Piper reconnects with Alex, who has just returned to Litchfield, amid the preparation for Mother's Day. Vause is angry at herself for getting caught with a firearm and returned to prison. She blames herself. Chapman seems to want to tell her the truth, that she had Larry and Polly inform on her, but in the end she doesn't. She says that it is the system that is to blame.
Doggett is the new driver. She goes with Bell and Maxwell to buy supplies. Doggett has the first of many flashbacks related to motherhood. Each flashback is experienced by a different person. Morello is no longer the driver because Miss Rosa escaped with the old van on her watch. Morello has been reduced to scrubbing toilets.
Red is moved in to Miss Rosa's old bunk. Her other roommates are DeMarco, Sister Jane and Vause. She finds what looks like a stash of bills in the bed. She quickly hides it in her clothing. She is trying to turn over a new leaf and think about life after prison, even though that's a couple years away. She seals up the entrance to the tunnel. During the Mother's Day celebration she gets a visit from her husband and her sons. They don't have the heart or the balls to tell her that the store is closed now. She doesn't tell them about sealing up the tunnel.
Caputo is now in charge of the prison. He has hired a new counselor who is also a correctional officer, Bertie Rogers. Healy takes offense at the addition of a new counselor. He thinks that he should be the only counselor. He doesn't mention how his support group fell apart.
Bennett has to deal with a couple challenges. Caputo knows about the fact that he is the father of the child that Dayanara will be giving birth to soon. Bennett tried to come clean at the end of last season. He told Caputo but Caputo had too much going on and didn't want it to become known that Mendez wasn't the father. Caputo thinks that Bennett is an idiot for doing what he did. Bennett's other challenge comes from Dayanara's family who also know that he's the father.
Dayanara has a challenge of her own to deal with when her mother finds out that Mendez's mother has contacted Daya. Aleida wants Data to milk that relationship for as much money as she can get. Daya doesn't want to have anything to do with Mendez or his mother.
Angie is convinced that Nicky has the hots for her because she's been spending so much time around the laundry. The real story is that Nicky is trying to get to the stash of drugs that she hid there, drugs that she stole from Vee. The drugs are still there but Nicky doesn't know how to get them out and keep it secret from Angie and Leanne. Boo is ready to move those drugs out of the prison through the tunnel. She doesn't know about Red sealing the tunnel.
Suzanne thinks that Vee is still alive. Poussey starts to show an interest in magic after seeing Mendoza perform a ceremony in the kitchen. Poussey also flashes back to when she was much younger. She remembers reading Calvin and Hobbes with her mother, who is dead now. It was a happy memory.
Once the Mother's Day celebration begins a number of the women share moments with their kids. Mendoza, Burset, Ramos all do which bring them varying degrees of happiness. Boo talks to Doggett about Freakonomics and Roe v. Wade. Lucy, Dayanara's youngest sister, goes missing while Dayanara is talking to Aleida. The celebration ends with a lock down which happens because Lucy is still missing after 20 minutes of searching. She turned out to be hiding under Dayanara's bunk.
The episode ends with two moments. The first involves Ruiz who has had a great day with her 2-year-old daughter. Her husband tells as he is leaving that he won't be bringing her back because he doesn't want their daughter to think this is normal. The second happens during clean-up when Poussey is cleaning up the remains of the pinata and notices a particular Calvin and Hobbes cartoon that she remembered reading with her mother during a flashback.
The rest of the flashbacks from this episode:
Burset - just before the birth of her son
Healy - his mother's crazy antics
Nichols - trying to please her mother at a very young age, maybe 4
Aleida Diaz - just after the birth of Dayanara
Thoughts
There's a lot packed into this episode. The first episodes of the first and second season focused mostly on Piper. She's a part of this one but there is no central character and no flashback spotlight on a single person. There is plenty of ground laid for things to come.
Most of the characters from the first couple seasons are in this one but many of them don't get much more than a scene or a cameo appearance.
I didn't recall all the bits and pieces from last season as I watched this episode. I had to go back and revisit some of my notes from those episodes in order to jog my memory.
There are a couple scenes that involve an inmate, that I don't recall seeing before, and her infant daughter. The inmate pulled a small packet of drugs out of her daughter's diaper. She later inhales some of the powder. She doesn't seem to get caught. I will be disappointed if she doesn't play a role in future episodes.
Maybe I missed it but it isn't entirely clear how much the inmates know about what happened to Vee and Miss Rosa.
The last couple moments from the episode got to me.
I'm curious to see where the season goes from here. Which stories will be central to the season? Will they return to having a single character in the flashback spotlight each episode?
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