Suzanne is doing a little Q&A with her fans over lunch. Wait, no. First, Black Cindy tells her she doesn’t have to eat the crap from the food sacks because they’re the chosen ones now and they can have kosher meals. And then Taystee tells her not to buy into the propaganda that makes people think yogurt tastes like key lime pie or chocolate cake, because at the end of the spoon, it’s just “gnarly curds” like always. And then Red comes up and goes, “I want you to know I had nothing to do with what you’re eating! It came from a bag, and is in no way a reflection of what I do!” (“Okay.” “Okay.”)
And now it is time for Suzanne’s Q&A with her fans. They’ve got dessert for her, to stimulate her creativity. They’ve got lots of questions about her process (“I think of shit and I write it down.”) and who she bases her characters on and technical questions about the logistics of having two penises with shockers on them. Maureen wants Suzanne to add in a chapter for the lesbians and this just sends Taystee over the edge; she goes, “She has done enough for the lesbians! What has she done for the Not Lesbians?” She wants Black Cindy to agree with her, but Black Cindy is invested now that she heard about the double shocker penises.
Maybe one of Rodcocker’s penises is a Horcrux, I don’t know, who’s to say.
NO. TOO FAR.
Alex invites Lolly to join her for lunch, hoping to crack the code on her creepin’, but she is unsuccessful. Lolly is even more sinister when she says words instead of just peeping around corners like Inspector Gadget. Red interrupts Alex’s interrogation to reiterate that she did not make this food, and then Alex starts grilling Lolly about what she’s in for, where she’s from, how much time she has, what’s her favorite color — but Lolly mostly just grunts and shrugs and then leaves in a huff to “go take a quiz” when she’s had enough questions. Morello is glad she’s a sane, normal person; Lolly freaks her out.
You don’t even know what I dreamed about last night, do you? You don’t even love me at all?
No, I know. I know. Was it, um, the recurring one where Queen Elizabeth adopts you and names you her heir?
Alex: Whatever, tell Piper I tried.
Piper: Tried what?
Alex: To have a scene with someone who isn’t you for once, but hello.
Piper: Cal’s coming tomorrow to tell us how Piper’s Panties is doing.
Alex: Cool.
Piper: Are you looking at someone who isn’t me?
Alex: No.
Piper: Are you thinking about someone who isn’t me?
Alex: No.
Piper: Are you seriously worried about literally just staying alive right now and not about whatever thing is the most important to me? For example, Panties?
Alex: No.
Piper: Yes you are and now I am going to cheat on you but remember this moment because you deserve it.
The time has come for the inmates to be tested on their commitment to Judaism. It’s my favorite montage the show has ever done. Taystee and Black Cindy are best because duh. Taystee says what she hates is “shrimps, damn dirty shrimps.” She hates them so much she doesn’t even want to talk about it. Black Cindy basically just lifts her life story from Annie Hall and Yentl. Actually, Angie is hilarious too: “There was a big book where I wrote down all the people I wish was dead, who, um, you know, God comes and kills them and not my peopl—me?”
Who is A?
It’s gotta be Wren, right? He had access to everything at Radley. He’s faking that accent.
Possibly a tag-team of Tippi the Bird, Pepe the Gravedigger, and Cooper the Raccoon?
The patriarchy, how many times do I have to explain this shit?
It’s totally Aria.
What’s that statutory rapist named? Oh, right, Every Man In Rosewood.
Gloria’s in the kitchen worrying about Bennie when Aleida comes in dropping trans slurs all over the place and talking general shit about Sophia and her inability to parent properly, which: is rich coming from the woman who literally just tried to sell her daughter’s unborn baby for commissary money. Gloria brushes off the slurs and says she should probably apologize to Sophia, for Bennie’s sake, but Aleida tells her you should never put the needs of your child over your own personal need to fuel the fire of your Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Gloria listens to her for some reason.
