‘Orange Is The New Black’ Season 6 Episode 8 Recap: “Gordons”

Episode 8 of Orange Is The New Black ends with the Americana sounds of Galt MacDermot’s song, “Glad I Had a Friend”: Wherever you had come from / that must be where you had to go / but whichever way you went, I can walk about just recalling /sweet memories not appalling … I’m glad I had a friend. As the song plays to credits, we watch the sweet memory of teenage Taystee walking off in one direction to become Inmate Jefferson, parting ways with her friend Tamika who heads in the other direction after a night of laughing and near death experiences… To become C.O. Ward.

Relationship after relationship, episode 8 hammers home that in prison, sustaining friendships is just as challenging—and just as valuable—as staving off enemies. Because a world where the most commonly used mantra is “You do what you gotta do to survive,” is not a world that fosters faith in friendship, and for good reason. Season 6 of OITNB is a lot of things thus far—funny, high-stakes, poignant, silly, occasionally annoying, a little bit sexy—but most foundationally, season 6 is constantly teaching our favorite inmates that inside the walls of Litchfield, it’s nearly impossible to know who they can trust. Certainly, this inability to trust has always extended to guards, but now, through the lens of Taystee’s past with CO Ward, we’re briefly given a glimpse of what it would be like for a guard to use their power imbalance to help, not harm, an inmate. Alas, life doesn’t always go in the direction we hope it will…

Episode 8 opens up on the Litchfield guards gleefully preparing to search the inmates’ cells following a 36-hour lockdown as a result of Badison getting shanked in the yard. Now, all rec time will be separated by blocks, and Alex has Badison’s contraband cell phone residing in her shoe. And after accidentally making a good impression on Carol with her contribution to the new contraband pipeline, Alex also has a mysterious $100 deposit in her commissary.

We’ve known about Carol and Barb’s hold over Litchfield Max since the very beginning of season 6, but as our OITNB stalwarts inch closer and closer into their orbit, we’re beginning to see just what powerful friends—and surely, enemies—Carol and Barb can be. After spotting fresh fruit and yogurt being wheeled into Florida Block where she also spots Frieda, Red decides it’s time to find whoever it was that Frieda was always so afraid of running back into at Max, and form an… anti-Frieda coalition of sorts. But Red has no idea that road will lead her to the very top of C-Block: Carol’s scary hair salon lair, complete with giant inmates and creepy twins.

Since Red originally insulted Carol by assuming that it was “an idiot” who let Frieda dupe them so long ago in Max, this meeting of uniquely-coiffed queens could go one of two ways. But luckily (or maybe very unluckily, we’ll have to wait and see), Red quickly finds a common enemy with Carol in Frieda, and a common goal in revenge. “I needed to find the person in her who was as angry as I am, who knows what it’s like to be betrayed by her,” Red says. “Well it looks like you found her,” Carol responds: “Now let’s fix that fucked up hair of yours, shall we?”

That’s one frightening friendship formed, and one youthful friendship revisited as we check in via flashback on Taystee and CO Ward’s time together as teenagers, working at Storkey’s Burgers (where, mind you, there are no stork products on the menu). Early in the episode, we see CO Ward cheerfully bringing Taystee her fan mail and even sneaking in an interview request from ProPublica that she saved from being thrown out. A decade or so ago, however, it seems Taystee was the one helping out Tamika most of the time, taking on most of the responsibility at Storkey’s while Tamika provided the…recreation. To the tune of Lil’ Wayne’s “Amili.”

Tamika didn’t lock the doors during their smoke session like she was supposed to though, and when Taystee stands up to help whoever just came inside after hours, she finds a kid with a gun, demanding all the cash in the drawer of the restaurant they were supposed to have closed up hours ago. Always quick on her feet, Taystee tells the kid that if she opens the drawer this late at night, it will set off all the alarms and security cameras. Freaked out, he looks around for anything else he could take, and demands the Jordans right off Taystee’s feet. Taystee begrudgingly tosses her shoes over the counter that Tamika has been cowering under the whole time.

Now, Tamika has a chance to repay her friend in the form of encouraging Taystee to take the ProPublica interview so she can tell people she’s innocent. But talking about her innocence involves Taystee telling her whole story—and the story of Poussey Washington, and the incarcerated millions she has been fighting for since the riot. And that story includes abuse at the hands of undertrained and over-authorized guards. CO Ward looks on with barely contained fury as Taystee tells the interviewer, “Every day I have COs spitting in my food, calling me names, beating on me, and all I can do is hope for my day in court.” When the ProPublica journalist looks shocked, Taystee tells him that’s what all of this has been about: “We are locked in cages—but they’re the animals.”

Over in C-Block, Nicky is attempting to help Blanca get pregnant via her knowledge of bovine insemination, but that’s a totally different story. Nicky has gathered all the supplies necessary, but Blanca still has no way to get Diablo’s sperm, until Luschek’s dancing class—the only place the Blocks are currently allowed to be in the same place together—reveals an opportunity. Given that Luschek’s Rec class is already the place where he’s smuggling phones to C-Block; the place where Daya realizes she can get Oxy to help Daddy from Blanca in exchange for retrieving Diablo’s, uh, release from the Visitation bathroom; and now the place where Luschek is drooling over Gloria as she takes over the teaching portion of Luschek’s dancing class… this Rec room is really pulling overtime.

And people have started to notice. Some C-Block lackeys observe this exchange of Oxy and a used condom; they jump Daya on her way back to D-Block, and catch Blanca in a compromising situation just as Nicky has just used a straw to (fingers-crossed) impregnate her in the law library.

Taystee faces her own rude awakening when CO Ward is suddenly refusing to hand over her mail. In flashback, we see the young women leaving Storkey’s a decade ago, Tamika telling Taystee she probably saved her life that night: “That was some not-all-heroes-wear-capes shit.” Taystee reminds Tamika that this hero isn’t wearing shows, but it’s not that big of a deal: “The joke is on that dummy because those ain’t Jordans—those was Gordons!” The shoes may have saved Taystee and Tamika at the time…but they were never really all that valuable. The girls laugh and part ways with a hug, each walking toward separate futures.

In her interview, the ProPublica reporter asks Taystee if now, facing life in prison or worse, she had any regrets about the riot. “I think what I’ve realized,” Taystee responds, “is that regrets are for people who have another choice.”

THAT’S A SHOT, INMATE

• You better get that Emmy, Danielle!!!
• Chapman is still fighting the good kickball fight, using her knowledge of what’s coming and going form the Rec room for some good old fashioned Luschek-extortion.
• And Aleida is still fighting the shady Nutri Herbal fight, now trying to sell her supplements in the Litchfield parking lot, but getting a date with CO Hopper to Red Lobster instead.
• Blanca would have tried to inseminate herself, “But I tried it with a Go-Gurt, and frankly, it was a mess—and a waste of good Go-Gurt.”
• Diablo is a unicorn! Diablo is a unicorn!
• Red in a nutshell: “That bitch should not be getting perks while we suffer.” “Yeah, we should be getting perks too!” “No—she should suffer.”
• Zirconia thinking that Red had both “a bandana” and “a veranda” against Freida got me every time.

Jodi Walker writes about TV for Entertainment Weekly, Vulture, Texas Monthly, and in her pop culture newsletter These Are The Best Things. She vacillates between New York, North Carolina, and every TJ Maxx in between.

Watch Orange Is The New Black Season 6 Episode 8 ("Gordons") on Netflix