“Make the best of it” can be a damning phrase. It suggests subjugation to the powers of the universe, that we are not really in charge of our own journeys, simply reacting to the world around us, rather than attempting to exert our own will on it. And while this can be a great, Zen-like philosophy to approach the difficulties of life, there are just some days, even for the most enthusiastic of us (the Soso in us all, if you will) where trying to “make the best of it” just doesn’t work. I’d say a prison full of bed bugs is a pretty good qualifier for one of those experiences – and so does Orange Is the New Black, perfectly setting the stage for the season’s first standout episode.
The presence of bed bugs in “Bed Bugs and Beyond” is quite literal, but it also acts as a wonderful metaphorical device; each scene is essentially a character being bit by unseen circumstances in their life, while the hour spirals around the prison watching everyone react to it. After the general calm of “Mother’s Day,” it’s a genius move to reintroduce some of the show’s running conflicts, be it the broader, racial examinations, or something more specific, like Red’s anger towards Piper, who lied to her last season about her family store still being open. Centered around Bennett-themed flashbacks (a first for the series), “Bed Bugs and Beyond” features a lot of characters trying to ignore or conquer conflicts they really have no control over; like the bed bug, it’s impossible to feel the bite until it’s already too late to prevent the damage.
This theme comes to the surface most cleanly with Caputo, oddly enough: for a guy whose been portrayed as a perv and a self-serving jerk, watching his face fall when he finds out the prison is going to be shut down in a month is a powerful image, and one that gives great empathy to one of the show’s biggest punching bags. Here he is, working two jobs and trying to hold the prison together under siege from invisible bugs (he’s even burning mattresses, which turns out to be a short-sighted idea), and the warden can’t even inform him that his prison is being shut down, and everyone besides Caputo in line to be fired. That’s a strong moment that helps give the season some scope and purpose: it could also point to a major shake up at the end of this season, though that’s something to discuss more as the season plays out.
Getting back to “Bed Bugs and Beyond” and its karmic consequences, the hour is terrific at slowly letting its smaller conflicts of the episode percolate, as characters fumble to gain control of dire situations. Bennett’s mushy demeanor makes for a great spring board of this topic: while he loves Daya and wants to raise a family with her, the family situation couldn’t be getting any worse. What do they do with the 37 months Daya still has left on her sentence? Bringing their baby to Cesar may not be a good idea, since he has his girlfriend feed the children fast food leftovers and points guns in their faces when they don’t (not to mention he won’t let Aleida see her youngest daughter anymore). He also doesn’t want to hand her over to Pornstache’s mother (played by the lovely Mary Steenburgen); though saying she raised “two sadists and a homo” might be a little overbearing, she did produce and raise ‘Stache into the man he was – is she a good option, even if she can give him an actual life?
There’s really no winning for Bennett; the baby is the grenade thrown into his tent, and there’s no freedom-loving soldier who is going to jump on it for him this time; even proposing to Daya only brings him closer to her dysfunctional family, clearly something Bennett doesn’t consider “good luck.” There’s no easy solution; like any person in Litchfield, there are no easy answers to the difficult challenges they face- it’s not as cut and dry as “save lives and get some!” or “washing pits, tits, and lady bits,” as Black Cindy tries to assert is a healthy approach to hygiene. Life is just not that simple; to really clean things out and have closure, it has to be scrubbed in its smallest crevices – or burned to the f-ing ground, which is certainly the approach Red and many other women in Litchfield would take.
I also like how “Bed Bugs” returns to the basics for a bit to spend some quality time with Piper, even if it was only to reinforce her addiction to emotional manipulation. It fits her in nicely with the rest of the thematic material in the episode, her and Alex reluctantly (and kind of violently) reuniting inside the fumugating library a wonderful little visual element of the hour. Some things can’t be killed, even by poison; there are some things in life we can never control, like who we fall in love with, and who our family is. We’ll never have power over these emotions (which, for someone like Suzanne, could end up having grave consequences) or situations in life; and as Red points out, the only way to really make sense of it all is to own it (not re-appropriate it onto other people, like Healy does to her): “Life makes much more sense in black and white” – and while she’s unrealistic in her attempts to define her own life that neatly, she’s right. Life is much easier to understand when the contrast is clear; but even in a world saturated of color, there will still exist many, many shades of gray, many dark nooks where the bugs can crawl and infest and reminds us yet again that no, nothing in life is simple, and we are but specks of dust in its cloud of chaos.
Other thoughts/observations:
– Red: “Nice is for cowards and Democrats.”
– Bennett: the only soldier with a travel iron.
– Nicky and Big Boo’s heroin gets stolen – or does it? Sounds to me like Nicky is trying to cut Big Boo out to make her 20/80 cut with Lushek a little more profitable.
– “I just bought three cases of uniforms with 300 pairs of tube socks I don’t own. But that’s a future me problem.” Keep on trucking, Caputo.
– So I’m going to guess Healy is single again?
– Early releases for six convicts to free up budget money? Ahh, our “fair” legal system strikes again.
– Red was really on fire this episode: “I married a pillow. Soft, lumpy, and always lying behind my back.”
– Nicky, to Big Boo: “Now you’re just abusing the metaphor.”
– Norma and Poussey’s budding friendship is my favorite.
– Caputo, to Bennett: “Let go of the dream.”
[Photo credit: Jojo Whilden/Netflix]
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