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Great recap! I really liked Leanne in this episode. Pity she got progressively more irritating as the series continued.
FACT: The moon doesn’t actually exist. It’s really just Piper Chapman’s ego.
If you’re going to fall in love with a writer, prepare to spend a lot of time listening to her say stuff like, “I can see the words but I can’t them obey me” and then going to sit in a room by herself for three hours to stare at the wall.
^OH GOOD it’s not just me.
I hadn’t realized the other kids who got in trouble were also Amish– now that makes more sense! (Although does anyone know how realistic this portrayal/storyline is?)
This episode is when it crossed my mind that I would totally ship Poussey and Soso, but I thought it was an unlikely fantasy.
I watched a documentary about rumspringa that would suggest it’s pretty realistic. Amish teens throwing epic parties and getting into drugs.
Yup. I grew up with friends from various plan groups (Amish, Brethren, Mennonite). Even in groups that don’t have rumspringa you get the occasional kid that does drugs. It seemed like if they were good they were really good and if they went bad they were the wildest kids of all. Sort of like as they were rejecting their religion they were rejecting all sense of ethics or morals or human decency and it was anything goes. But the majority of people I know in those communities never did anything crazy. You don’t see them on TV though because they are boring.
Three things. First, Maureen is my very favorite new character of this season. I desperately hope that she and Suzanne can find happiness together some day. Second, it is my informed theological opinion that yes, Jesus would totally throw his pie for Leanne, or for any of us. And also that that there is some peak photo-captioning. Third, I happened to overhear a couple of guys talking about TV in the break room last week. One allowed that he’d enjoyed the first season of OitNB all right, but that the show had really gone downhill when they wrote Larry out of it. And I thought, “Eww.”
Yeeesh, I didn’t think it was possible that people could exist in this world who gave a shit about Larry.
loving these recaps. piper was a big WOMP WOMP this season. piper who even cares
ruby rose = hot and unlikeable and hot
alex = you are fucking crazy
suzanne is the absolute best character. when do we get to learn about her? imagining her fan-fic filled preteens. she would have grown up with harry potter. the magic plant in the first book vs snape sexually.
maureen = eh
Coming in to be Captain Buzzkill for a hot second: I thought the let’s-prove-we’re-Jewish montage was offensive as hell, and I HATED that Sister Ingalls was the one who passed as Jewish. So many anti-Semitic tropes I could barely keep them straight, with a fun kicker of “Jews are just Christians, without Jesus!” HOORAY.
Honestly, I’m Jewish, and I can see why you feel this way, but I really thought it was hilarious, and pretty accurate. That is not to say that your feelings are not valid, or that because I enjoyed the montage and didn’t find it offensive means that it’s not offensive to you, I just wanted to offer a different opinion.
When I started university, I met a lot of people who came from small town for whom I was the first Jewish person they’d ever. They didn’t know anything about Judaism except, yes, what they’d seen in movies and tv shows. So the scenes where they’re all using Woody Allen movies to help them understand Judaism was, to me, a very funny and very accurate depiction of how people who don’t have a lot of experience with Jews or Judaism understand the culture and the religion.
I also think (and this goes for ANY issue in ANY show) that it important to think about what the SHOW is saying, not merely what the CHARACTERS are saying. And the show is, again, in my opinion, very clearly saying that testing people to determine how “Jewish” they really are is morally wrong, legally unconstitutional, and inevitably not very effective.
HOWEVER – this is an article I read after season 1 aired, which makes a lot of excellent points about how OITNB talked about Judaism in just season 1, specifically in relation to Larry and his family, which you might want to check out: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/07/18/does-orange-is-the-new-black-have-a-jewish-problem.html
Also, I just wanted to mention that Jenji Kohan is in fact Jewish herself, and apparently sends her kids to a Jewish day school. Not that any of that precludes OITNB from making offensive jokes about Jews, but it’s just something to keep in mind.
