busing sewing panties and talking about how Alex dumped Piper and Piper can’t believe it. Alex dumped her. Alex dumped her. “A sophisticated, powerful criminal mastermind like you?” is a thing Stella says with a straight face. She invites Piper to movie night but Piper says she needs some time to really dig into her emotions and process what happened and take responsibility for her contribution to the demise of her relationship.

LOK JK, like every Slytherin masquerading as a Hufflepuff, she just wants to mope around in public and feel like everything is everyone else’s fault and use other people’s sympathy to amass power. Textbook.

Anyway, that’s what men’s rights are about. Now here’s a thing I wrote about reverse racism.

Will you punch me in the face instead?

Soso’s depression is at its max now that Berdie is gone and she’s back to dealing with Healy. He wants her to take anti-depressants and she figures she’s got nothing else to lose, so why not? Only when she hits up the new MCC doctor, he leaves her alone with a couple hundred thousand pills and she stuffs them all into her pockets, directly.

Pennsatucky and Big Boo are sorting out what to do with Coates. It’s not enough to get Pennsatucky away from him, Boo wants her to get revenge on him. In fact, she wants to rape him right back. Pennsatucky isn’t really feeling Boo’s plan but she also know she’s never going to get a single drop of justice from the system, so if she wants some, she’s going to have to take it. Big Boo’s been saving dog tranquilizers or something from the pet therapy program in season two, so her plan is to stuff Coates full of them and then stick a broom in his ass. Pennsatucky reluctantly agrees.

Make it quick. I have a magazine cover shoot in 20 minutes and a press day for the movie I did with Lily Motherfucking Tomlin.

Sophia is in her salon, minding her own damn business like she always does, when a handful of prisoners waltz in to harass her with the most disgusting, transphobic bullshit. It’s so upsetting. It’s one of the most upsetting things I have ever seen on TV. I watched this episode at the time of the summer when it seemed like one trans woman was being murdered every week. Laverne Cox is one of the very few high profile black trans women we see regularly treated with respect and given a voice on television — along with Janet Mock and now Chandi Moore because of I Am Cait — so watching her get brutalized and abused like this is important because this is real life for so many trans women, especially black trans women, and we need to bear witness to this horrific, inexcusable, perpetual violence so we will accept that it’s happening and stand with our trans sisters to MAKE IT STOP. But goddamn it is hard to watch. I had to pause it like seven times to even get through it. She fights back and it only makes it worse. She fights back and one of the new stupid guards sees her and runs for a supervisor. They really almost kill her.

She finally ends up in Caputo’s office and because she knows her rights and she knows her shit, and she tells him like it is: All these guards need training, half of them need to be fired, the women who jumped her need to go to SHU and if he doesn’t figure out how to make that happen, she’s going to get a lawyer and deal with him with a lawsuit in court. He shrugs his trademark impotent shrug.

I got Vincent Crabbe on BuzzFeed’s Which Harry Potter Character Are You test. Who’d you get?

I don’t need a BuzzFeed quiz to tell me which Harry Potter character I am!

But it was Ginny Weasley.

Aleida and Maria talk about how having a kid is this weirdly addictive thing because they need you for food and shelter but you need them to validate your life and your choices and make you feel like the most important person in the world. Which leads to Aleida flashing back to the first day she dropped Daya off at the upstate summer camp with all the do-gooder teenage counselors who are nice kids but also have exactly zero experience living out their idealism in the hard world. Daya freaks out when Aleida leaves her; she just wants to go back home with her mama! So Aleida Harry and the Hendersonses her, telling her to go on and get out of there and she doesn’t want her around this summer anyway.

And then she goes to her car and sobs and sobs.

Hallway of Regrets and Recriminations

Have you ever noticed how the sun doesn’t even bother shining when I’m not awake?

Alex: Oh, hey.
Piper: I’M FINE.
Alex: Yeah? Because I’ve been worried about you.
Piper: For what reason? Nothing out of the ordinary has happened. I am awesome, as usual, and so is my life.
Alex: Okay, well. Breakup’s still on!

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!

I am so good at praying!

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.

We’ll be gal pals forever, like Anne and Diana!

Excuse me Anne and Diana were gay.

I KNOW!

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.

My prayer request is that Miley will be quiet for a minute and listen and learn something.

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!

I’m running for president!

My platform is that candy corn needs to taste like either candy or corn instead of like dirty wax.

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.

I’ll bet I could at least get this chicken to be my girlfriend.

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. No.

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:

Aww, if you’re my mom, you’re Admiral Rodcocker’s grandmom!

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.

I got you an A+ gold membership for your birthday. It’s the best way I could think to make the world better for you.

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.

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