‘Orange Is The New Black’ Season 7 Episode 8 Recap: “Baker’s Dozen”

You know it’s a fun episode of Orange Is the New Black when the majority of it takes place in a chicken coop were Suzanne has been given the title Mayor of New Cluck City. Suzanne earned such an esteemed role by suggesting that they take the roof off the coop because the chickens need sun to lay more eggs, and she was correct. Of course, that also leaves the new Litchfield chickens exposed to being infiltrated by Litchfield’s most notorious and mystical resident…

Chicken mayor is just one of the man side hustles being batted around this episode. Suzanne shows Lolly the note Taystee wrote her thanking her for being “a bullheaded, refuse-to-listen-to-reason pain in the ass” because she’s sent Suzanne’s notebook to her lawyer, and hopes it might help. “Turns out, I’m a fixer,” Suzanne tells Lolly (the lieutenant mayor of New Cluck City, as it were). “Like Olivia Pope, or Woodward and Bernstein Bear.”

The new pep in her step has also landed Taystee a side hustle, whether she wants it or not. Linda has returned from the Bahamas furious with Ward for allotting the psych money to new inmate programs, and tells Ward she’s not allowed to spend another cent. That means she can’t get a special ed tutor for the GED program like Doggett needs, so Ward assigns Taystee to the task. But no one tells Taystee that Doggett has dyslexia, and she accuses Doggett of “pretending to be dumb” when she reads out loud from the text book, given that Taystee has previously seen her “give entire 20-minute sermons about how thongs turn you gay.” 

Doggett says she can read, her brain is just wired differently, and storms out because Taystee has disrespected her. Taystee finds her later in the yard to apologize, saying that she’s new to this tutoring thing too, and she’s been studying up on the right ways to help with her learning disability. “Suzanne didn’t give up on me, and I want to pay that forward and not give up on you,” she tells Doggett. 

But lest we forget how Taystee ended up as Ward’s assistant, and then Doggett’s tutor in the first place, Daya comes strolling up to tell Taystee that her intel from the last episode was helpful, and it’s earned her what she asked Daya for: the drugs to take her own life. In a slightly different place mentally than she was a few weeks ago, Taystee looks terrified that what she previously felt so desperate for is now an option. Ultimately, she hides the drugs behind a framed PolyCon Policies poster in Ward’s office.  

And speaking of a different place mentally: Nicky has finally gotten really concerned about Red after finding her sitting inside the walk-in freezer with no explanation. But anytime she suggests to Red that something might be going on, Red gets angry with her. She tells Nicky that she needs her to find an address and send a letter for her. She won’t tell Nicky what’s in the letter, but the clues start to come together in Red’s flashbacks to her time running a deli and working with the Russian mob. Red was angry that the men she was helping wouldn’t listen to her good ideas, and when she finally gets them to listen, she tells them she doesn’t think they should be using a young man named Ilya on dangerous missions because he’s too much of a mama’s boy. 

She tells them this because she loves Ilya like a son and wants to keep him safe, and because he is a mama’s boy. But she misses the part where when the mobsters note that Ilya “knows too much” while taking her recommendation. The next time Red sees Ilya, he’s inside a body bag in her shop’s walk-in freezer.

Nicky is able to track down Luda, the woman Red wants to send the letter to, but she can only find her phone number, not her address, so she calls Luda who asks Nicky to read the letter over the phone. Luda says that Red sent her the same apology 10 years ago; she didn’t forgive her for getting her son killed then, and she doesn’t forgive her now. Upon hearing this, Red insists to Nicky that she never sent her a letter before, that she doesn’t need to see a doctor for any memory loss, and she’s furious at Nicky for reading the letter. Nicky tells her, “I’m only saying this because I love you, Ma,” but Red yells that their relationship is over. 

A realistic depiction of what it can be like when the care in relationship has to transition from parent to child—I did not expect to see it. 

And then, of course, there’s a relationship like Aleida and Daya’s where a third party should really be present at all times. Aleida is back inside Litchfield after her dust-up, and she wastes no time belittling Daya and telling the drug crew she’s amassed that the last gang Daya ran involved My Little Ponies. Adeola sticks by Daya’s side for now, but they soon realize that Aleida is trying to cut them out of the business by getting Hopper to bring in the drugs via some method other than the smoothie powder tubs. For his part, Hopper has other COs catching on that his girlfriend is now an inmate, which is illegal if they continue their relationship (and that’s, y’know, not mentioning the heroin). 

McCullough is dealing with her own moral crisis after kissing Alex in the last episode. Alex is treating her coldly and won’t stop reminding her of that pesky little fact that McCullough is forcing her to do something that could get her more jail time. McCullough realizes just how much Alex is risking when as CO goes storming into Alex’s cell saying, “I saw that, inmate!” just after Alex has exchanged a charger. 

The CO has actually just seen Alex’s roommate exchange cigarettes, but it leads McCullough to give Alex an out if she wants it, handing over the bustier they’ve been using to exchange the chargers. But in this conversation she also tells Alex about how difficult it was for her to keep a job after returning from her military service, and about her credit card debt that’s the reason she has to keep this job no matter what, “otherwise I would have quit when y’all took me hostage in that riot.” And somehow, by the end of it, Alex is the one kissing McCullough…

Which might be interesting information for Piper to have while she’s on the transformative and totally entertaining wilderness retreat Neri takes her to. It includes a teacher named Rio who spews valuable life lessons while teaching Brooklyn moms how to hunt: “Recognize the bow as both arbiter of death and provider if life; recognize the multitude that exists within each of you; be proud of it; be weary.” 

The trip also includes Neri accidentally killing a pet sheep named Freckles, and a charming woman named Zelda that Neri is not so subtly trying to push Piper to have sex with. 

Turns out, Zelda is not in on Neri’s sex plot, but by the time she and Piper are burying the sheep fetuses that fell out of Freckles when Rio insisted they waste no part of the kill, they’re pretty much bonded. Zelda tells Piper that she should have released her seven-month-old divorce in Rio’s guilt-releasing bow and arrow exercise…

And Piper tells Zelda she needs to release prison. “It’s a part of me and I’ve been hiding it, and I need to embrace it.” Piper says those 18 months inside were maybe four percent of her life, but it was enough to change everything: “And now I have no idea who I am anymore.”

Jodi Walkerwrites about TV forEntertainment Weekly, Vulture, Texas Monthly,and in her pop culture newsletterThese Are The Best Things. She vacillates between New York, North Carolina, and every TJ Maxx in between.

Stream Orange Is The New Black Season 7 Episode 8 ("Baker's Dozen") on Netflix