Orange Is the New Black 7.04

How to Do Life

Red, Mendoza, Flaca, Nochols and Morello start to work in the kitchen in the ICE detention center. The make contact with Flores and Ramos. Flaca and Mendoza try to help them. Flaca calls lots of people trying to find Ramos' mother. She finally does but then learns that Ramos was born in Colombia.

Morello gets an unexpected visit from Vinnie, her husband. He doesn't look good and he's there to deliver the bad news that they lost Sterling, their son. He got pneumonia and died.

Warden Ward introduces some classes to the prison. She offers incentives to prisoners who participate. Doggett tries out a number of classes but walks out of most of them. Caputo teaches one of the classes. The last class Doggett checks out is the GED class.

Mendoza gets the backstory spotlight. It is all about how she moved from Puerto Rico to New York City to try and make a better life for her daughters. The oldest one doesn't understand and talks the others into refusing to move to NYC when their mother finally sends for them.

Piper works for her father. She tries but in the end she cracks. His petty bullshit is what finally does it. Alex calls Piper on a cell phone that McCullough got her. She is working late in her final scene in this episode when she decides she's had enough. She starts drinking alcohol from a bottle she found in a desk drawer and eating a cake that was supposed to be for a celebration the next day. 

Taystee decides that she's had enough and that her best option is suicide. She goes to Dayanara to get something strong to take, with which to overdose. Dayanara wants a lot more than Taystee is able to pay. 

Thoughts

Berlin makes her first appearance this season. Most of the correctional officers are not in this episode other than Hopper and McCullough. Fig and Linda are not in this episode. Aleida is also not in this episode.

Bell and O'Neill, two COs who were regular members of the cast for the first three seasons but have only been seen on a few occasions since then, return in this episode. They are both working at the ICE detention facility.

Mendoza is trying to find out what happened to Diablo, for Flores, but she has yet to make any progress on that front.

Morello seems to have entered another delusional state. I think she has convinced herself that Sterling is still alive. It's unclear if Nichols or anyone else knows that Sterling died.

I wonder what's going to happen when Linda learns that Caputo is back at Litchfield?

I don't think that Taystee is dead. It looked like she couldn't quite bring herself to do it. What's next for her? I still have hope that her conviction will get overturned when it is discovered that multiple COs have been smuggling drugs into Litchfield. 

This was a rough episode. There was a lot of sad stuff. Hopefully this is the low point or one of the low points and not an indication of what the last nine episodes are going to be like.

This was a good episode even though it was a real downer.