‘Orange Is the New Black’ Season 4, Episode 4 Recap: ‘I Know Everything That Goes on Here’
(Photos: Netflix)
Warning: This recap for the “Doctor Psycho” episode of Orange Is the New Black contains spoilers.
At least it’s not another Brook Soso backstory. But there’s not a lot of good things to say about the big Sam Healy backstory we get in this episode, either, as it revealed few surprises, and most unfortunately, few reasons to empathize with the Litchfield counselor.
The flashback springs from Healy’s most recent bit of creepiness in the present, when he sees his new crush, Judy King, being all bond-y and flirtatious with Luschek. Yeah, you can understand where coming in second (if even) to the hapless Luschek would be a big kick in the junk, but it sends Healy a–plottin’, hatching a plan to keep Judy occupied (i.e. away from Luschek) by having her teach a cooking class at the prison. When she says she’d rather not (i.e. doesn’t immediately throw herself in his lap with gratitude), Healy turns on her, ordering her to teach the class anyway.
Flashback: A young Healy, sporting a bruised face that suggests he was in a tussle, is in a car with his father. A schoolmate called his mother a “lesbian who howls at the moon,” but Mr. Healy tells his son lesbianism is a “disease” that does not afflict his mom, who instead has a “highly active imagination”… it makes her hear and see things that aren’t there, like angels, little people inside the walls, and, sometimes, Roy Orbison.
Sam and his dad are in the car outside a hospital, waiting to pick up his mom, and his dad says her new treatment will help her. He also assures Sam he won’t get sick like his mom, because only women get what is making her ill, he says. At home, Sam wakes up in the middle of the night and finds his mom in the kitchen, unable to sleep and making a breakfast of deviled eggs and sliced tomatoes. Sam’s allergic to eggs, though, and his mom apologizes for her brain being “a little skippy” and forgetting that. She tells him it’s the treatments… the metal plates make her feel like she’s being erased, and she wants to stop them, without telling his dad. Sam tells her not to, as he doesn’t like her when she’s crazy. She agrees, and goes outside to turn off the lawn sprinklers. That’s the last time Sam sees her for several decades.
Flash further forward: Healy, in his 30s or 40s, is on a movie date which isn’t going well. The woman makes uncomfortable chit chat when they leave the theater, and then says she’s going home, alone, in a cab. The source of her discomfort: Her date, Healy, is also her social worker. He says they’re “just two people trying to figure it out,” but she says it feels weird, and she bolts. When he walks to his car, he looks across the street and sees an older woman sitting on some steps. He thinks it’s his long-lost mom, and takes her to a diner, but even after she reveals herself to be a psych hospital runaway and not his mother, Healy asks her to stay with him and share a meal. She refuses and runs off.
Back to the future, Healy is pleased with himself after the first Food for Thought cooking class, until Caputo tells him Judy came to him and no longer wants Healy to be her counselor, as she thinks he has “power issues” (sing it, Judy!). Caputo says MCC wants to keep her happy so she doesn’t sue them when she gets out, and despite Healy’s protest, Caputo says someone else will take over Food for Thought, which was the best-attended inmate event ever (way to rub that burn in, Caputo).
Healy ends his day thinking he’s gotten a chance to redeem himself — clearly motivated by his history with his mother — when Lolly wigs out in the garden and is dragged by Piscatella towards the psych ward. Healy intervenes and talks to her, getting her to admit she’s upset because she killed a hitman, chopped him up, and buried him in the Litchfield garden.
Didn’t happen, Healy convinces her. She’s just delusional. “As a counselor, I know everything that goes on here,” he tells Lolly. “So if anyone was killed here on campus, I’d know about it.”
OK, an amendment to that opening statement about Healy being unsympathetic. The fact that one of the most clueless characters at Litchfield truly believes he’s so in the know is one of the saddest statements uttered in Season 4 so far.
Elsewhere in Litchfield (and beyond):
* This certainly is not how we wanted to see Sophia, but our first glimpse of her this season shows her in SHU, and looking exactly as miserable as you would expect she would be after being unjustly put in SHU and kept there. When the guard delivers her meal tray — which contains nothing but a slice of Nutraloaf — Sophia crumbles it up and flushes it down the toilet with a towel, causing an overflow (no surprise: Nutraloaf only looks more like dookie when it’s floating around a toilet bowl). The flood finally draws Caputo to Sophia’s SHU cell, but he lies to her and tells her he spoke to her wife, Crystal, and that Crystal agrees with him that Sophia should remain in SHU lockup until it’s safer for her to return to gen pop. Sophia doesn’t believe him, and adds her shirt to the toilet to make the overflow worse.
When that still doesn’t get her out of the SHU, she busts a lightbulb and starts a fire, and the COs have to evacuate all the SHU inmates. “Tell Caputo to go f–k himself!” Sophia yells as she’s led away from the SHU. “I’m just getting started.”
* Yup, Maria is going head-to-head with Piper in the dirty undies game, and Piper is legitimately worried, because, as she says, two illegal businesses of the same variety only make it that much more likely they’ll get busted. Especially, Piper tells Maria, when Ms. Ruiz has no idea about how to maintain a website, couriers, brand identity, a client list, payment… “I better run it real good, then,” Maria tells Chapman, but this battle of the funky panties is obviously going to get so much uglier. And add Flaca and Maritza to the employees who have ankled Piper’s Felonious Spunk; Maria lured them to her business with free slipper socks and the promise of twice the pay once she has a cash flow.
