Hello and welcome to the tenth recap of the third season of Orange is the New Black, a Foo Fighters reunion concert starring the cast of Finding Nemo! Every time I’ve told anybody I’m recapping episode 310, they give me a look of sympathy and despair. Perhaps you are making a sympathy/despair face right now, thinking about you and me and this tangled web we weave together.
A heads-up that if you’d like to avoid reading about the last ten minutes of this episode (which includes sexual assault) then you should skip the last page of this recap.
FLASHBACK! It’s Tiffany’s First Period Day, in which blood gushes from between her legs and her mother informs her that she’s not dying, it’s just “life coming outta ya, like pee.”
Ms. Dogett: Now you’re like a case of pop. You got value. Look, there’s some things you gotta know. Now that you’re a tittin’ and a hairin’ boys are gonna look at you different. And pretty soon they’re gonna treat you different. Best thing is to go on and let ’em do your business, baby. If you’re real lucky most of ‘em will be quick like your Daddy. It’s like a bee sting in and out, over before you knew it was happening.
This will be the first and last time in my life I’ve ever thought, “maybe she should’ve just gone with absitenence-only education.” So this is the world according to The World of The Dogetts: sex is a thing that boys do to girls, and it’s best to just let them do it ’cause it’ll be over soon enough.
I don’t think your Pretty Liars show is on tonight, sweetheart
Why did I even wake up today
Anyhow, Tiffany’s Mom feeds her ice cream and Mountain Dew which I imagine will also come right out of her, like life or pee.
Back in Litchfield, Officer Coates chases Tiffany down to apologize for treating her like an actual dog JUST KIDDING he chases her down to suggest that perhaps his inability to express his feelings about hanging out with Tiffany is what led him to jam his tongue down her throat without permission.
Coates: I’m really sorry if I made you uncomfortable or did anything you didn’t want to do. But maybe you also… did want to? ‘Cause I could be misinterpreting, women are difficult to read sometimes.
So yeah, that was me. I’m the guy who woke up at 1AM on Prime Day to buy a VCR Rewinder for 75% off, and I’m pretty proud of myself for getting SUCH a good deal.
Why did I even wake up today
Yes, he affirms, he likes her. He likes her likes her. And because of the life she’s lived and where she’s been and what love and men has been to her before now, she feels flattered by this instead of completely disgusted.
Luscheck is really cashing in on that heroin deal.
Seriously? My ex-boyfriend is following me to work now?
HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW, DADDY
Out in the yard, the Normites are screaming at the goddesses about their various maladies, like hating papaya, having the same itch for three months and not knowing who A is. Or being confused now that A isn’t Andrew. It’s hard to say.
Poussey: THIS IS STUPID!
Leanne: I’d like this to be a little more group positive, but okay.
ONE TIME REGINA GEORGE HIT ME IN THE FACE AND IT WAS AWFUL!
Caputo orders them to disband The Breakfast Club and go eat breakfast, which is a big disappointment for Leanne. Maybe they’re having Eggs Benedict in a bag!
In the Mel-Caf, Alex Vause demands Lolly get thrown into psych on the basis of the notebook in which she documents Alex’s every move.
Don’t lie to me. I saw that bitch Gina on Facebook wearing the Scissoring Sweatshirt I GOT YOU for Hannukah last year.
She was cold!
SCISSORING WAS *OUR* THING!!!!!
This plan backfires quickly, earning Alex two shots and getting Lolly off the hook.
In the Audio/Visual Entertainment Center, the ladies learn that Judy King is guilty on all counts and therefore could be arriving at Litchfield any minute now to teach them how to make every fall into a Fall Festival.
Watching Criminal Minds
In the yard, Piper recruits more vulvas for her Panty Project with the help of her Aussie Sidekick, Stellar Stella Shane. Piper and Stella McShaney Shane Stella offer Flaca, Maritza and Maria Ramen flavor packets in exchange for a little of their own Creamy Chicken, delivered from vadge to Whisper Pink Thongs.
So, when you get out, you have to check out these artisanal churros they’re making at this bakery in Greepoint ——
Me interrupting you right now is me doing you a favor
Flaca says these prison panties make her butt sad, which’s how my butt felt when Hanes stopped making these. Anyhow, they’re in.
