Orange, Black, or Bleak S7 E13: “Here’s Where We Get Off”

Several years ago, I decided to do a deep-dive into the Netflix show Orange Is The New Black and today, after 91 recaps, it comes to an end (although I am planning to do one last post discussing the book).

I am not a woman, which is a huge weakness in my coverage. I do consult with friends who did time in women’s facilities and try to ensure accuracy.

I did time in a state and not a federal facility, another huge weakness.  I try to consult with friends who did time in federal facilities and try to ensure accuracy.

If you haven’t been listening to the Decarceration Nation Podcast my most recent guest was Rachael Rollins the progressive prosecutor from Suffolk County Massachusetts (including Boston). We discussed everything from solitary confinement to justice reinvestment and how to reduce mass incarceration. 

Here we go folks, my very last recap of the television show Orange Is the New Black.

If you have not watched OITNB before *Spoiler Alert*

5. “Breakfast for Dinner” (Part 2)

Tiffany Doggett is perhaps the best example ever of what could be called the Orange Is the Balck Empathy effect. She is the perfect example of how, when you get to know someone’s whole story, even a person who committed horrific crimes is worthy of being treated with dignity and humanity. 

She was the villain in season one, she is literally in prison for murdering someone who insulted her, and she has a long history of drug abuse.

Still, I bet a lot of people reading this right now teared up when Taystee found her lying dead in the laundry room (some of you will remember she was in charge of the crew that ran the laundry room back when everyone was still at the camp).

We have gotten to know Doggett well over the years, we have seen the whole story of her life and if you are like me you probably thought about cheering when you saw the posthumous evidence that Doggett passed her GED.

Doggett is also one of those people who deserved a better fate. She had a very hard life, and never really found much happiness (despite her generally sunny disposition in the later years of the show). 

Suzanne’s quiet recognition of Doggett’s passing shows how far she has come in her journey on this show, and Taystee was right to say that she was proud of her. As the show goes off the air we see Suzanne working with Taystee in a classroom, working on moving the microloans program forward, and looking happy.

I am very glad Taystee makes peace, like so many real people are forced to do, with walking down her long sentence despite full knowledge she is in prison for a crime she did not commit (and somewhere, in some alternative universe, there are a bunch of fictional correctional officers who know the truth and will have this on their consciences forever). But Taystee represents real people in real prisons, we know from the success of organizations like the Innocence Project that we convict a large-number of innocent people and sentence them for long periods (even to death). 

It also makes an odd kind of sense that Judy King works with Taystee to create the Poussey fund. Judy King started as a stand-in for Martha Stewart but she ended up more like a Kim Kardashian, using her influence to help out.

• Taystee is a stand-in for a statistically significant number of people in prison who are innocent.

• Taystee is a stand-in for a large number of people sentenced to a new crime for something that happened while they were in prison but convicted on evidence from a jailhouse informant. 

• Suzanne, Lolly,  and Morello are stand-ins for a large number of women (and men) in prison who suffer from or incarcerated primarily because of mental health issues.

• Doggett is a stand-in for a large number of women in prison who need trauma-informed care and meaningful addiction treatment including a harm-reduction approach. 

• Red is a stand-in for a large number of women (and men) in prison who need compassionate release. It is especially cruel to make someone with memory-loss to serve out a sentence for crimes they mostly can’t remember having committed. One thing is for sure, dealing with serious medical issues in prison is much more costly than dealing with them taking advantage of compassionate release.

At the beginning of the show every week, we see a bunch of faces, each character on the show represents real people who are currently incarcerated and have real, and often traumatic, stories to share themselves.

Way too often, people like myself (impacted activists on the outside) say we are “voices for the voiceless,” but people inside have voices, we just have to get better at caring enough to listen. Currently, our prisons and jails are black boxes but we can insist they become more transparent, we can write or email incarcerated people, we can visit incarcerated people, we can even interview incarcerated people.

What we should not do is to pretend the show is over and what we saw was entirely fictional. If you connected with characters on this show, connect with real people suffering many of these same issues. Get involved with activists in your area, visit a prisoner, meet some of the families from your church or neighborhood meetings who have a family member who is incarcerated. Get involved in the legislative battles around criminal justice reform in your state. Trust me, once you get involved, and meet some incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, you will be hooked.

Most exciting, criminal justice reform is one of the only places in our society where large numbers of people from both parties work together to make real change happen. We have made a lot of changes over the last five years and, hopefully, a lot more change is coming.

4. “It’s Hard to Sing With No Teeth”

So, Hellman, who was the guy smuggling the drugs in is the new warden at Litchfield I guess that is how bureaucracies often function (elevating the least deserving and most effectively corrupt). 

Warden Ward was trying to make Litchfield a better place, but none of these officers had the training or experience to be a particularly effective warden. Ward, in many ways, did not have any idea what she was doing (she wasn’t even a particularly experienced or good correctional officer), but she did care and she got to the core of one of the most annoying issues in prisons. Lack of programming.

Even a simple back of the envelope calculations would show how much money could be saved by ensuring people have access to recidivism-reducing programming. There are several kinds of programming and ways to incentivize progress throughout incarceration (early diversion, good-time credit, special housing units,  earned credits, etc.) but they all reduce violence and save money long-term. What frequently happens, as we see on the show, is short-term budget concerns (and old-school thinking) frustrating or destroying programming.

