Television history is littered with supercouples. You know, the sorts of couples who are destined to be together, but fate and circumstance always keeps them apart, like Luke and Laura on General Hospital, Billy and Allison on Melrose Place, Blair and Chuck on Gossip Girl, Sean Hannity and Alan Colmes on Fox News. I’ve finally figured out who the supercouple is on Orange Is the New Black. Is it Piper and Alex? No, no one cares about them. Daya and Bennet? Please, he took off to figure out how to get away with murder. Red and Healy? Maybe, but we’re still waiting to see.
The real supercouple in Litchfield is Taystee and Poussey. They’re together because they love each other and they’re the most fun when they’re together, but they’re kept apart by so many factors, the largest of which is that Taystee isn’t gay, so there’s that. Just when Taystee pulled Poussey up off the floor of the prison and was going to nurse her back to sobriety in AA, I thought they were finally going to have the chance to be together, but it wasn’t destined to be. Poussey is getting help, but it’s not with Taystee, it’s with Norma’s cult of personality. As the door closed with Taystee on the outside I saw just another thing keeping them apart, and it made me a little bit sad.
Poussey was also a part of the other best story this episode, where Crazy Eyes was being pressured by the other inmates to finish the Time Hump Chronicles, her filthy story about romping across the time-space continuum. Let’s call it 50 Shades of Beige. Poussey was arguing for her to write faster, Black Cindy wants the Vaseline man from chapter three to return, and another inmate was advocating for Admiral Rodcocker to get Gilly in the end of the story. Was this a bit of meta-commentary on how Jenji Kohan and her writers feel about the vocal fans on the internet expressing their opinions? Is this how they feel about us writing and reading these recaps? How dare they! Okay, fine, they can dare all they want, because it was funny.
The rest of the episode, however, was a disappointment. Piper is plotting ahead (or plodding ahead) with her Stinky Panties line of clothing and cashed out all the ramen packets from the commissary to bribe the women with their flavor packets so they’ll wear her goods for her. She also enlisted that pediatric guard to carry them out of the building for her. As her new Aussie girlfriend points out, what exactly is Alex doing in all this. (Also, after all her questions, I still kind of think she’s a spy for Whispers Inc.) The only really interesting part of this was when Piper turned the prisoner’s reek into some sort of feminist manifesto, otherwise I have a hard time really caring about whether this goes off without a hitch or not. How can we be invested in this ordeal when there is very little danger or emotional stakes?
Alex is getting all emotional in jail worried that Lori Petty is going to go all Tank Girl on her and shiv her for testifying against Kubra. As soon as this episode started with her in Alex’s cube I knew that was what was going on, despite Piper’s protestations that she is harmless. We got another letter from Obvious Town when Alex’s backstory told us that she worked for a drug dealer, and that he is very dangerous and slightly irrational. I slipped that right in the “Duh†file with the information that you should never leave an inmate unattended in a van, donuts cannot possibly eat themselves, and Justin Bieber is going to be the end of humanity.
Speaking of “Duh,†how stupid was Daya to tell Mrs. Pornstache that the baby isn’t her son’s, especially right after she reminded us that he is currently in prison. Sure, she now has a way to make sure that she keeps the baby and to keep her mother from collecting more hush money from Mrs. Pornstache, but don’t you think his mother is going to go right to the appeals court and try to get this overthrown? The thing about rich people is that they can afford everything, including lawyers. Here is a woman who wants to prove she’s not a bad parent. She’s not going to let her baby rot in jail for a second, not when it reflects badly on her.
Pearson is also having some family issues of his own. It turns out the reason he has his job at MCC is because his father is a muckity-muck at the company, and he’s a bit of a disappointment to his father, especially when he brings up programs to train the inmates and give them books in front of the company’s CEO. He also says if it’s not taken care of it is going to cost them a lot of money in the future. I just got a flash from the Magic Eight Ball that says that they’re going to take away the Kosher meals, the women are going to sue, and then MCC is going to withdraw from the prison. There you have it, the rest of the season figured out.
But right now Pearson is taking things out on Caputo, who is trying to do what’s best for the inmates, for a change, and has therefore run afoul of the guy who is the warden even though he says he isn’t the warden. Hey, that was a pretty catchy tune there, Sideboob. Any chance that is going to take off and Caputo is going to be on the next season of The Voice? With all the wackiness that is going around Litchfield these days, I wouldn’t put it past him. And who cares what happens, as long as Taystee and Poussey eventually get together. Shall we start a slash fiction writing campaign?