What I’m Watching: Orange is the New Black

Orange is the New Black: Season 2, Episode 10 “Little Mustachioed Shit” (B+)

Things are not headed in a good direction for anyone in prison, and everything is certainly going to fall apart before the season ends. It was clever to start the episode following Piper’s furlough with scenes of Piper in bed with Alex. I do hope Alex will return soon, though for now it’s great to have Piper elicit help from her new sister-in-law in exacting her revenge on Polly after she realized that she was the person who slept with Larry. It was jarring to see Christopher at the prison, and it’s a good thing that Lorna kept it together. Fortunately, Nicky was there to take care of her, and she had her own guardian angel in the form of Gina. Red seems to be in a good place, and I do hope that she’s able to effect a takedown of Vee’s operation. It’s hard to know whether to be happy for any of the members of Vee’s group since they’re being such terrible people, Crazy Eyes especially. Figueroa’s patience is wearing thin, and the fact that she saw Piper’s visitor leaving suggests that she’s going to bring down punishment on Piper soon. Pornstache getting fired and escorted out of the prison was dramatic, and it definitely didn’t feel like the clean answer to everyone’s problems than it should have been. I suspect things are going to get much worse for our most sympathetic characters over the course of the season’s final three episodes, and let’s hope the likes of John and Piper make it through it without any lasting scars.