What I’m Watching: Orange is the New Black

Orange is the New Black: Season 4, Episode 7 “It Sounded Nicer in My Head” (B+)

This show is doing a superb job this season of blending comedy and drama into the same episodic recipe, and this installment was firing on all cylinders. It was great to see the tragic story of Lolly played out for the first time, with an intrepid reporter undone by the conspiracy theories swirling through her head and the voices adding considerable stress and agitation to that. Seeing her homeless and delivering coffee to people on the street was heartwarming, and it’s sad to see where she’s gotten to in prison when everything is continuing to overwhelm her again. Welcoming Nicky back into the fold was a cool way of recapping what’s going on at the moment, with Red particularly overjoyed to see her, though she has to yet to receive confirmation that Nicky is once again being consumed by her addiction. The plot to capture a photo of Judy King was hilariously timed with the unfortunate revelation of her racist puppet show past, and I think that’s a fun entertaining subplot that also got to be a little dramatic when Aleida visited and realized that she should use her skills doing nails to help find success in the real world. Linda getting Caputo’s education plan approved was a victory, but the fact that it looks nothing like what he wanted and has little to with education cancels out any sense of celebration that should have been present. Just as she was starting to understand what she had created, Piper got betrayed by the person she thought she had to worry the least about, resulting in a brutal but fitting punishment: the burning of a swastika into her arm to remind her of who she was pretending to be. It had to happen eventually, but it was very painful to watch.