Stella tells Piper she’s hot when she’s closing and goes in to close a smackaroo, but Piper withdraws — not because she’s doing that “guilty, whining tortured cheater thing,” though, because Piper is “not interested in sitting around and analyzing everything [she does] anymore.” Stella’s got her hand on Piper’s nubile neck when Alex rounds the corner, sees it happening, and instead of confronting them, just shakes her head and sighs. Of course this is happening, how could anything else ever happen. How could her and Piper ever work as anything but antagonists who hate how much they’re in love with each other, because it makes them weak, because they define weakness as a lack of self-reliance.
That’s right, I’ve been the topic of at least 46 Buzzfeed articles in the last two weeks. Wanna make out?
Suzanne’s having a whale of a time walking in a straight line when Maureen shows up to offer up some suggestions for further installments of It’s Two People Connecting With Four Other People and Aliens, by Suzanne Warren.
Mainly, Maureen wants exactly what we always want:
May I suggest that you pander to your audience
with more girl-on-girl stuff
It’s not rocket science
Look, it may not be an exact rhyme, but I’d like that couplet/triplet printed on cardstock and laminated and hand-delivered to the producers of every show ever.
Hey bro, it’s not cool to hog the balance beam all day
It continues:
If you need to research the activities
I’d be happy to join you
As I have homo proclivities
Man I bet Ilene Chaiken got poems like this in the mail all the time.
“You don’t have to say anything!” Maureen says, nervously, ‘cause it’d overstimulate and destroy her if she did. But she’ll be in the broom closet later if Suzanne, you know, wants to meet her there. OR WHATEVER.
WELP THIS IS ADORABLE!
Soso tries out the talking cure with Berdie, who tells her it’s normal to be depressed when you’re eating bagged Beef Wellington and sharing a room with an undeveloped tertiary character and all the good books just got burned as part of an arbitrarily designed bedbug prevention program.
This pillow is my only friend. I named it Janet, like Dannielle’s cat.
Also, says Birdie… maybe Soso can’t make friends ‘cause she’s just not like the other girls. Normally “not like the other girls” would mean “queer,” but this is prison, so.
Red’s in cahoots with Lorena Bobbit, who brings vegetables to her kitchen for non-sexual purposes.
I’m telling you, it was the biggest dildo my ass has ever seen!
Over in the Trip Advisor Top Traveler’s Pick Visitors Lounge Gloria glares at Sophia visiting with Michael while Morello listens to some chump talk about how he wants to smash his hands into her hair which he hopes will smell like rice pudding. When my girlfriend doesn’t wash her hair for a week, it smells like Doritos?
You make me feel like I just overate at Long John Silvers
Michael’s in a bad way, though, stealing cell-phones from his Mom’s desk like he’s A or something, ‘cause she can’t take what’s his. “Nothing is yours. You live by the grace of me,” says Michael’s Mom like a queen. Sophia comes down hard too but Michael’s not having it.
I wish I was at home reading Autostraddle
You know when your ex won’t let you go to a thing because whatever, she RSVP’ed before you broke up and can’t you let her have just this one thing and then the whole time it’s happening you’re fantasizing that she’s just having the GREATEST TIME at this thing and it makes you madder and madder the more you think about it even though the funny thing is, your girlfriend is actually having a terrible time at the thing? That’s what Gloria’s doing right now, envying Sophia’s visitation like it’s a jolly musical review and she’s stuck listening to 8-tracks of whales communicating with other whales when she’d really rather be watching her son tap-dance. She misses her kids. Aleida is like, “that’s real,” and is also like, ‘do you want one of mine?”
C’mon the veggies are fresh and it’s the closest thing we’re gonna find to a dildo in this place
Tiffany tells Big Boo that hey, maybe she really likes this guy, ‘cause they talk about things and stuff and he hasn’t called her any really bad names quite yet except for that whole dog thing.
I’m just saying, what’s the point of living in a Tiny House if we spend all our time outside eating donuts?
Big Boo: Hey maybe next time you could suck his dick, get us an ice cream cake.
Pennsatucky: C’mon you know that would melt before it got here so that’s not a good idea, duh!
Awww.
FLASHBACK: You know those “parties” in the middle of nowhere that big groups of bored teenagers have because they live in the middle of nowhere and there isn’t jackshit to do besides drink, fuck, do whip-its and make fun of each other? This is one of those parties. I don’t miss these parties.
