‘Orange Is the New Black’ Season 4, Episode 13 Recap: Happy Puppy Guy

Photos: Netflix

SPOILER ALERT: This recap for the “Toast Can’t Never Be Bread Again” episode of Orange Is the New Black contains storyline and character spoilers.

One of the most prevalent themes weaved throughout this fourth season of OITNB is the one about treating people like human beings, specifically, how that practice is often lacking throughout the prison system. “He’s a person,” “She’s a person,” “They’re human beings” has been repeated throughout this season more than any other — so it seems especially appropriate that in the Season 4 finale, Poussey Washington isn’t treated with basic human respect even in death.

“She was extremely violent. That’s how we start, right out the gate. We were dealing with a violent inmate.” That’s guard captain Piscatella, telling Caputo how they begin to deal with Poussey’s death. It’s been many hours since she died in the chaos that begin as a peaceful protest, but her body is still on the floor of the Litchfield cafeteria. The prison has been put on total lockdown — prisoners in their bunks, all phones and TVs shut down, no visitors allowed — and the COs have been instructed to pool their stories about what happened and make sure they all repeat the same version of events.

Related: ‘Orange is the New Black’ Episode 12 Recap: ‘Prison Wasn’t Built on Humanity’

No cops or coroner have been called, either. The COs aren’t the only ones who have to get a story together. MCC has dispatched two representatives to the prison to come up with a response the company expects Caputo to sell in a televised press conference later that day.

Their first inclination: turn Poussey Washington from a victim into a villain. Throughout Caputo’s own investigation of what happened while he wasn’t there (a comment from girlfriend Linda about some bite-marks on his ear suggest he may have been otherwise engaged with his ex, Natalie Figueroa instead), various guards will add to Piscatella’s “extremely violent” picture of Poussey, telling Caputo she ran at Bayley with a knife or a shiv of some kind. MCC’s damage control duo combs through her files, looking for a previous health condition they can exploit, some violent incident from her past, even something pulled from her pre-prison social media accounts, anything they can spin into a story that will allow them to paint Poussey Washington as the person responsible for Poussey Washington’s death. As only her best friend Taystee mentions later in the day to Caputo, no one has even thought to call Poussey’s father and tell him his daughter is dead, but they have spent enough time unsuccessfully trying to make her the villain to figure out they just can’t.

“Father’s an Army muckety-muck, nice family, educated, low-level crime, sweet face, healthy as a f***in’ horse … we’d be smeared,” MCC rep Josh tells Caputo, while filling him in on their next plan.

“We’re shifting our focus to Officer Bayley. We got a villain,” Josh says, proving his company is willing to de-humanize anyone if it protects their profits. “He was untrained and a loose cannon, who, as you will announce, will be fired, effective immediately.” Caputo tries to shoot the plan down. “He wasn’t a loose cannon,” he insists. “He’s a kid who got scared… We leave him out there to twist in the wind, he will go to jail.”

The company is just fine with that, going so far as to find a photo of Bayley dressed up as Rambo for Halloween and distributing it to the media to perpetuate the “loose cannon” image they’re creating of him.

Ultimately, Caputo goes with his gut. Josh has prepared a statement for him to read on TV, but after Poussey’s body is finally picked up, and the cops have finally been called, and Caputo has finally taken a minute to call Poussey’s dad, the warden goes “off-book” during his televised response to Poussey’s death.

“As warden, it is my job to ensure that this prison runs safely and effectively. Because we are a women’s camp, that responsibility is often underestimated, the assumption being that minimum-security women do not pose a physical threat, that as long as they are clothed and fed, the ship will run smoothly,” he says. “Well, our ship ran off its course yesterday. And because of that, a young woman lost her life.

“Sadly, there is nothing we can do to bring her back. I understand, in these situations, everybody is hungry for blood, everybody is looking for a scapegoat. But in this case, the officer responsible… he was set up to fail. He was a victim of circumstance. Every day, my officers deal with convicted felons. Every day, they interact with women who were sent here to serve their time, to repent for their crimes. Any allegations coming from them or any other source are just not credible. My officer fulfilled his duty, and I defend his actions. He will take a short leave of absence, and be back in uniform, pending investigation.”

Taystee, who hid outside Caputo’s office during his announcement so she could find out what will happen next in the investigation of her friend’s death, is enraged by that last part. She runs down the hallway, towards her dorm, yelling, “They ain’t gonna fire him! They’re letting him go free! They called him the f***in’ victim!”

And she’s not just crushed by the news about Bayley. She’s upset Caputo didn’t even mention Poussey’s name. She’s so angry and vocal by the time she gets back to her dorm that it’s obvious to her friends and fellow inmates what has happened, too. This is the first information they’re getting since Poussey died, and they pour out of their dorm and down the hallway. The news quickly spreads to the other inmates in other dorms, and soon most of the Litchfield inmate population is headed towards a central location where they all run into Judy King and guards McCullough and Humphrey, who are leading her to processing, where she’s about to get an early release.

