Everything You Need to Know to Watch "Orange Is the New Black" Season Two
Get caught up with "Orange Is the New Black" before you binge-watch season two.
Image via Complex Original
Orange Is the New Black isn’t your typical comedy. It’s not even your typical drama. Created by the same funny lady who brought us Weeds, Jenji Kohan, this Netflix hit uses both humor and the stuff of nightmares to keep audiences intrigued, surprised, and constantly coming back for more.
The show’s main character (and our primary point of view) is Piper Chapman (Taylor Schilling), a pretty, blonde, white woman who is sentenced to 15 months in prison for a crime she committed almost a decade ago. The show is made all the more intriguing by the fact that it’s inspired by the true story of Piper Kerman, who detailed her prison experience in the best-selling memoir Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Women’s Prison.
Despite having enough female cast members to rival a Jane Austen novel, OITNB does a remarkable job of fully developing its characters. As we experience prison through Piper’s eyes, we quickly realize that there’s a lot more to each girl than just her arrest record. Each episode features flashbacks which gradually help transform these inmates from distant and abrasive to sympathetic and relatable women. Even Piper is forced to break out of her lavender-scented, gluten-free bubble and face her flaws head on in prison, where there’s no one to pat her on the back and tell her she’s fine just the way she is. From angry prison cooks to borderline-sex-offender prison guards, Piper must learn how to survive amongst strangers and come to terms with her true self.
Haven't checked out the series yet? Well, with its second season dropping on Netflix this Friday, get up to speed with this: Everything You Need to Know to Watch Orange Is the New Black Season Two.
Colleen Thornhill is a contributing writer who will binge-watch anything and everything. She tweets here.
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It all starts when Piper Chapman gets thrown into prison.
On the surface, Piper seems to be living the life that an Anthropologie catalog tries to sell you—she's engaged to a cashmere-sweater-wearing Jewish man and is producing a line of artisan bath products for Barney’s. However, she’s also just been sentenced to 15 months in prison for carrying drug money for her post-college girlfriend, Alex, who ran an international drug ring almost 10 years ago.
Going to prison forces Piper to give up the life she's come to love, which means no more New York City apartment, recyclable grocery tote bags, or lemon water and cayenne pepper cleanses. It also means not being there for her best friend Polly (Maria Dizzia), who’s about to have her first child.
Rather than own up to the wrong she’s done and the pain she’s caused, Piper compartmentalizes her emotions and tries focusing on the interesting, fun aspects of her life as much as possible. One could say she gets that from her mother, who has told friends that Piper isn’t going to prison but to Africa to do charity work. As Piper slowly realizes prison doesn’t offer her that safety net of distraction she’s hidden in her whole life, she is forced to face herself head on.
Consequently, however, that means getting locked up in solitary confinement for taking her aggression out on another inmate, Pennsatucky, at the end of season one.
Which leaves her deluded fiancé Larry Bloom waiting at home.
Blinded by Piper's pretty, sparkly exterior, Larry Bloom (Jason Biggs) allows himself to ignore any aspects of Piper's life he may find unsettling. Like the fact that she dated a woman after college, travelled Europe with her, and smuggled drug money for her. While plenty of men might doubt their relationship when they find out how many secrets their girlfriend has kept from them, Larry is undeterred and proposes to Piper before she goes to prison.
Like a moth to the flame, Larry is addicted to Piper's vibrant, outgoing personality. Larry's parents are less than impressed by his choice for a fiancé, and drop hints whenever he's around that this union can't possibly last long. The two are at least partially matched in their respective inabilities to be fully responsible adults; Larry has faltered through adulthood as a struggling writer, depending on the generosity of his parents to stay afloat.
When Piper leaves for prison, Larry's own life suddenly turns interesting. The New York Times asks him to write a column on being the fiancé of an imprisoned woman, and he makes a radio appearance in a segment on long-distance relationships. His fame, however, has consequences for Piper in prison. Divulging prison stories means talking about Piper's fellow inmates, which creates unwanted tension for Piper and a rift in their relationship.
Things get worse for Larry and Piper's relationship when Piper's ex, Alex, ends up in the same prison.