I’m using this photo for the cover page of my new book “Misandry For Everybody”
A tall douchebag compliments Tiffany’s skirt and offers her a six-pack of Mountain Dew in exchange for letting him stick his dick in her, which is an unacceptable valuation that she unfortunately accepts.
Hey uhhh I was just wondering if you wanted to come over and watch me play video games?
Awww he doesn’t know we’re lesbians
He brings her out back and bends her over to get going, and she’s there but not really there, just a vessel, the possessor of a body part her mother told her men would want a piece of. When she gets stung by a bee — an actual bee and an actual bee sting — and lurches away from his hard-on to look at her sting, his inability to give a shit about any piece of her besides her vagina becomes immediately apparent. Pissed and in pain, she returns to the “party” while he yells at her for not letting him finish. I hope somebody runs him over with a truck.
Then there’s this other guy with long-ish hair who maybe cares a little bit and wants to help her cure her sting. He’s new in town and his Dad is as drunk as everybody else’s Dad and his name is Nathan and maybe they could go to a movie sometime?
How about now? Do I look like Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites now?
“What do I gotta do,” she asks, ‘cause that’s all she knows — heterosexual relations are two people getting something from the other, and that “something” is not a movie. But Nathan don’t play like that, he’s like the Caleb of OITNB.
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Thanks for this recap; this must have been a very difficult episode to write about.
Thank you for this recap Riese
this one was rough. Thank you for writing about it anyway. <3
i loved boo and doggett this season.
best buddy pair
nathan though. totally unconvincing pixie dream guy.
Thank you for this recap, Riese. I am totally here for Boo and Tiffany’s friendship.
Actually, the fact that Doggett’s rapes fit her character so well are why I wasn’t happy with it. Daya and Bennett were *not* an anomaly, they are a romanticized version of Doggett and Coates. I wanted the show runners to explore the abuse of power there instead of introducing another, more black-and-white version of the same story. I feel like a lot of the subtlety got thrown out the window this season, unfortunately to the disservice of the characters the show has spent so much time illuminating.
I’m completely agree that the storyline about Daya and Bennett is disgustingly romanticized, and I think similar problems show up in the interactions between Red and Healy. In the earlier scenes involving Tiffany and Coates I was expecting more of the same, so I feel like at least for once the show didn’t go that route.
Red and Healy were problematic, but Red at least got that great speech about leaving a woman with only one option when you take away her power. Fuckin patriarchy in a nutshell, right there!
I kinda hate how the flashbacks made Healy into a fucked up version of Charlie Brown.
it drove me batshit that we were supposed to believe red would ever go for healy, though. it just grated at me all season!
It’s so annoyingly done! Kathryn Janeway would not stand for this
“This isn’t about a sex act between two people, it’s about one person being attacked by another.”
Thanks, Riese, for articulating the difference between rape in OITNB and rape everywhere else on TV (GOT I’m looking at you). Game of Thrones not only glorifies rape by portraying it as a sex act, it pretty much does the same thing with violence and murder.
I am not interested in rape on TV as a plot device. I am not interested in rape on TV as titillation. We will only advance past the rape culture in this country when rape is shown for what it is — an attack, a show of violence and power, the effects of which can be extremely difficult to overcome.
OITNB had some issues this season but I think they dealt with Tiffany’s chain of abuse better than anything else I’ve seen.
“I am not interested in rape on TV as a plot device. I am not interested in rape on TV as titillation. We will only advance past the rape culture in this country when rape is shown for what it is — an attack, a show of violence and power, the effects of which can be extremely difficult to overcome.”
AMEN
really feeling this stock photo
My LDR was in town when we watched it, before we gave up on the whole LD thing. It was the hardest episode to watch, I needed a minute to just hold her on my couch, but yeah, this is the feeling.
This storyline made me so fucking sad. It reminded me of how lucky I am that this has never happened to me, and made me think two thoughts: “will this ever happen to me,” followed quickly by “when will this happen to me?”
Because rape seems so inevitable to so many woman, and it breaks my heart and I can’t even deal with the rage that this inspires in me.
I want to take a sword and go out and fix all of rape culture.
Actually in my ideal world, Big Boo would be wielding a sword, and she would have a horse, and there might be artistic flames. And everyone would be out of the prison but the guards, and the women would live in a beautiful commune surrounded by a ring of fire to keep out everyone that had wronged them.
