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“Orange is the New Black” recap (4.7): How Do You Solve a Problem Like Lolly?

Mental illness is a prison. A prison run by a cruel, capricious, illogical warden that lives in your head. Struggling with mental illness can feel like an insurmountable task on its own, but consider dealing with it behind bars. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, there are more than 350,000 prisoners who suffer from serious mental illness, who are forced to do just that. When you consider that, Lolly’s imprisonment seems sadly inevitable.

We open with Piper, who is now flanked by her gang of white supremacists. She’s horrified to have started Litchfield’s Aryan Sisterhood, but when she sees Blanca staring at her, she realizes that white power is the only thing protecting her from a beat down. This leaves Hapakuka in an awkward position, and Piper tells her that she’s unable to defend her but is rooting for her. Ugh, remember when Piper wasn’t the worst? No? Me neither.

I don’t know guys, what if we trade all this racism for some macramé and light crafting?

In other white folks news, Nicky Nichols is back! Despite only being gone a couple of months, Litchfield has changed. Guards are patting down inmates, the food is now mush, and there are twice the number of women crowding the hallways. In Lolly’s words, “this place is not cool anymore.” Nicky ignores Lolly’s ravings and walks away while Lolly gives the finger to imagined spy cameras.

We FLASHBACK to young Lolly (played and voiced FLAWLESSLY, btw) working at a free weekly paper. She tries pitching political exposés to her boss, but he reminds her that they work for a glorified Pennysaver. Lolly starts hearing voices that tell her to stop snooping around.

Maybe I should move to Australia and get myself a tank

Taystee, Tovah, and Alison go over the blurry phone pics they got of Judy King. There’s some religious ribbing between those two, but Taystee has had enough of their fooling around. She wants a clear photo of Judy that will tell a story and be sellable to the tabloids.

Caputo gets a call from Linda, who pitched his education initiative to the MCC board. They approved his idea, but have some alternate suggestions for classes. I’m sure those will be really beneficial to the prisoners. While Caputo drives by, he passes former guard Bell, who is now working as a crossing guard.

Everyone welcomes Nicky back with hugs, but no one is happier to see her than Red. The guards threaten to give her a shot for hugging Nicky, but Red blows them off and tells them that some things can’t be rushed. I’m so glad that Nicky is back; Natasha Lyonne is great, but the Nicky/Red relationship was one of my favorites, and I missed it last season. While everyone catches up with Nicky, Lolly is sneaking around and collecting trash. We FLASHBACK to see Lolly’s friend Anne-Marie taking her for a tour of an assisted living home. Anne-Marie is sympathetic, but she tells Lolly that she doesn’t know what to do with her. And there’s nothing she can do: she’s not family, and she’s an adult. After getting creeped out by one of the residents, Lolly runs away.

Red and Nicky are my OTP

Back at Litchfield, Judy King finds out that an old video of hers was leaked. Nope, it’s not a sex tape (she’s been there done that), it’s a wildly racist puppet show for children. Yoga Jones is horrified, but Judy protests that she’s not racist. Here’s a fun tip: if you find yourself repeatedly assuring folks you’re not racist, you’re probably racist. Guys, do you remember how racist the 80’s were? Watch any ’80s comedy and prepare to be horrified. Yoga sees Suzanne spying on them, and thinks that the Black inmates are going to attack Judy when in reality they just want their paparazzi shot. LOL racist misunderstandings! They finally get a good shot, but it looks like Tovah is trying to kill Judy King. Whelp, it tells a story. Unfortunately, Alison’s phone dies, and she doesn’t have a charger.

This would be so much easier if we had a drone

Over in Spanish Harlem, Daya is pissed that Aleida quit studying for the GED. Aleida doesn’t see the point, considering that GED or not, she will still be a convicted felon looking for work. The stakes are doubly high for Daya, who has her younger siblings and her newborn in foster care. Daya tells her she has to figure out some way to make a legal living, but Aleida spits out angrily that she is not good at anything.

Out in the yard, Nicky is jonesing for heroin and trying to buy drugs, but she’s distracted by Piper’s white power posse. Piper spills to Nicky that she never meant to add time to Maria’s sentence, and she feels trapped in the Nazi bed that she’s made for herself. Nicky invites her to her welcome back party, and Piper cries because she doesn’t have any not racist friends anymore. Nicky is still adjusting to this bizarre version of Litchfield, where Big Boo is little, Morello is married, and Piper is a Nazi. Morello fills Nicky in on the Shower Pooper mystery, and Nicky immediately realizes that someone is swallowing and shitting out drugs.

Listen up Sherlocks; a Mycroft is talking

Piscatella brings Lolly to Healy over the trash theft, but Lolly claims she’s innocent. Healy tries to talk her out of her delusions, but Lolly’s problems can’t be fixed with conversation. We FLASHBACK to Lolly living off the grid, in a homeless camp. Despite the squalor, she seems to be at peace. She strolls all day through the neighborhood, selling people coffee from her cart and recycling cans. Whenever the voices get too loud, she shakes a makeshift rain stick to drown them out.

Linda and Caputo celebrate the education proposal over dinner, where it turns out that MCC cut all the educational programs and replaced them with vocational work. It’s a chain gang masquerading as an education program, so the inmates won’t even get their 11 cents an hour. Caputo is butthurt about it, but soulless Linda doesn’t care.

Healy brings Lolly to Nicky’s party in an effort to keep her from isolating herself. But Lolly’s head is overrun with voices, telling her that she has no friends and that everyone is against her. Lolly starts spinning out. We FLASHBACK to a dirtier, rougher looking Lolly, who pushes her cart through her freshly gentrified neighborhood. Her cart wheel gets stuck, and she’s approached by some police. She tries talking to them, but the voices overpower her. She tries shaking her rain stick, but the officers only see a weapon, so she’s arrested.

See, Dottie caught the ball, but she dropped it because she knew I wanted it more.

Aleida brings a private meal to Judy King (on orders from Caputo) and Judy compliments her nails. Aleida realizes that maybe she is good at something. Also, Yoga Jones got a Soda Stream. The white power crew wants to expand their territory, and Piper snaps at them that they need to stop demonizing other races. She storms off, and the inmates chalk it up to white shame. Sister Ingalls and Gloria as Nicky if she saw Sophia in SHU, and Nicky tells them about the bloody scene she saw in the cell. Red watches Nicky sneak off with Angie to score drugs, and her heart breaks.

Healy finds Lolly in the laundry room, where she has built a time machine out of all the trash she’s purloined. It’s a quiet, safe space for her, and Healy and joins her in the machine. They talk about time travel, and what they would do differently if they could. Lolly tells Healy that she knows the voices aren’t real, but that doesn’t mean that they have nothing to say. Healy thinks about doing some time traveling of his own, and they both sit in silence with tears in their eyes.

I wish we could time travel back to Season 1 too, Mr. Healy

Piper, now ostracized from every group, apologizes to Hapakuka for being terrible. Hapakuka asks her if they can talk outside where it’s quiet, and as soon as they step into the hallway, Piper is attacked by Maria’s gang. They drag her to the kitchen and pin her down while Maria brands a swastika into her arm. This show is getting dark, y’all.

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