While the two haven't seen each other in 8 years—not since Piper left her just as Alex (Laura Prepon) learned her mom died—the two end up in the same cell block. Piper hates Alex for ratting her out, and Alex hates Piper for breaking her heart. It would seem fate is laughing at them. Unlike Larry, who represents the stable, normal life Piper had been trying to make for herself in her 30s, Alex Vause is a window into who Piper used to be, a side that Piper might not even realize still exists.
Raised by a single, working-class mom, Alex wanted bigger and better things her whole life. Her one source of pride? The knowledge that her father was a member of a famous rock band. But when Alex finally meets the man her mother once glorified as a god, it's a heartbreakingly disappointing encounter. The man is drugged out and crude.
Yet when meeting her father, Alex also meets Fahri, who works for an international drug cartel. And so begins Alex's foray into the world of illegal activity. When she meets Piper, Alex is already a wealthy and successful drug supplier, and it's this excitement and sense of danger that attracts the Connecticut-bred blonde. When Alex is short on help, Piper smuggles drug money for her, which ultimately brings the two to where they are now.
But Alex isn't the only one who gives Piper hell. Enter: Red...
In prison everyone is assigned jobs, and one of the most coveted is that of head cook. At Litchfield Federal Penitentiary, that cook is Galina "Red" Reznikov (Kate Mulgrew). When Piper first meets Red, she says "The food here is disgusting." Nothing like telling the person who prepares your food that they suck at it. Strike one against the newbie. Not one to accept just an apology, Red starves Piper out, not allowing any of her staff to give Piper food at meal times, thus providing Piper with her initiation into prison life.
In the flashback to Red's pre-prison world, we see that she and her husband ran a small grocery and restaurant, which was frequented by the Russian mob and their trophy wives. Eager to do more than just serve them, Red's husband encourages her to befriend the wives, only to be laughed out of the group. Red's business savvy, however, impresses the wives' husbands, and in just a matter of time, she's more welcomed into the mobsters' meetings than her own husband.
Back in prison, Red also takes on a motherly role and has a group known as "Red's Girls," who frequently refer to her as their mom. Her reign ends, however, when Red is framed for running an illegal drug smuggling operation in prison by a sleazy guard named Pornstache.
...Piper's roommate, Miss Claudette...
Miss Claudette (Michelle Hurst) may be old, but don't let that fool you. Rumored to have killed a man, as well as poured boiling water on a former roommate's face, no one dares cross Miss Claudette. Upon meeting Piper, she informs her, "I make honor cube every week. So you do your part and then some. My floors, my pride." Naturally, things get dicey between the two of them when Crazy Eyes leaves her pee present.
But beneath that cold exterior is just a woman who never really got to be a child and never knew love. She is brought to America by a close family friend to work as a maid so that she may pay off her parents' debt in Haiti. Miss Claudette eventually runs the business herself, which involves bringing children from Haiti to do work cleaning houses, earning money for their families back home (hence, her offense: human trafficking).
When one of the girls is abused by a customer, Miss Claudette confronts the man with his own carving knife and puts the matter to eternal rest. She rarely shows vulnerability, except when her old family friend, now a widower, finally comes to visit and offers her a chance at love. When she gets the chance for an appeal, Miss Claudette almost seems light on her feet. But when things go sour, she takes it out on a prison guard and is forcibly removed from Litchfield, leaving Piper to wonder if she'll ever see her again.
...and the infamous Pennsatucky.
Prisons are probably full of people with questionable moral judgment, but Tiffany "Pennsatucky" Doggett (Taryn Manning) takes the cake. A former meth head with a record number of abortions under her belt, Pennsatucky becomes a pro-life hero when she shoots an abortion clinic nurse. Although she shot the nurse for "disrespecting" her, her lawyer instead argues that Doggett was simply defending the rights of the unborn. Although she's behind bars, Pennsatucky is now a conservative, hardcore Christian celebrity who receives fan mail and gets free legal counsel.
Detemined to shut Pennsatucky and her racist, homophobic mouth up, Alex hatches a plan. She gets fellow inmates to pretend to have been healed by Pennsatucky's holy, God-given powers. When Piper tricks her into trying to heal a wheelchair-bound girl, Pennsatucky gets thrown in the psych ward.