Humphrey, the psychotic guard who’s already wreaked a lot of havoc on the inmates, was allowed by his fellow guards to sneak a gun into work that morning, and he immediately reaches for it, hidden in his sock. An inmates pushes him at the same time, and the gun goes flying across the floor. Daya picks it up before he can, and the entire dynamic suddenly shifts. Maria asks Daya if she knows what she’s doing, if she wants to give the gun to someone else.

But Daya seems pretty confident as she makes McCullough get down on the ground. She points the gun right at Humphrey, while the other inmates yell at her to shoot him.

“S**t, here it is,” mutters Red.

Elsewhere in Litchfield (and beyond):

* The temporary peace that was forged when the inmates were united to spark the peaceful protest in the cafeteria has completely fallen apart. When Sankey makes a thoughtless comment while Black Cindy, Watson, and Abdullah are watching Poussey’s body being loaded into an ambulance, Watson punches her, hard, in the nose. While she and her minions, Brandy and Skinhead Helen, are cleaning up her face in the bathroom, Sankey admits she understands Watson is upset about her friend’s death. Brandy and Helen want to start gathering shivs and socks full of rocks, though, preparing to get violent with their foes.

* Of all the ways the inmates are dealing with Poussey’s death, Suzanne’s is the most annoying. She decides she wants to find out what it feels like to not be able to breathe, so she gathers hardcover books and piles them on her chest to try to mimic what happened to Poussey with Bayley’s knee in her back. Taystee, who’s often the only one who can snap Crazy Eyes out of her craziest states, is too busy trying to deal with her own grief to keep tabs on Suzanne, who goes into the library and pulls several steel bookcases full of books down on herself. She survives, but is injured, and when she’s wheeled into Medical to recover, she’s placed right beside Kukudio, whose face is so badly bruised and swollen from the beating Suzanne administered to her that she can’t open one of her eyes.

* Soso, who cried in Norma’s arms while Norma sings to her right after Poussey’s death, decides to get drunk on some of Poussey’s homemade hooch. She does, but still manages to get help for Suzanne in the library. For Angie and Leanne, the headline is that there’s liquor to be found, which they do, and get so wasted that they decide to destroy Lolly’s time machine.

* MCC arranges for an early release for Judy King, which they plan to backdate to before Poussey’s death. Judy’s freaked out by the death of her friend, and she’s willing to lie and say she wasn’t there for the protest if it gets her an early release. But now that she’s literally in the middle of Daya’s hostage situation with Humphrey and McCullough, that plan could take a very different turn.

* Red knows trouble is coming after Poussey’s death, so she gathers her family — Nicky, Morello, Alex, Piper, DeMarco, Norma, and Freida — and gives them all tasks related to starting a new garden. It’s an assignment with multiple purposes, as she tells Freida. “When my boys were little, and we lived in a s**t neighborhood, I kept them busy,” Red says. “Sports, chores, board games, outings, music, pillow forts, anything I could think of. Because busy boys don’t have the time to get into trouble.”

Related: ‘Orange is the New Black’ Episode 11 Recap: ‘So Sad It’s Almost Supernatural’

* Piper discovers Alex has left a trail of notes — written with her left hand, so her handwriting won’t give her away — all across the Litchfield campus, leaving clues about Aydin’s identity. Alex explains Aydin was a person, and at one time, he was her friend, her drinking buddy, and that his family deserves to know what happened to him. “I didn’t take the life of a stranger,” Alex explains. Still, Piper points out, he was a contract killer, and he was there to kill her, and her guilt about her death is making her do something dangerous for herself with leaving these notes behind. So the two of them scout campus, find the notes, and burn them in a trash can.

* Pennsatucky and Coates re-bond when he talks to her about how he hates working at the prison, especially now that he sees it has destroyed the “happy puppy guy” Bayley used to be. Pennsatucky delivers the titular line, “toast can’t never be bread again” about their relationship to him, but then she also kisses him, leaving them both so confused that he tells her he thinks he may have to quit his job.

* In a montage during Caputo’s press conference, we see Aleida watching TV and hearing about the death of an inmate, whose name Caputo doesn’t announce, leaving her to wonder if Daya is safe. We also see Healy during the montage, in the mental institution, playing with children’s lacing cards. He’s looking at a TV while Caputo’s on, but it’s not clear whether or not Healy even recognizes his (former?) co-worker.

