Poussey loves Taystee Vee sees that as her biggest threat, because if Taystee has a real, non-toxic relationship, she might start asking questions about why she can’t get that same treatment from Vee. Suzanne desperately needs to matter to someone Vee sees an unbalanced, needy woman who can be made to do horrible things in the name of loyalty.
Taystee’s trying to hold on to the only parental figure she’s ever had Vee sees that as a means to control her. It’s an ugly scene, but it’s also tragic, because we know all of these women – Vee excepted – is acting out of love, but that where we see love, Vee sees weakness, and exploits it. And Suzanne - who needs Vee more than anyone, whose loyalty is based on the fact that Vee is the only person in Litchfield who’s ever treated her like a human being, let alone seemed to love her - beats Poussey to a pulp, at Vee’s command. Poussey, heartbroken, gets drunk and tries to start a fistfight with Vee. But facing the fact that your mother doesn’t love you is painful, so, rather than listen to Poussey, Taystee snaps, and pushes her best friend out of her life. Which is probably a hint at how Taystee wound up in prison in the first place. But Taystee is locked back into an old pattern, endlessly loyal to her abusive mother-figure even though she has every reason to know Vee is not loyal to her or anyone: In this episode, Janae gets caught with cigarettes she’s selling for Vee and is sent, once again, to SHU, and Vee cares so little for Janae that she doesn’t even look at her as she’s being hauled away. So Poussey tries to pryTaystee out of Vee’s group. Poussey is scared by the fact that Vee’s running drugs and targeting vulnerable inmates: The first person Taystee hands a packet of heroin to is recovering addict Nicky, who spends most of the episode agonizing over whether to start using again or report it to Red. For example: In this episode, Taystee, Poussey and Suzanne, will each, separately, break your heart. The story of her pregnancy is rarely about her, which is why this is so frustrating. That’s because Daya just sort of sits there while things happen to and around her. But notice how all the verbs in that sentence - “reveals,” “frames,” “shames,” “blames,” “arrest” - describe things being done by characters who aren’t Daya? Yeah. This episode, at least, the plot moves forward incrementally: Bennett reveals Daya’s pregnancy to the administration and frames Pornstache for it, and, after Daya gets thoroughly slut-shamed and victim-blamed by Fig, Pornstache is arrested for rape and sent away. But when Daya got pregnant, the writers of OITNB seemingly forgot everything else about her: The only thing she ever talks about, these days, is being pregnant, and the only thing she says about being pregnant is that she wants Bennett to “be a man” and claim paternity for his offspring, and, no matter how many times the other characters explain to her how nonsensically counter-productive it would be for Bennett to do such a thing, she keeps insisting on it anyway. Interesting women get pregnant every day and proceed to have interesting lives. Children have been conceived, born and put through medical school in the time that Daya has been pregnant when Daya gives birth, in Season Twenty-Seven of Orange Is the New Black, the attending doctor will be the grandchild of someone who was conceived in the third trimester of Daya’s pregnancy. Hey, seems like a great time to check in on the never-ending Daya’s Pregnancy Plotline! Daya has been pregnant for approximately eight years, at this point. It seemed that these three plot lines were set to collide everything was set up for a confrontation. Vee had revealed her master plan: running not just cigarettes, but heroin, through the prison. Boo had snitched on Red, revealing her secret underground pipeline to Vee. Red’s nemesis, the drug-running and inmate-raping Pornstache, had been recalled from involuntary leave and was terrorizing the women of Litchfield once again. Welcome back! When last we checked in on the inmates of Litchfield prison, things were heating up. This is a show that can set women at each other’s throats, and have them beat each other half to death, and still maintain such fidelity to its characters that you can’t hate any of them you just wind up feeling sorry for them all.