Upon her release, Pennsatucky seeks revenge on Piper. At first, their relationship appears to be saved, when Piper agrees to ask "Mr. Christ" for forgiveness for her sins. But when Piper refuses to be baptized and tells Pennsatucky she doesn't believe in God, only science, Pennsatucky decides the only solution is to kill Piper for the glory of God. Unfortunately for Pennsatucky, when Piper gets hit, she hits back even harder.
At least Piper's got her counselor, Mr. Healy, to rely on, right? Not so much.
All of the inmates are given a counselor, but it quickly becomes evident these counselors fail to truly do as their titles would suggest. The worst of them all may be Mr. Healy (Michael Harney). Mr. Healy is somewhat taken with Piper and holds her in much higher regard than the other inmates. When the girls are allowed to elect officials to a prison government committee of sorts, Mr. Healy selects Piper as one of the representatives, even though she doesn't run. He also warns her to stay away from any lesbian behavior, something he seems to have an unhealthy obsession with. When Healy sees Piper dancing suggestively with Alex, he immediately has her thrown in solitary confinement.
Determined to dig Piper's grave even deeper, Mr. Healy takes it upon himself to call her fiancé and tell him Piper has gotten back together with Alex in prison, forcing Larry to question their entire relationship. In the season one finale, Mr. Healy actually witnesses Pennsatucky threaten Piper's life, which he doesn't attempt to stop. By hurting his masculinity, she's dead to him already anyway.
Healy's not the only douchebag at Litchfield. Remember, there's Pornstache.
And Pornstache, a.k.a. George Mendez (Pablo Schreiber), has got to be the worst. You know when you feel like someone's breathing down your neck when you're in line? Pornstache is that person, but in prison, you can't move two steps forward to escape him. He's always around, staring and drooling at the inmates like a dog who hasn't eaten in two days. The prison is the only place where he can have a hold on women, and he abuses his power through foul language and aggressive body searches.
Despite being a prison guard, Pornstache himself engages in plenty of illegal behavior. He smuggles drugs into the prison, a habit that turns costly when the prison decides to be more diligent in searching the employees themselves. Among his addict customers is one of Red's girls, Tricia Miller (Madeline Brewer). When Tricia finally gets clean and refuses to accept any more drugs from Pornstache, he forces her to sell them for him.
Instead, Miller accidentally overdoses, but he makes it look like she's committed suicide. When Red discovers Pornstache's role in her "daughter's" death, she sets her sights on ridding him from the prison forever.
Luckily, an inmate helps get rid of Pornstache, and that inmate is Daya.
On Dayanara “Daya” Diaz’s (Dascha Polanco) first day of prison, she's greeted by a woman who slaps her across the face. Who's the woman? Only her mother, Aleida Diaz (Elizabeth Rodriguez). Aleida let her drug-dealing boyfriend use her apartment as a drug production center, and Daya was left to watch over her four siblings. Their relationship is nothing but rocky.
With her mom more devoted to her fellow Latina inmates than her own daughter, Daya seeks solace elsewhere and soon finds herself in the company of prison guard John Bennett (Matt McGorry). The couple’s relationship begins innocently enough, with Bennett leaving pieces of gum for Daya and Daya drawing him cartoons, but the relationship soon gets more involved. Like Daya-getting-pregnant involved.
Through a mother’s intuition, Aleida realizes her daughter’s situation and soon rallies her fellow inmates to help her. When Red learns the news, she tells Daya the only way to save Bennett is to sleep with another prison guard and blame the pregnancy on him. Otherwise, Bennett will be sent to prison as a sex offender. Red’s suggestion? Pornstache, the man Red needs to be rid of if she hopes to stop him from using her weekly produce shipment as a guise for his drug smuggling.
While the plan semi-works, with Pornstache getting suspended rather than imprisoned due to a corrupt prison system, it has unexpected consequences: Pornstache believes he's fallen in love with Daya and confides in Daya’s baby daddy, Bennett.
Like all the other racially divided inmates, Daya sticks with a clique of Latinas, which, in addition to her mom, includes Gloria, Maritza, Maria, and Flaca.
Gloria Mendoza (Selenis Leyva) is as fierce as Red and almost as frightening. A mom of four, she delivers advice with a stern jaw and doesn’t let much slide past her. When Red is banned from the kitchen after drugs are found in her produce, Gloria is appointed the new head chef. She sees through Red’s attempts to sabotage her and proves her worth.
