In which old friends return, people move on, plots are hatched and parties are planned, as Caputo’s “kinder, gentler regime” struggles to take hold.

Mother’s Day can be one of the hardest, as well as most exciting, days of the year in a women’s penitentiary. Inmates with children get to see how much their kids have grown, while also being reminded how powerless and trapped they are behind razor wire.

It’s a time for reflection, for remembering, which serves as an excellent re-introduction to the complex, convoluted world of Litchfield Penitentiary, in the brand new season of Jenji Kohan’s Orange Is The New Black.

[This recap will discuss ‘Mother’s Day’ in detail, and may contain spoilers. Be advised.]

Season 3 of Jenji Kohan’s prison drama starts off right where the end of Season 2 left off, with Pennsatucky taking over Morello’s van driving position, after she let Rosa escape during Season 2’s pyrotechnic finale. It starts off with a banal and hilarious exchange between Penn and the two guards, as she tries to teach them how to talk dirty, on their way to pick up party decorations for the upcoming Mother’s Day celebration. It’s a meaningless exchange, meant to amuse and kill time, which is exactly the way inmates spend their time in prison, with nowhere to go and nothing to do. It also avoids the hyped-up expectations of following on a widely successful series, by dropping us in during the everyday, mundane rituals and routines that make up prison life.

Beginning the series with this exchange lets us know, right off the bat, that we’re in for a very different beast, focusing WAY, WAY less on Piper and her miniature dramas, correcting one of the main criticisms leveled at the first two seasons. Piper is a privileged white lady, doing a fairly short sentence (a “short timer”, in prison lingo), but still gobbling up most of the screen time. It’s an interesting and complicated look at both the biased judicial system – and the way it’s perceived – as well as a lesson in adaptation: How to stretch a 300 page novel into multiple seasons of a TV series?

As we get further and further into the series, it’s becoming less beholden to the original text, and becoming its own creation, taking full advantage of the medium of television, most visibly in the new season’s most striking difference: flashbacks. Every central character gets a taste for flashback throughout Season 3, providing a fascinating and thought-provoking layer on who these people are, and how complex influences have contributed to them either being inmates or employees of a federal penitentiary. Pensatucky’s flashback shows her as a child, with her mother making her chug a two liter of Mountain Dew to game the system, while Sophia’s backstory shows her, pre-transition, as an expectant father (cleverly played by Cox’s real life brother M Lamar).

Nichols’ flashback shows her as an angelic little girl, with her wretched, entitled Mother on Mother’s Day, who forgets to read her card on her rush to the spa. It’s tantalizing and fascinating to speculate how this life of privilege, entitlement, and neglect stack up, to create a lifetime of opiate abuse and “a thirst for oblivion”. Let it be a lesson for those who think they’re too busy to hang out with their kids.

The flashbacks are short vignettes, without explanation, which can cause some confusion upon initial viewing, but offering rich rewards for multiple watches.

The most moving flashback, however, comes from Poussey remembering her itinerant military childhood, re-enacting “Calvin And Hobbes” strips with her Mom, whom she loved and had a good relationship with, although she passed away a few years prior. This healthy relationship makes Poussey the odd-woman-out, with another inmate claiming, “Maybe I’ll like my own Mother more once she’s dead.” A sad reminder that most people don’t end up in prison, coming from a happy and well-balanced childhood, and of the systemic forces that push these women into a lifetime of crime and incarceration. Poussey’s flashback also serves as an illustration of her burgeoning interest in the supernatural – a theme which will be explored, at length, throughout the new season. There’s not much of a central plot to ‘Mother’s Day’, instead skipping around to re-introduce the vast ensemble cast, to see where everybody’s at.

The main drama comes, unsurprisingly, from the direction of Daya and Bennett’s relationship. Daya receives some mail from Mendez’s (“Pornstache”) mother, who wants to be a part of Daya’s new baby’s life, who she believes is her grandchild. You might recall, in Season 2, Daya manipulated Mendez into sleeping with her, to make him think he was the father of the child, clearning Bennett and getting rid of Pornstache in one fell blow. Daya’s mother, Adeleida, senses money and encourages her to get in touch, but Daya and Bennett are still living in a fantasy, that their happiness will see them through. Bennett begins to see some of the challenges he and the baby will face, as he meets Daya’s extended family – the gun-wielding, psychotic, misogynistic Cesar, and a swarm of unwanted and uncared for children.

