What I’m Watching: Orange is the New Black

Orange is the New Black: Season 3, Episode 2 “Bed Bugs and Beyond” (B+)

You’d think that bed bugs would be the most serious threat facing Litchfield at the moment, but it seems that its future is particularly bleak, with new mattresses not commissioned since the prison is scheduled to be closed soon. We saw just how miserable it was for someone like Piper to be in another facility, unsure of what will come next and who she’ll have to form new relationships with in a fresh setting. Litchfield has become an institution over the course of the series, and seeing it go would mean the devastation of the show itself, which of course suggests that maybe it will make it somehow. Every part of John and Daya’s baby drama is cause for concern, as Pornstache’s mother, played by a very well-cast Mary Steenburgen, showed up to lay claim to the baby, while John thought that proposing and then driving out to her family’s home to announce the news was somehow a smart decision. There’s no way that this ends positively at all, and seeing the way that her family deals with children and guns, it’s obvious that he can’t handle it and isn’t ready to get in bed in such an irreversible way with this criminal family. Having him be the focus of the flashbacks was an unexpected surprise, but I guess he too ended up in prison, even if it wasn’t being behind bars but still confined by them. It was so strange to see this cocky, callous version of him, so different from the Bennett we know today.