Maritza (Diane Guerrero) is Aleida’s prison replacement for Daya. Protective of Aleida and fluent in Spanish, Maritza is everything Daya isn’t. She and her prison friend Flaca (Jackie Cruz) pass the time playing dominoes and choreographing salsa routines.
Nine months pregnant and due any day, Maria Ruiz (Jessica Pimentel) tells Daya her volatile relationship with her mother is more effective birth control than Plan B. When Maria gives birth, she is immediately separated from her child and brought back to prison. Gloria and the other women rally around Maria, telling her she isn’t alone. Seeing Maria’s heartbreak helps Daya decide she wants to keep her and Bennett’s baby.
At another table of the prison cafeteria, there's a group of black women, with BFFs Taystee and Poussey at the forefront.
Tasha "Taystee" Jefferson (Danielle Brooks) may be in prison like the rest of these women, but you wouldn't know it. To her, prison is more like a summer camp and she's the seasoned counselor. She sings in the shower, she flaunts a new hairstyle like it's a designer gown, and she takes more pride in her library job than most people do in their own children.
Taystee's best friend is Poussey Washington (Samira Wiley). The two go together like Seth Rogen and James Franco. When Taystee's appeal is approved and she's released, Poussey panics when she fears she's missed her chance to say goodbye. But just weeks later, Taystee ends up back in prison.
When Poussey yells at her friend for messing up her life again because "freedom was inconvenient" for her, Taystee breaks down and the happy-go-lucky exterior is gone. She explains that life outside prison walls was more messed up than life within them: "Everyone I know is poor, in jail or gone...I know how to play it here...I got a bed and I got you."
But sitting not-so-quietly at the end is Crazy Eyes.
Suzanne Warren (Uzo Aduba), otherwise known as "Crazy Eyes," is a passionate, lovelorn inmate with eyes for Piper. After Piper accepts a small "gift" from her, Crazy Eyes assumes Piper is now her wife and wastes no time in telling everyone. Or as Crazy Eyes puts it, they are "chocolate and vanilla swii-iirl. Swii-iirl." From calling Piper "dandelion" to writing her poetry, Crazy Eyes is head over heels in love, albeit scarily so.
When Piper directly tells her they aren't a couple, Crazy Eyes responds calmly at first. But later that night she leaves a present on Piper's dorm floor: a nice gift of pee. It's enough to make anyone want to stay as far away from Crazy Eyes as possible.
Yet, as OITNB tends to do, the character goes straight for your heart when, in a later episode, she tentatively asks Piper with genuine curiosity, "Why do people call me Crazy Eyes?" While Crazy Eyes, or Suzanne, may have moments of insanity, she's still a human being trying to figure out how to survive just like Piper.
Of course, Piper's got her own group, too, which includes Nicky...
If prison were high school and it was your first day, Nicky Nichols (Natasha Lyonne) would be the only cool kid who offered to show you around. Slightly frightening, slightly mothering, Nicky is a wide-eyed wise-ass with a knack for laughing at just about whatever life throws at her. She's the competitive, insatiable type whose sexual appetite is only rivaled by one other inmate, Big Boo (Lea DeLaria).
When Nicky entered prison, she was a heroin addict whose Upper East Side mother had tired of her daughter's less-than-seemly conduct. As she struggled through withdrawal, Nicky relied on Red to help her through those first difficult days. Red helped Nicky hide her condition so she wouldn't face the threat of an extended prison sentence. For the first time in years, Nicky was clean and she had the mother figure she'd always wanted.
Prison is probably the only place where Nicky has felt truly free, which might explain her comical outlook on prison life, and the joy she finds in watching Piper take a tumble now and then. But she'll only laugh for a little while before offering up her own advice.
...and Nicky's friend with benefits, Morello.
If Nicky belonged to high school's cool kids, then Lorna Morello (Yael Stone) was a member of the ditzy cheerleading squad. Sporting cherry red lips and flapper-inspired waves, Morello lives in her own fantasy world where the promise of true love is the only thing making her life worthwhile. She spends her days creating poster boards covered with wedding magazine photos and asking her friends for opinions on honeymoon locations, like "Bora Bora Bora."