Gahhhh more things to say – I don’t know if you’ve finished the season yet, so I don’t want to spoil anything, but I just want to assure you that the Jewish storyline ends in the most amazing way, and the scene in the season finale is one of the most beautiful, powerful, and moving scenes this show has ever done.
First off — two Jews, three opinions, etc! I totally respect your reading of the scene, even though it struck me differently. I read that Daily Beast article back when the first season came out, and I thought a lot about Larry/his family during this season. That and this scene combined with the soap joke from a few episodes before this one — and, honestly, Piper’s underwear speech, which had some fun Hitler callbacks in it — the overall result isn’t good. While yes, the show is clearly trying to make a point about stereotypes etc, it’s put those stereotypes in the mouths of characters we’re generally supposed to find sympathetic (Flaca, Poussey, Taystee, etc). Generally I feel like the show’s track record isn’t good enough with Jewish characters to allow me to take this arc in good faith (HA). Also — Jenji Kohan is Jewish, but like you said that doesn’t excuse her (we’re more than capable of regurgitating horrible tropes about us), and I’m pretty sure she didn’t write this episode, so by me it’s a moot point.
That being said — the end of the season is beautiful, and I loved it. It didn’t make up for how much I hated the earlier episodes, but I was very happy with where Cindy ended up.
Two Jews, three opinions – entirely accurate.
Re: the soap joke. Yes – that was gross and horrible. And if you remember, the character who said it got fired. And re: Piper’s speech – yes, Piper is the protagonist of the show, but the show goes out of it’s way to point out how she is horrible and oblivious, so I don’t think the SHOW is condoning these things.
The characters say a lot of things the SHOW doesn’t believe. I think it’s really important to be able to differeniate what the SHOW is saying versus what are the words coming out of people’s mouths. Yes, the characters say a lot of racist, transphobic shit – but that’s because the SHOW is trying to say that people – including inmates, including women, including people of colour – say racist and transphobic shit. Even when its sympathetic characters saying it, the show is trying to make a point about how these characters have been socialized. That’s not to say all offensive shit on the show can be justified in this manner, but some of it definitely can, and I think the Jewish montage is a prime example of this. When a character says “Jewish control the media”, the SHOW isn’t implying that it thinks Jews control the media – the SHOW is saying “it is a common anti-semetic stereotype that Jews control the media, which this character, who has had very little experience with Jews, has been socialized to believe.”
I respect your point about the show’s Jewish track record, but I guess I just didn’t feel the same way.
I just wanna get in on this Jewish thoughts/feelings convo!
I found that montage pretty funny, and then the climax of the series pretty beautiful and moving- it really resonated with me.
What DID piss me off though was the ongoing joke that felt like “hahaha look at all these Black people trying to be Jewish” – it felt strange that the humour of it seemed to come from a kind of divisive and Othering place that I didn’t like. But I can’t quite put my finger on why- I’d probably have to rewatch and study it a bit deeper.
I agree with your overall point for sure– that some of it was kinda funny, that the end was beautiful, but that that stuff doesn’t make up for some of the really bad stuff, like the soap “joke” for instance. However with regard to stereotypes coming from the mouths of “characters we’re generally supposed to find sympathetic,” I think one of the overall points of the show is that nobody is just good or just bad, just sympathetic or just horrifying. Like even the characters we come to love and kind of trust are flawed and shitty products of a flawed and shitty world, and even the ones we hate occasionally do something good for someone (like, Vee, for everything she was and did, did in some way provide a family for a lonely young Taystee. A manipulative shitty family, but a family that anchored her for a long time).
That said I feel like there has to be a better way to convey that point than antisemitism that would be (to me!) funny/ok if it were firmly couched in a culture of “ignorance is the joke, Judaism/Jewish culture is not the joke!” but it’s not firmly couched in that culture, because of the soap joke, because of some of the Larry stuff, etc. Idk, for me it was a lot of context dependent stuff that by itself sat on the fence between funny and shitty, and context pushed it into shitty a lot but not always. I was laughing but also sometimes not laughing, basically.
