"When I leave this world, I ain't owing nobody nothing."
So sad.
As a homeless teen, Tricia kept a log of everything she "borrowed" so that she could one day pay them back. She couldn't bring herself to sell Pornstache's dope -- maybe she felt that it would be incurring a debt with the other inmates that she could never repay. So she overdosed instead. Pornstache covered it up by hanging Tricia with an extension cord, which just felt so terribly wrong. It was even sadder that the last person nineteen-year-old Tricia saw in life was Pornstache calling her names.
This was the Scared Straight episode, and juvenile delinquency dovetailed nicely with Tricia's sad demise. Several of the inmates were looking forward to scaring the delinquent girls like it was happy fun time, but Poussey wasn't comfortable scaring Dina, the unrepentant girl in the wheelchair who robbed a liquor store. Dina ended up locked in the bathroom with Piper, the frightening stone cold lesbian. It seemed laughable at first, like Piper couldn't scare anyone, but a darkness in Piper has started to emerge, and she did indeed scare Dina by telling her that prison would bring her face to face with herself.
Plus, there was Pennsatucky. I actually felt a little sorry for her. She's mean, bigoted and demented and deserved to be screwed with (Big Boo's scene was especially funny), but Pennsatucky just didn't have the brain cells to understand what was happening to her. She was genuinely trying to heal someone she thought she could heal, and she ended up in Psych.
The flashbacks showed Piper meeting Larry for the first time. Piper was a lot hotter and less stuck up back then; it seems that she changed her entire personality for Larry. And now in his absence, she's slowly changing back again to the person she was before she met him. In the opening scenes, Piper carefully explained to Nicky that she wasn't gay and denied having an affair with Alex. I wonder if the denial will stop now?
In other news and in keeping with the kid theme, Bennett just found out he's going to be a father thanks to the interfering and controlling Mama Aleida and her buddy Cesar. If the prison administration finds out, Bennett could go to jail as a sex offender. Let's hope that doesn't happen.
Nicky couldn't stand the guilt that she may have had something to do with Tricia's death, and she told Red the truth. I was surprised that their relationship didn't suffer, and that Red recruited Nicky to help her get rid of Pornstache. He certainly needs to go. Fingers crossed.
Character bits:
-- It seems hard to believe that Tricia wound up in federal prison for trying to make restitution for shoplifting. I assume she was incarcerated for something else. Not that it matters now.
-- Larry is doing the show on NPR next Sunday, and Piper told the other inmates. Big mistake. Since Piper hasn't heard from Larry since Thanksgiving, we still don't know what Healy told him. I bet it wasn't good.
-- Flashback Larry was watching Almost Famous for the zillionth time. Piper is his Kate Hudson, isn't she?
-- Morello wants to go to Bora Bora (Bora) for her honeymoon. Unfortunately, her fiance Christopher hasn't come to visit Morello since three weeks after she was incarcerated. Morello is hanging on to a delusion. I wasn't expecting that.
-- Morello thinks bucatini with clam sauce is an exotic meal.
-- The flashbacks included Polly's marriage to Pete. She chose him because she's comfortable with him and he makes even jigsaw puzzles fun. I sort of get that, even though Piper was all about hotness and physical attraction.
-- Bennett lost his leg because of an infection he got from a hot tub. And it wasn't even at Disneyworld.
-- Miss Claudette got her hair done because Baptiste came to visit. She had never had a visitor before, and hadn't seen him in ten years.
-- Crazy Eyes wanted to do Shakespeare, so she did a speech from Coriolanus for the Scared Straight girls. Crazy Eyes is fascinating. I want to know more about her now.
Bits:
-- Frankly, I think they should have let those girls see Tricia hanging from the ceiling. Although I understand why they didn't.
-- Won't an autopsy show that Tricia didn't strangle?
-- It's a long story that I won't go into, but a co-worker tried to faith heal me in an institutional bathroom once. So I can relate. No, it didn't work. I respected her intentions and accepted what she did, but I was terribly uncomfortable while it was happening.
Quotes:
Piper: "It's weird how normal this feels. I feel like I'm 23 and no time has passed."
Alex: "Well, I think that when you have a connection with someone, it never really goes away, you know? You snap back to being important to each other because you still are."
Crazy Eyes: "I want to play a role, you know? Like Desdemona, or Ophelia, or Clair Huxtable."
Pornstache: "The borrower is the slave to the lender."
Piper: "I used to have a temper. Now I have a passion for justice."
Watson: "It don't work no way cause you just like the Wizard of Oz. Just a bunch of show, nothing behind the curtain."
Inmate: "What are you talking about? Wizards are evil."
Alex: "You want to get to someone, you gotta have a long game."
Pennsatucky: "Gay, Lord, no more!"
Big Boo: "I don't feel any different. Wait. Let me try picturing the 2008 U.S. Women's Soccer Team. That usually works."
Piper: "I could tell you that I'm going to make you my prison bitch, I could tell you that I'm going to make you my house mouse, that I will have sex with you even if we don't have an emotional connection, that I'm going to do to you what the spring does to the cherry trees but in a prison way. Pablo Neruda."
Poussey: "Man. You're cold."
Piper: "Bitches gots to learn."
If Piper had said something like this at the beginning of the series, it would have been laughable. It isn't now.
Four out of four long games,
Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.
Billie,
ReplyDeleteI think if I had to choose, this is my favorite episode of S1. The Tricia story... was so heartbreaking and well-done. But I think most memorable was Piper who shows a considerable amount of growth and it feels so hard-won and worth it as a viewer at this stage of the narrative.
Also, I'm smitten with your OITNB reviews! I watched the whole season in a few days last summer and they were a blur until you started reviewing them. I feel quite ready for S2 now!
Thanks so much, Heather. Poor, poor Tricia. Heartbreaking.
ReplyDeleteThis series keeps ramping up the emotion, even when I think there's no emotion left. Tricia's story was so sad and I gasped when I saw her body. And, so young.
ReplyDeleteHealy has really gone around the bend. Even Caputo, hardly a saint, tells him to back down. I think Piper was right in the last episode -- Healy has a lot of unresolved issues when it comes to her.