This episode seriously made me feel all the feelings.
I’ve always thought of rape as inevitable. “When will this happen to me?” is a question I’ve often asked myself, and though I’ve never thought this was a unique thought to have, it hit me pretty hard to see you ask the same question. *tight, consentual hug*
I really appreciate you doing this recap, even though I know it must’ve been rough. I did appreciate their focus on Tiffany’s face, and her experience.
Thank you for writing this.
Can I also say that living in a tiny house and spending all my time outside, eating donuts would be the perfect life?
you are not alone in that desire, i suspect
my gaydar shouts tiffany is very much lesbian who’s with me
I took this episode pretty damn hard. But this was a really good recap- and I’m glad you continued the conversation at the end.
(also PURE GELT made me laugh a lot)
This was excellent. Thank you.
Well the great commentary at the end of the recap made me cry.
So I’m gonna go back to that line with Morrello’s face “I think my diva cup flipped” because this is the funniest thing on the Internet today.
This episode was fucking depressing. Considering how hard it was to watch, I know it had to be hard to write about. Thanks, Riese.
It’s amazing how my feelings regarding Piper and Pennsatucky have changed through the seasons. I was 100% cheering on Piper in season one and hating on Pennsatucky. That was slowly changing episode by episode until this one firmly planted me in the opposite camp. I felt horrible for Tiffany especially at the end as she was just resigned to getting raped. Meanwhile I wanted to rip Piper’s hairs out of her head one by one as she once again cheated on Alex and treated Alex as the interloper when she is her girlfriend not Stella. Oh and yeah as Riese pointed out there’s that little thing about how Piper got her thrown back in there so she’d have someone to play hide behind the library shelves with. Too bad Piper wasn’t the one getting coldclocked instead of Lolly or Gloria.
I agree I think that Tiffany has come along way from who she was in season 1 and I’m glad that she’s found a friend in Big Boo. Also I really began to despise Piper as the episodes went on. In season 1 and 2 I disliked her but found her to be more annoying than anything else. I’m not the biggest Alex fan but at least she’s more self aware and doesn’t try and pretend to be morally superior.
No shade but Maritza and Flaca have way more sexual tension than Stella and Piper. I mean really their whole “panty twinsies” and “nipples got hard” lines, come on. Also I agree Sophia was acting pretty out of character when she hit Gloria. I mean you could argue that maybe stress from her son acting out combined by the threat of not seeing him as much caused her to do it but we’re just assuming these things.
Pennsatucky was built up to be this horrible character in Season one and I felt this episode strike doubly hard because I was one of those who judged her and loved to hate her back then.
Her whole arc tied in so perfectly with this episode, though, that it hurt.
I wouldn’t have believed in a million years that of all the inmates, Pennsatucky’s storyline would almost physically strike me like this.
I agree so much I hated her she was the annoying religious-freedom bearing kiddo and now ugh I love her and boo
I am sad, and I am angry.
I appreciate the way you handled the TW, also. Sensitive in a way that is also upfront, frank.
It was so difficult to keep reading these recaps, knowing that this episode was coming. Thank you for doing it, for using humor where you normally would have and letting it fade away where real life starts to really slip in. Thank you, thank you.
This whole episode was terrible. Not even getting into the sexual assault bits.
I also very, very much hated Alex in this episode. Again. Like, she’s a terrible person, but manipulating a seriously mentally ill person and just eugh. Using a seriously mentally ill person’s paranoia for your own gain. I really don’t like Alex. (I also really don’t like Piper and her blatant disregard of Alex’s mental health issues.)
(But you don’t see a whole lot of criticism on Alex about the whole manipulating of a mentally ill person. And that’s a shame. Speaking as a mentally ill person.)
I’m confused…are you talking about this episode? How exactly did Alex manipulate a mentally ill person? She found Lolly’s journal that showed Lolly was tracking her every move. And then she attacked her when Lolly brandished the huge piece of sharp glass at Alex. As soon as Alex realized she was mentally ill and not send by Kubra she stopped choking her. I thought Alex behaved pretty admirably all things considered.
Thanks for writing this. I am so sad about this storyline because it hits so close to home for me, and so close to home for so many. I always envied those who had some anger and defiance at their assualts (I don’t for a second think that’s a logical or fair feeling), but all I have is tiredness, sadness, and self-blame. I’m glad Tiffany has Boo.