It’s definitely interesting to hear how different Jewish viewers perceived these arcs though! Thanks for sharing and engaging, everybody!
Yes!! One of my favorite moments of the series.
Oops – that was in reference to the wrap-up of the story arc later in the season, not the montage.
This leaves out how Fucked Up and Grossly Antisemetic all the portrayals of Judaism are in this season – especially this episode. I’m not Jewish but from what I’ve heard from Jewish friends/people on the internet that montage you say is your “favorite” is incredibly offensive. We can love this show while still talking about what it gets very very wrong.
Jew here – take a look at what I just wrote in response to a similar comment above. Not that my opinion cancels out the opinions of your friends who found that montage offensive, just offering a different perspective.
Your description of Piper’s narcissism is so spot on and hilarious! I’ve always been a Piper defender and it became hard to keep doing that from about episode 5 of this season on but this episode was the last straw. She intentionally gets Alex thrown back in jail because she loves/misses her then turns around and cheats on her in the blink of an eye with a random nobody who complimented her? You cheat with Alex Vause you don’t cheat on Alex Vause! And of course digging the knife in deeper at that exact time Alex finds proof that she’s being targeted. Piper is so incredibly self centered that I wanted to strangle her with her panties at the end.
@pallas+ @liz:
I’m sorry y’all were offended by the part of my recap where I said my favorite thing was the montage with the rabbi. I’d love to have a discussion about that, and hear from any other our other readers/writers, especially Jewish folks.
Let me tell you my thinking on this one:
First of all, I read a lot of reviews of this episode, most of them from Jewish writers and Jewish websites, and only one of the writers I read thought this scene was anti-semitic, and the commenters on that site all seemed to think the opposite. Lots of Jewish sites even had lists of Top Jewish Moments on OINTB Season 3, and this scene was on every list. The comments on the lists are also overwhelmingly positive. Again, from Jewish websites and Jewish people. That’s not to say that being offended by this is wrong or anything, or invalid; it’s just to say that the majority of opinions I heard were from Jewish people who weren’t offended.
My personal thinking on this scene is that every minority on this show has been skewered by characters in the show, right? Race stuff, sexuality stuff, ethnicity stuff, gender stuff, and religious stuff (especially this season). What I thought really set this scene apart was how purposefully absurd it was. They weren’t playing it for laughs at the expense of Jewish people; they were playing it for laughs at the expense of people who believe these stereotypes/only have very limited knowledge about actual Judaism. That’s unlike a lot of the stereotyping this show does with it’s dialogue, most of which is slurs aimed at a minority person.
I also think when you contextualize it with the conclusion of Black Cindy’s story arc, it really grounds the humor in some earned pathos.
What do y’all think?
I’ll tentatively agree with you here, Heather — it’s shallow non-Jewish people, not Judaism, being skewered here.
But I do think that Liz has a larger, and valuable, point:
The earlier roundtable in the 306 recap highlighted problems with that episode’s use of some tired Asian stereotypes. And I’ve been really uneasy throughout the show with the over-broad generalizations about Appalachian life in Pennsatucky’s backstory. (Disclosure: I live and work in a state that ends in “-tucky.” Stereotypes of Appalachian life that remind folks of Deliverance and its ilk aren’t popular here.) Emma Eisenberg did a pretty fine piece of writing over at Salon, “We still don’t know how to talk about Pennsatucky,” in response to episode 310. It’s worth reading. As far as this episode goes, like Abbie, I’m not sure how close to reality this portrayal of Amish life is. Truth is, I don’t know; I’ve never had direct contact with that community, and haven’t spent enough time learning about it to know which sources to trust and which (besides Witness) not to. But I’m moderately suspicious of this portrayal, just because of some of the other mis-steps we’ve seen the show take when portraying other “othered” communities. (Which makes me start questioning my judgement in this regard: why am I suspicious of this portrayal of the Amish, while I didn’t have similar misgivings about, say, the portrayal of Red’s backstory?)