Later, Ouija gets Piper to follow her into a Port-a-Potty, where Pipes runs her fingers around the gnarliest part of the toilet, thinking she’s going to find panties. Instead, she emerges empty-handed, covered in poo, and with Ouija and her middle finger in the air greeting her.
* Taystee continues to rock her job as Caputo’s assistant. When she isn’t using the labelmaker to put her name on every item in the room — each label in a differing font and font size — she’s calling the public library to ask them to verify a “suspicious” story she read in “U.S. Weekly” about Beyonce getting divorced.
* Poussey and Soso definitely made up, including post-make up naughty time in Poussey’s bunk. The more exciting news for Poussey was that Judy King chose her as her assistant during her cooking class.
* Alex makes a (bunk) bedside booty call to Piper, but abandons it when Piper asked too many questions.
* Coates confronts Pennsatucky about why she’s avoiding him, and she finally lets him have it. She asks him if he’s sleeping with new prison van driver Maritza. He says no, and thinks she’s upset because she’s jealous. “I just wanna make sure you’re not raping her, is all,” she tells the stunned guard, who says he told her he loved her. “That makes it different,” he insists.
“That didn’t feel any different,” she tells him.
Questions: We Got a Few
* Sure, things have never been more chaotic at Litchfield, but shouldn’t someone have questioned where Ayden is by now? He was a guard, and the prison has been short on guards… do they think he just quit?
* When did Nicky come back to Litchfield? Is she in the SHU, too? We’re not sure, but when the SHU inmates were taken out of their cells after Sophia’s fire, Nicky — who, when last we saw her, was being sent to the maximum security prison — was one of the prisoners lined up against the wall.
She Said, He Said
“She’s got too many loose screws. Like my cousin Arlene, after they kidnapped her, put her in a truck, and gave her a pickax lobotomy. But before she went blonde… that helped with her self-esteem a little.” — Frieda, explaining the current state of Lolly’s mental health, with a little family anecdote thrown in for fun.
“Trapped in cages, hog-tied… kinda like how I spent my 30s.” — Judy King, to Luschek, describing the “kinky” sex life of Wonder Woman creator William Moulton Marston, who had two wives, says self-proclaimed “polyamory expert” Judy.
“He’s basically Doctor Psycho.” — Luschek to Judy, referring to Healy, which prompts comic book fan Judy to add he’s “the one who hates women.”
“The only thing worse than so-called ‘meat curry’ is fresh produce fertilized with rotting flesh.” — Red, after learning Alex’s secret about Ayden’s dismembered body being buried in her garden.
“You’re the resident Frieda whisperer, so whisper.” — Alex to Red, explaining that she came to her for help with Frieda, who wants to kill Lolly with a poison tea concoction made of oleander, because she’s worried Lolly’s going to blab about Ayden.
“Correctamundo!” — Healy, clearly a fan of The Fonz, confirming Caputo’s description of his Food for Thought cooking class with Judy King.
“Healy… no knives.” — Caputo, to Healy, on the Judy King cooking class. “Obviously,” Healy replies.
“You think I’m that stupid, that I’d carry a cup of death juice in plain sight?” — Frieda to Red, after Red knocks a cup out of her hand, thinking it’s oleander tea she’s going to use to kill Lolly.
“Poison is beneath you, Frieda. It’s for witches, bored housewives, not badass biker chicks with octopus tattoos.” — Red, trying to talk Frieda out of plotting Lolly’s death.
“Long day at the office?” — Crazy Eyes to Taystee, who opens up about her long day in Caputo’s office, faxing, making copies, teaching Caputo how to download software, and filling out an order form for order forms.
“So, are dragons covered in feathers like the dinosaurs, or are they covered in scales like the gorgons?” — the question Suzanne asked Taystee to ask of the public library information desk. “They weren’t quite sure,” Taystee tells her.
“I’m like Columbo with two real eyes and a better ass.” — Gloria to Aleida, who wonders how Gloria knows Aleida just found how she’s going to be released early because of good behavior. Gloria follows it up with a pep talk, because Aleida worries she won’t be able to get a job or a place to live on the outside, and therefore won’t be able to get custody of her four children, plus Daya’s baby girl.
“Frieda’s right. We have to kill her.” — Red, after meeting with Alex, Frieda, and Lolly, and witnessing Lolly’s paranoid behavior.
Behind Bars:
* Taystee’s candy of choice: Good & Plenty. Healy agrees to give Caputo’s secretary three boxes of the candy-coated licorice in exchange for getting him an appointment with her boss.
* Should you like to know firsthand just how terrible Nutraloaf is, the New York Times published the New York State Department of Corrections’ recipe for it (a recipe so awful the state decided in 2015 to eliminate it as a meal for solitary confinement inmates.
* Piper tells Maria she’s been using “palace of the mind” to try to remember things (even though she could only remember that Ouija’s name was that of a board game, and not her actual name). It’s a technique many people use with great success, though, as science writer Joshua Foer describes in a TED Talk.
* Song playing over the closing credits: The Fling’s “Out of My Head.”
Orange Is the New Black Season 4 is streaming on Netflix.
Read more OITNB recaps:
‘Orange Is the New Black’ Season 4, Episode 1 Recap: Over Alex’s Dead Body
‘Orange Is the New Black’ Season 4, Episode 2 Recap: There’s Something About Maria
‘Orange Is the New Black’ Season 4, Episode 3 Recap: A Soso Episode