2.5 Low Self Esteem City

'I am an adult who is in prison. I can handle things.'

I didn't know that 'screws' had ever been a word in US prison parlance. Interesting to see that when Vee produces it it's received as dated by her interlocutors.

It would have been nice to see Cal and Neri at the prison in series 1, their vitality would have lifted the carceral gloom. This series though has already been sprinkled with comedy sugar, so the contrast is dimmed.

I wasn't taken in by Vee's display of vulnerability at all, and there doesn't seem to be anyone else online who was either. Odd how I can see that, but spend 2 hours trying to get my head round Piper's 'I spent 3 weeks in solitary confinement thinking "winner"' before I realised she was being sarcastic.

Surveillance cameras are a thing now. I was thinking in series 1 'lucky there aren't any spy cameras in this prison' when all the guard/inmate sex and guard/inmate suicide faking was going on. Did you know Britain has more surveillance cameras per person than any other nominal democracy on the planet? I'd filed the action in OITNB under long ago (2013) and far away (the US), where people were going about their business without the constant background perception that they were being watched, whether they were inside or outside prison. You can join the dots of this metaphor yourself, I'm not typing it all out for you.

Observe how Caputo and Fischer, discussing phone monitoring and camera surveillance, are obliged to put on a show of omniscient authority for the passing inmates, just as the latter are obliged to put on a show of compliance for them.

Forgot to mention the scene where Piper remonstrates with Healy for letting Pennsatucky attack her last season. 'I could've been killed.' Subtext: 'Whatever were you thinking? That's the opposite of what you're supposed to be doing.' I don't think I've seen that before in prison drama - the victim of corrupt authority insisting that the oppressor use his powers for their legitimate purpose.

And maybe that's why Healy is receptive to Caputo's suggestion later that they should start giving more of a shit.