Sophronisba

I would have voted him out for that alone.

Yeah, I think this is a really good point. Morello used to be my favorite, but this was the last straw for me. I do root for most of the women to one degree or another, but that doesn't mean that I am condoning their previous behavior. I want them to put their lives back together and lead productive lives, not continue to commit crimes. Is there another character who is continuing to perpetrate the same criminal behavior while behind bars?

See, I think it's going to be a disaster. She married someone who was already having doubts about a relationship with a prisoner. He is going to get tired of this relationship sooner or later, and then she's going to be devastated.

And Chang and Miss Claudette. (Chang does have a sad story but it's hard to deny that by the end she is a straight-up criminal.) I don't think Aleida's backstory does her any favors, and I thought Nicki's flashback this season made her less sympathetic rather than more so. Even Sophia -- I have some sympathy for her, but there's no question that she made the choice to steal all on her own. I don't really see her as a victim of circumstance so much.

My guess is that Norma is probably in prison for whatever the cult leader was in trouble for -- income tax evasion, maybe, or something like that. It just seems like it would be too hard to prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt.

Yes! There's a picture of it here: http://www.vulture.com/2014/07/orange-is-the-new-black-props-explainer.html

I loved that line, too. It was just a throwaway line, but it was a great little character moment.

It's because of benefits. If everyone is a part-time employee, they don't have to pay for health insurance and other add-ons.

My assumption is that CPS has to sign off on who takes custody of the baby; and in that case I think it would look very very suspicious, so I don't think it would be that easy. But I could be wrong about that.

One of the things I liked about this storyline was that no one was 100% right. Sophia and Gloria were both feeling insecure as parents and that insecurity caused both of them to be unreasonable. Neither is to blame for the other's problems; but they're locked away from their kids and can't effectively parent them, so they take it out on each other.

Everyone in this storyline is awful, but Aleida may be the worst of them. She is the one I always think of when I read that OINTB is making all of the characters sympathetic -- I really don't sympathize with her at all. She is manipulative and self-absorbed and only sporadically seems to care about her kids. The only redeeming quality I can think of is that her friendship with Gloria can be kind of cute.

All in all, I liked this season quite a bit, but I didn't like the Piper-as-kingpin business and I didn't really buy the attempt at a feel-good ending. It didn't really have one strongly plotted story propelling the season forward the way season 2 did, but it had a lot of great scenes and moments and lines. The early reviews talked about this season being lighter than last season. That may be true for the first few episodes (which is what the reviews would have been based on) but I thought it went to some pretty dark places in the second half, with the Gloria/Sophia storyline, the Soso story, and the Pennsatucky arc with the guard. In some ways it ended up feeling darker to me because there wasn't a single Big Bad who could be killed off in the end, just the relentless misery and frustration of prison wearing people down. One nitpick: the lack of resolution to the Morello/Christopher story bugged me. So four strangers force their way into his house and beat him up and it never comes back to Morello? Didn't they even mention her to Christopher at the beginning? Christopher's never been shy about going to the police in the past, so I don't know why this hasn't come back to bite Morello.

I have been really excited about this season because one of the chefs, James Rigato, owns my favorite local restaurant (The Root in White Lake, Michigan) and also catered my son's bar mitzvah. So I have a rooting interest for the first time. He wasn't in this episode much (he is the skinny guy with the glasses on the Blue team) but I love his food so I'm hoping he represents Michigan well.

I just think that the difference between Korina and Char is being exaggerated. Korina is not all that. She's turned out some (IMO) terrible designs. I would argue that the judges aufing Kristine and Mitchell instead of Korina in episode 5 was at least as egregious as Tim Gunn using his save on Char. So it's not obvious to me that Char is being propped up at the expense of much more talented designers.

They did the same thing a couple of years ago when the judges couldn't decide whether to send Uli or Joshua home. So there's precedent; they didn't just make it up last night. The judges have already sent Char home once -- and I don't think they conspired with Tim to have him use his save on her -- so I think they would have done it again. I also wonder if Korina might have been kept if she'd shown a little less attitude on the runway in the first place. Nina does not like it when designers argue with her. All of that aside, Korina has no excuse for the way she treated Char. Even if you think the producers are pulling strings to keep Char, Char isn't doing anything wrong. What was she supposed to do, turn down the save when Tim offered it? Resign from the competition to keep Korina in? If Korina has a legitimate complaint -- and I don't consider her a huge talent (I would have eliminated her for that green dress in episode 5) -- her beef isn't with Char, it's with Tim and the producers. So acting like a brat to Char doesn't do anything other than display the kind of person Korina is.