I probably wouldn’t nitpick like this, except that the writers clearly are able to get some things very, very right. (Sophia’s story arc is IMHO a crowning example of this.) I love the show. I guess I wish it could be perfect.
Really good points, Willow. Thank you. (I want this show to be perfect too.)
Hey Heather – Jew here. Personally, I LOVED this montage as well, and Cindy’s entire conversion storyline in general. I just wrote a huge long post, and the server ate it, so let me just say this – What you say right here, “They weren’t playing it for laughs at the expense of Jewish people; they were playing it for laughs at the expense of people who believe these stereotypes/only have very limited knowledge about actual Judaism.” THIS. This is entirely right. It’s all about context – what is the SHOW saying, as opposed to what words are coming out of the character’s mouths.
To me, the show is saying that testing people to see if they are Jewish is an exercise in futility. As a Jew who has often been the first Jew other people have met, these scenes really resonated with me, and I found them really accurate and HILARIOUS.
And not to spoil anything, but anyone who has seen the season finale knows that this storyline ends in the most beautiful way, and in a way that flat out PRAISES the Jewish religion.
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Heather, and also thanks for doing due diligence on the Jewish response to the episode! I said this up above, but in general I feel very strongly that the show’s track record on Jewish characters (namely, Larry and his family) is terrible, and for me, they haven’t yet gotten to a point where I can take a scene like the rabbi montage in good faith (the pun so nice, I used it twice). I know that there are plenty of my fellow Jews who didn’t find it offensive, and I respect their opinion, but I’m just sick to death of those tropes cropping up anywhere there’s a Jewish character. I know there are plenty of people that think those things, and that’s supposed to be the joke — but I just don’t think it’s funny. And this season has had a couple of other weird, disturbing jokes like this, so.
That being said, Cindy’s arc was ultimately beautiful, and I loved the last episode. I just think the beauty of that was possible without all the lazy, offensive crap that came before it. YMMV.
Thanks for talking it through with me, y’all! I loving having these kinds of conversations with smart, empathetic people who are just wanting do good and be good. Thank you also for being patient with me.
Mostly tired of Woody Allen being part of Jewish stereotypes/ tropes, because fuck Woody Allen.
Didn’t Larry end up saying he wasn’t Jewish at one point?
I agree, Heather. We were meant to be laughing at their ignorance. It was pretty clear in the context of this episode (even without knowing that by the end of the season they make it sound like Judaism is the most complicated wonderful thing on the planet) that they weren’t presenting the stereotypes themselves as funny, but the idea that someone would be so narrow in their assumptions.
I think there was another thing going on too, though, which was that if this had happened on the outside and someone wanted to “pass,” there would have been a lot more information available to them. Sure, Angie and a couple of the others probably wouldn’t have bothered, but access to a library (no books there anymore) or the internet would have allowed them to do at least some perfunctory research. Being imprisoned makes it difficult to even satisfy basic curiosities and routes to education, and then we expect these people to come back out into the world and just find their way. It’s just a limited paradigm in there, and the show often demonstrates that that’s why so many of the inmates rely on oversimplified stereotypes about things/people they don’t know about.
Much of the show’s bread and butter, in fact, is presenting oversimplified stereotypes and eventually exploding them.
“I also think when you contextualize it with the conclusion of Black Cindy’s story arc, it really grounds the humor in some earned pathos.”
YES.
As a Jew- I loved this scene. I think it’s okay to love this scene (or not love it). For me it felt like the butt of the jokes were the assumptions the characters were making, not Jewish people. Which is kind of what matters, right? I think there are always going to be audience members that watch this and go “YES THOSE ARE CORRECT FACTUAL THINGS ABOUT JEWISH PEOPLE” – but the majority of us can go “hahaha, of course Jews don’t control the media”
I think one of the things that I love about the AS staff is that you’re so willing to engage and question and accept criticisms without defensiveness. Thanks for coming into the comments to discuss it HH!
