After an impatient year of waiting, finally season 4 of Orange Is The New Black has been released. What happened to Alex? Did all of the inmates escape to new lives through the hole in the fence? Has Piper lost her freaking mind? Of course, Piper has lost it with power, that probably isn’t a question you actually had.
This season opens exactly where Season 3 left off. New inmates have arrived, Alex is getting strangled to death by a hitman, and Piper just sent Stella to Max. Just when you think shit has hit the fan, Jenji Kohan decides to keep piling it on. There are plot twists in every single episode, but I’m going to talk about the ones that hit the hardest. I want to reiterate that THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD!
Lolly the…Murderer?
In the first scene of season 4, Lolly comes to Alex’s defense and stomps out the hitman who is trying to kill her. Literally, she stomps on his throat until he’s dead. Or, so you thought. Later on in the episode you’ll see that Alex finds him barely alive under the tarp they left him under, and she has to smother him to death before they cut up his body and bury him in the garden. Throughout episode 7, you learn Lolly’s backstory. She was a journalist who became homeless and suffered from schizophrenia. She always heard negative “voices” talking to her and it was implied that she also suffered from hallucinations. Because of this, she wasn’t even sure that the murder happened in the first place. That is, until they find the cut up body in the garden and throw her in Psych.
Piper, Piper, Piper
I was hesitant to even watch this season of Orange Is the New Black because of how much I hated Piper by the end of season 3. But I know the writers better than that. They wouldn’t let her keep going on this power trip, would they? The Latina girls start their own business and Piper goes all gung-ho about taking them down. She ends up tacking on 5+ years to Maria’s sentence by ratting her out to the new Captain. She then starts getting people to protect her, at the same time inadvertently starting a white supremacist group. (Wait…you mean the inmate with a confederate flag tattooed on her neck is racist?!) After you decide that you couldn’t hate her anymore and you want to set your TV on fire, revenge is served. You know that saying “Revenge is a dish best served cold”? It was the exact opposite in this situation. Some of the Latina girls got together and held her down, branding her with a Swastika, straight on her arm. Usually, you’d think “Wow, this is pretty brutal.” But she deserved something this brutal and it was the only thing that would calm her down and bring her back to Earth.
Fight Club?
Season 4 introduces one of the most messed up characters so far in the series. He’s a guard that forced Maritza to pick between eating dead flies or a fetal mouse. Not just hypothetically in a game of “would you rather”; he holds a gun to her head and makes her choose (you find out later she chose to eat the baby mouse). Another inmate comes forward and says the same guard locked her in a closet until she could decide whether she would eat her mom or her dad. While the inmates are being interviewed to find out who killed the man they found in the garden, he makes the inmates fight each other. He picked Suzanne who is mentally unstable, and she starts punching her taunting ex in the face until it’s covered in blood and she’s unconscious. The scene is horrifying, and there’s nothing the inmates can do except watch, or be sent to the SHU or Max.
You’re Crushing Her!
The most heartbreaking part of this season was watching Poussey get killed. I was sobbing before the scene was even over. The inmates were standing on the cafeteria tables, protesting the unsafe conditions they were forced to be living in (for-profit prisons, am I right?). Tensions were extremely high in the prison up to this point, and Suzanne lost it. An under trained newbie guard had Poussey pinned to the ground with his knee on her back (guards and police officers aren’t supposed to utilize this as it can be fatal, re: Freddy Grey). Suzanne goes after the guard trying to get him off of Poussey. Because he is repeatedly hit, he accidentally adds more pressure on his knee, ultimately suffocating Poussey to death.
Of course the writers of Orange Is the New Black wouldn’t end the season without an insane cliffhanger. All of the inmates are rioting throughout the prison because of Poussey’s death and one of the guards tries to pull a gun from his sock (guards aren’t allowed to have any guns for this reason). One of the inmates pushes him, and the gun slides across the floor to Dayanara’s feet. She picks it up and, as a turning point for a non-violent offender, she points it straight to his head. They’re playing badass music over the scene as you’re thinking “SHOOT THAT ASSHOLE!” But, of course the scene cuts before you get that satisfaction, and the season is over. Do you think she has it in her to kill a guard? She doesn’t know the full extent of the things he’s done to the other inmates. Could the conditions in the prison could be enough to drive her to be a murderer?
I think season 4 obrings up important topics such as prison for rehabilitation vs prison for punishment and profit. Orange Is the New Black touches on race, power over consent, and the messed up truth behind the industrial prison complex. The intense curve balls they throw are enough to keep anyone entertained for the full 45 minute episodes.
Rating: 
ComicsOnline gives Orange Is the New Black: Season 4 5 out of 5 Netflix Stars!
Whether it’s reviews of a compelling Netflix drama, comic books, video games, or movies, we’ve got you covered at ComicsOnline.com. Don’t forget to like us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and our podcast on iTunes for everything geek pop culture.