If you think about it, this was a pretty sad and fatalistic final episode:

• Ward has been fired

• Hellman, arguably the worst or the remaining correctional officers, becomes the warden.

• Linda is still thriving and large and in charge.

• Taystee is stuck in prison.

• Daya had her windpipe crushed by her mom, not that it was undeserved, but what happens to Aleida’s family now? Aleida will now be in prison for much longer and we get no redemption arc for Daya who is either dead or seriously injured (I guess Dasha Polanco said her character did not die in a post-finale interview).

• Red and Morello are lost in Florida (but at least have each other).

• McCullough is still a mess and looks even more miserable because she knows she intentionally uprooted Vause.

• Doggett is dead.

• Flaca in prison (fighting the good fight).

• Nicky’s girlfriend was deported and she is still incarcerated.

• Maritza was deported.

• Lolly is still incarcerated.

• Carla is dying in the desert after being abandoned when she broke her ankle (I assume trying to get back to her kids).

As much as I celebrate all the successes of the people I see come home from prison successfully, prison doesn’t often have very good outcomes. Still, sad to see the whole thing end with corruption winning (as it often does).

3. “Because You Giggle When You Fart”

Okay, I guess I will spend a few seconds on Vause and Piper.

We spent almost the entire run of the show with the “will they or won’t they” storyline. So the final answer was (drumroll please)...They end up together.

At least I will no longer have to deal with this repetitive and annoying storyline anymore.

I like both characters but I could not have been more tired of their storyline never changing. I liked Zelda, but part of the reason this was all annoying is that it was always obvious they would end up together (it made it seem like teen drama whenever they battled back and forth and broke up and got back together, etc.).

We do find out that Vause was not the only person who got transferred to Ohio, we get a brief view of the following former Litchfield residents:

• Big Boo (missed badly during the last two seasons)

• Janae Watson (still running).

• Leanne Taylor (sorry, didn’t miss her, mostly found the meth-heads annoying)

• Angie Rice (see above)

• Yoga Jones (should give Judy King a call)

• Gina Murphy 

• Norma Romano (sad she didn’t get to reconnect with Red before Red lost her memory)

• Anita DeMarco

• Brook Soso (Sankey???)

• Allison Abdullah 

• Kasey Sankey (second-chances? It was a nice haiku I guess)

• George Mendez (see Hellman, although at least Mendez paid a price)

• We also see Taslitz (one of the Golden Girls)  and Mei Chang back at Litchfield during the final episode.

I guess I wish we had seen Miss Claudette (she was mentioned during an earlier final season episode) and Sister Ingalls but I guess you can’t have everything 

Good to see everyone one last time, and glad we also got to say goodbye to Sophia a few episodes ago.

2. “Eye Hug”

The final episode had better news for some folks:

• Caputo and Fig are happy together and adopt a precocious young girl they meet at an adoption agency.

• Gloria goes home and finds her kids, grandkids, and her Mi Burro book 

• Maria gets to read Mi Burro to her kid (after coming to an agreement with Yadriel about his new girlfriend...Maria).

• Piper is working at Starbucks and going to, I think, law school (Starbucks does hire formerly incarcerated people on a case-by-case basis). 

• Blanca earns her release, gets back her green card, and decides to leave the United States and self-deport to be with Diablo in Honduras.

• Cindy reconnects with her mother and daughter and starts trying to get her life back together. They start meeting at McDonald's (some McDonalds hire formerly incarcerated people, others don’t).

• Nicky, while still incarcerated, becomes a prison mom and a head chef, following in Red’s footsteps and trying to help new girls struggling with addiction and recovery in prison.

Glad to see some happy endings for some great characters at the end of a great series.

1, Thank You

I was unsure from the beginning if I should write this series of recaps. I am so happy that I did. I want to thank everyone for being so supportive and for being consistent readers of this recap for seven seasons. 

A Special shout out to the Orange Is the New Black Reddit. I have had thousands of good discussions about the show there.

I have learned a lot from all of you, learned a lot from all the women I talked with about the show and about what it is like to be in a women’s prison. I remain committed to ensuring that criminal justice reform includes women and for women’s prisons (and jails).

Thank you again, and thank you to Piper Kerman and Jenji Kohan and all the writers and incredible actors on the show. 

Last thought, I would put Uzo Aduba’s performance as Suzanne right up there with Omar on The Wire as one of the best and most memorable performances of all time on television. Suzanne was almost always the heart of the show, and I will probably remember Aduba’s portrayal, of  Suzanne’s grace and ceaseless optimism in the face of almost unimaginable injustice.

Okay, in a few weeks I will have one last post (discussing Piper Kerman’s book).

Unlocking The Gates

New recaps will come out once a week (usually on Sunday mornings).

Lots has happened since last season, I am now a policy analyst at Safe and Just Michigan, a consultant with #cut50, and still the host of a podcast. I am still a member of a Criminal Justice Reform organization called Nation Outside (The Voice of the Formerly Incarcerated) but I am not speaking for Nation Outside in any official capacity.

Leave comments, let us know what you thought! We will answer any questions you have (that are civil).