Jackson Ball reviews the fifth episode of Orange Is the New Black Season 2 …
Going into this episode, we leave behind the establishing nature of the opening episodes and ease into the real meat of the season; the bulky centre that Netflix series are becoming famed for. Episode 5 offers a lighter tone than we’ve been used to, but in true Orange Is the New Black style, underpins the fun with the growing influence of a new threat…
Warning! Spoilers Ahead – You have been warned!
The intense ‘lesbian rivalry’ between Nicky (Natasha Lyonne) and Boo (Lea Delaria) grows more heated and more hilarious with every passing episode. The pair are well underway in the contest to see who can have the most sex, and have even began a surprisingly elegant scoring system. The funniest detail? All the officiating is being done by the most nonplussed of inmates, Chang (Lori Tan Chinn).
Clearly, this is an indication of the show’s lighter side, which for the most part has had much more prominence in Season too so far. I would goes as far to call it all out comic relief (and so it shouldn’t be for a prison-set series), but it is nice to see that the show doesn’t take itself too seriously. Not for the first time this season, OITNB shows its impressive ability to weave ridiculous scenarios into the series in a way in which is both believable and services the overall plot.
For example, this already funny situation is given a second injection of humour when Piper (Taylor Schilling) is mortified to discover that she is only rated as a 3 on Nicky and Boo’s ‘bedding scale’. It’s obviously a ludicrous thing for her to be concerned about it, but her reaction goes a considerable way to revealing another aspect of the character’s psyche, and her perception within the prison. From what we know of Piper’s life on the outside world, she has had a lot of advantages based on her endearing personality and good looks. In Litchfield though, that personality has been stamped out and her fellow inmates remain impervious to her.
Elsewhere in this episode, tensions between the prison’s power-cliques. New inmate Vee (Lorraine Toussaint) has used her cunning to ascend to power within her hand-picked gang, and a malfunction in the shower room puts her in directly in the firing-line of kitchen matriarch Mendoza (Selenis Leyva), and her ‘family’ of fiery latinas.
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Originally published June 13, 2014. Updated April 12, 2018.