Black Cindy’s conversion is also one of my favorite moments of the series! It’s almost like she’s the exception to the whole season. Everyone else sought something spiritual but found only disappointment, while Cindy, whose main experience with religion had been an angry Christian father, actually found something real and resonant and uplifting in her study of the Jewish faith. I’ll talk more about that in my finale recap!
Completely agree- I was super moved and emotional watching that scene with her and the rabbi and then the (no spoilers) end scene as well. It was nice to have something uplifting in a series I took really hard due to (no spoilers) episode 10/11’s events.
It makes me really sad that Sophia’s feud is with some of the latinas! Like, come on, those are the two groups i belong to (trans and latina) and they’re fighting and being awful to each other all season? no me gusta!
I agree I’d much rather have Sophia gain a new love interest than the storyline that we got for her. It also irritated me that none of the African American girls Poussey, Taystee, Black Cindy etc stood up for her. It did give us some pretty good Sister Ingalls/Sophia bonding
So, as a queer ex-Mennonite, I had mixed feelings about this episode… Nothing about it was accurate, but like, it doesn’t matter? Of course most people/ media will have an incomplete vision of private, secluded lifestyles. It doesn’t matter that this isn’t how excommunication works, or that Amish kids (even the ones who participate in rumspringa) are socialized differently than the average screenwriter and would not ever say the stuff a writer would come up with. Although I did think it was kind of… silly? to make the most fanatical person in Norma’s group be explained as formerly Amish, and it’s ironic that Leanne complains about Amish stereotypes in a story that uses every one there is, it’s not like Amish people care this much about how the outside world sees them- I don’t see any teenagers standing up to talk about it during a baptism. Combined with the presentation of Jewish stereotypes in this episode, the whole thing felt like an extremely flat, cheap, shallow view of faith and spirituality. (Sorry for the rant! I am not even religious but I have a lot of feelings about this season’s theme of faith and how it went about portraying that in various extreme ways!)
Thanks for that perspective. Very helpful.
The captions were fantastic as usual, but this one was my favourite: “Oh my god, fine. You’re the best baseball player in the world, so much better than your sister, can we talk about literally anything else?”
I was really frustrated with the Sophia/Gloria feud because it seemed to rely on the lazy plot device of “we just won’t communicate and clear things up” to build up to a pretty awful (but realistic) scene with Sophia . I just…sigh. If the people involved in Sophia’s storyline were random extras anyways, I don’t understand why the writers went this route with Gloria.
Plus, Aleida’s transphobia was whoa :/
A League of Her Own references never get old!
FFS people. Just because you don’t like something does not automaticly mean it’s offensive. It might just mean you don’t like it. If I got offended every time I didn’t like a story line on a TV show about a lesbian or a black woman I would walk around like the angry black woman stereotype all day everyday. Or I would just hide in my house because really how many of us are there on TV anyway.
Did anyone else think the Amish backstory just didn’t fit? I mean, taking comfort in rigid religious structures and the partying/getting into drugs I can understand from this, but her whole personality just doesn’t make sense as someone who would have grown up in that kind of community?
Yes, I felt like that storyline is something they came up with after the first two seasons.
Yes def a last minute idea on the writers part! I mean if she was raised and schooled in a closed predominantly German speaking community with no American media wouldn’t she have at least a slight accent speaking English?
And would she be likely to have a name like “Leanne Taylor”? Granted, I know next to nothing about Amish naming conventions, but I’d expect something more Germanic and/or Biblical-sounding.
I agree that the Amish storyline felt like it was cooked up as an afterthought, but I imagine that there is as much variety in personality types amongst the Amish as in any other group of humans.