Despite not having a central plot (or maybe because of it), ‘Mother’s Day’ has numerous moving, funny, thought-provoking moments from several characters. There’s Pensatucky, pouring out caps of Mountain Dew for a small graveyard of aborted babies, only to have Big Boo come through in her clown costume, to drop some science and cheer Penn up.

Boo acts as the series’ moral conscience, throughout Season 3, with monologues that can be a bit expository and heavy-handed, while still providing a useful critical framework to understand the system that has produced these conditions.

Pennsatucky’s feeling guilty for having six abortions. Big Boo talks about a book called Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner, citing a chapter called “Where Have All The Criminals Gone?” In the mid-90s, there was a sharp decrease in felonies, 20-some-odd years after Roe V. Wade was passed, when the first generation of unwanted children would have been “of prime crime age.” Boo points out that unwanted, neglected, impoverished children are the most likely to become career criminals, and that Pennsatucky may have been acting as a good Mother, protecting her children, by making sure they were never born, “sparing society the scourge of your children,” as Boo puts it, in the process.

It’s a funny, thought-provoking, moving, and right-on exchange about a very, very hard subject, which most media won’t go near with a ten foot taser. Kohan’s letting us know she’s not pulling any punches – casting wide, unblinking eyes at society’s ills, and the conditions that create them.

The other random encounter – which turns out to be surprisingly poignant and interesting – is between Morello and Sophia, as Morello pitifully whines her way into the beauty parlor, “because dolling up is the only thing that makes me feel better,” as Morello puts it. Once Sophia sets to work on her #7 prison do, they begin exchanging small talk, with Morello asking innocently, “Is anyone coming to see you on Mother’s Day?” Sophia tells her that her son Michael is coming to visit, to which Morello expresses some confusion.

Morello:  How does that work, with you being a lady-man? Do you and your ex-wife share the day?
Sophia: You sure you want to be calling me a lady-man, with me having a handful of your hair?
Morello: I meant no offense! I don’t know for these things, which is why I asked!
Sophia: We’re sharing the day. My son’s going to spend Father’s Day with my ex-wife’s new boyfriend, The Pastor.
Morello: Well, that doesn’t seem right, either. I mean, he’s not his father!
Sophia: I’m not sure I am anymore, either.

It’s a hard, complex, and confusing topic that can be very, very touchy and almost impossible to touch upon in any other series. Morello’s confusion is not surprising: she’s not encountered this situation before, doesn’t know how to handle it or talk about it, so she is open and honest about it.

In this complex world we’re living in, we’re almost all guaranteed to say something stupid, about things of which we know nothing. Morello’s got the right idea: if you don’t know, ask. How else are we supposed to learn? If you are being offensive, the other person will undoubtedly let you know, in no uncertain terms. The new season of Orange Is The New Black is inviting open dialogue about numerous loaded topics and issues, and this is a good thing.

Of course, the lighthearted revelry cannot last, as a small child gets lost, causing a blaring alarm to sound overhead. The episode wraps with everyone face down, on the ground, reminding everyone of where they are, as the sound of crying infants and children mix the pulsing air raid siren.

‘Mother’s Day’ starts Season 3 off with a bang and a siren, despite not having a driving plot or one central story. This time around, it’s going to be about a lot more than white women and their first world problems. Finally, we’re beginning to talk about some of the cracks in the foundations of our society, and how it effects the most marginalized and vicitimized among us.

Favorite Quotes:

“They’re not girls, Bennett. They’re inmates. Or women.” – Caputo

“I’m just looking for some fucking peace.” – Anita

“The pinata’s empty! What a sad metaphor for their lives!” – Soso

“I hate kids. They don’t drink. They haven’t traveled.” – Nichols

“Jesus. You’re like the fucking Angel Of Death.” – Pennsatucky

Stay tuned for our ongoing Orange Is The New Black coverage! Do you like the season? Think it’s better than the first two? Do you hate it? Let us know in the comments!

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