* Poussey may not have gotten respect in life or death at Litchfield, but she does in the season finale’s flashback sequences, which recall a pre-Litchfield Poussey having an adventurous night in New York City, with friends old and new, before she was about to move to Amsterdam and start a new life. The final shot of the episode is not of Daya and the gun, in fact, but of Poussey Washington, flashing her trademark smile, right into the camera, fourth wall-breaking style.

Questions: We Got a Few

* Will MCC fire Caputo for going off-message during the televised response?

* Caputo sent Piscatella home for the weekend, so he could deal with the crisis without Piscatella’s interference. He also hinted that he’d uncovered some skeletons in Piscatella’s closet, regarding his last job… so will Piscatella ever return to Litchfield? And if not, will his lying, torturing, out of control guards be ousted, too?

* Bayley was being questioned at his home about Poussey’s death. Will that result in charges against him? Will Poussey’s death and the conditions at Litchfield become a public scandal? Will Danny Pearson get involved, with his anti-MCC blog? Or will the whole situation evolve into a completely different story depending on what happens with that cliffhanger, with Daya pointing at gun at Humphrey, and celebrity Judy King right in the thick of the meltdown?

* Did Alex and Piper really find all those little notes Alex had hidden around the prison? Also, they were burning them in a trash can when a crowd of inmates came rushing by and knocked the can full of burning paper over and scattered it across the hall… any way that might have sparked a fire?

She Said, He Said

“It’s all, like, jumpy in my head. I was in the cafeteria, and Piscatella was telling us to pull them down. So I grabbed someone, and I was getting hit. And then I don’t know. I don’t know. I just wanted to help.” — Bayley, when Caputo asks him what happened in the cafeteria.

“You’ve got maybe one more day before bloat and putrefaction begin with the corpse. After that, this room will smell forever like death.” — Red, to McCullough, suggesting they speed up moving Poussey’s body out of the cafeteria. McCullough at first asks how Red knows that, but then decides she doesn’t want to hear the answer.

“I’m a good person. You know that. I didn’t mean to hurt her.” — Bayley to Chapman, who finds him in the hallway, heading towards Poussey’s dorm so he can apologize to her friends. Chapman wisely talks him out of it, pointing out that they’re grieving and not in the right frame of mind to deal with him.

“I don’t know if this will help or not, but in Afghanistan, I killed some people, some innocent people… so much time spent chasin’ after the bad guys, and then you don’t get ‘em, and then they blow up your friends or shoot up your convoy, and you just get so mad, tired and bored. So you just grab a farm kid from a grape field, and you make him juggle live grenades until one of them blows up. And then you shoot him because you don’t want him to grow up without arms or tell on you. Or maybe you just strangle a girl that you’ve had sex with in a small village because her family’s gonna kill her anyway, right? And you just gotta get over it. You have to get over it. You got so much of your life to live, and we’re so young. We can’t let things like this f**k up the rest of our long lives.” — CO Dixon, one of Piscatella’s damaged guards, thinking he’s giving good advice to a devastated Bayley after Poussey’s death.

“The Roots all got some serious vitiligo, man.” — Poussey in flashback, when she and her friends discover another friend sent them to a Roots concert that turns out to be a performance by “The Rootz,” a white Roots cover band.

“It’s girls gone wild in there right now. And not the kind we like to jack off to.” — Humphrey, trying to justify to his friends and fellow guards why they should let him take a hidden gun into the prison after Poussey’s death.

“It’s only the living that scare the f**k out of me.” — Boo, after Pennsatucky asks her if she’s okay being along with Poussey’s corpse.

“What kind of contortions are your brain acrobats doin’ up there in your fu**in’ head circus?” – Nicky to Morello, when Nicky realizes Morello is lying about the state of her relationship with Vinnie.

“I forget sometimes that all the girls in here, you’d be anywhere else if you could be. And I come here every day, by choice, like an idiot.” — Coates, explaining how the prison is starting to get to him, to Pennsatucky.

“Where there’s drunk, there’s drink.” – Angie, planning to find out how Soso got her drunk on.

“That nutty lady went in there and she’s in Psych now. Hoochie’s dead. I think the tall lezzies are still around, but their days could be numbered.” — Drunken Angie and Leanne, convincing themselves Lolly’s time machine is dangerous and it’s “our duty as citizens” to destroy it.

Behind Bars:

* The book Red reads to her friends: Anne Lamott’s classic Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. She tells them Poussey recommended it to her after finding out Red was interested in gardening.

* That pretty drum music being played on the subway in Poussey’s flashback is from an instrument known as a hang drum, and while it may look like a giant steel bowl that would be fairly inexpensive, it’s actually a somewhat rare instrument that can cost several thousand dollars.

* The song played with the end credits: “Muddy Waters” by LP.

Orange Is the New Black Season 4 is streaming on Netflix