Despite claiming to be a good Italian Catholic girl engaged to her faithful fiancé Christopher, Morello carries on a very physical relationship with Nicky. When Morello ends the affair, she leaves Nicky feeling slightly bitter and more upset than she lets on. Nicky tells Morello she doubts there even is a Christopher, especially since no one has seen him since she first arrived, causing Morello to get so angry that it forces the rest of us to question if Nicky may be onto something.
In the periphery, there are Watson and Yoga Jones...
One of the great successes and charms of OITNB is its ability to humanize the inmates and show just how slight a misstep it can take to change the course of one's life. One such example is the story of the inmate Janae Watson (Vicky Jeudy), a former high school track star with a shot at a college scholarship. Janae was always more sporty than girly and could never seem to catch a guy's eye. When one takes an interest in her, Janae is easily swept into his daring world. While running from the cops after robbing a bank, Janae slows down a moment to wait for her new friend and is caught by the cops, ruining her chance at college and landing her in prison.
Bitter at life, Janae takes it out on her fellow inmates, but goes a step too far when she accuses Yoga Jones, the prison's resident yoga instructor/peace-loving hippie of killing a child, causing Yoga Jones to snap and slap Janae. Later Janae tries mending the pain she's caused and asks Yoga Jones about her past, in which she admits to drunkenly shooting a child that she mistook for a deer.
Yoga Jones (Constance Shulman) has already become such a likable character that it's hard to reconcile these two different versions of her. But as Piper points out, prison is the one place where you're forced to come to terms with who you really are. Confronted with her alcoholic self, Yoga Jones uses prison as a place to transform herself into someone who finds peace in different, more holistic ways, and seeks to helps other inmates find that same peace within themselves as well.
...Litchfield's ruthless administrator, Figueroa...
One perpetual problem with Litchfield Federal Penitentiary is that it's constantly short on money but high on scandals. In charge of handling these issues is Natalie Figueroa (Alysia Reiner). As the only female in a position of power among men, you might think she actually cares about the female inmates. Instead, Natalie is more concerned with proving her bravado is bigger than anyone's.
Which means she empathizes with no one. When Tricia is found dead, she has the body immediately cremated rather than do an autopsy to see if foul play was at hand. When Pornstache is found having sex with Daya, which is automatically considered rape, she allows him to have leave without pay rather than send him to prison.
After Piper's fiancé Larry gives a radio interview and comments on the increasing amount of shutdown programs at the prison due to decreasing budgets, a reporter does some investigating and finds that Litchfield was actually given an increase in its budget. So who's getting all that money, Figueroa? Let's hope season two brings some justice, because this woman needs to go.
...and its pervy prison manager, Mr. Caputo.
When Figueroa isn't around, Joe Caputo (Nick Sandow) runs Litchfield. When Piper first meets Caputo, he seems nice enough, but there's something that's slightly off about him. We soon learn it's because Caputo spends his days aroused by his female inmates. When female prison guard, Susan Fischer (Lauren Lapkus), begins working at Litchfield, it's all Caputo can do to keep himself under control.
Absolutely no one in a position of authority at this prison is actually of sound mind or capable of going through a day without having lewd thoughts.
Last but certainly not least at Litchfield prison is Sophia, the one lone wolf who confidently stands on her own.
Being in prison is hard. Being a transgender in prison is even harder. Sophia Burset (Laverne Cox) is just that. She runs the prison salon and makes couture sandals out of duct tape. But there's more to Sophia than just some liquid eyeliner and impeccable fashion sense.
Through flashbacks, we learn that Sophia was once a firefighter, a husband, and a father. Struggling with her identity, Sophia decides to begin living life as a woman, a decision her wife is graciously understanding and lovingly supportive of. Sophia's son, though, struggles with his dad's new way of life, and Sophia tries to do all she can to make him happy, even going so far as to commit credit card fraud.
In prison, Sophia makes an unexpected bond with Sister Ingalls (Beth Fowler), a nun doing time for protesting. When Sophia confides in Sister Ingalls that her wife has been growing lonely without a husband, Sister Ingalls tells Sophia that all she can do is allow her wife to be happy.
Season one of OITNB was a constant series of laughable surprises crossed with dark lessons about prison life. If season two can be half as enjoyable, then it’ll be worth the binge.