Orange is the New Black, the hit Netflix prison dramedy, just launched its fifth season last week. All thirteen episodes take place over the span of three days in the midst of a riot at the Litchfield Penitentiary. It’s a ballsy choice to allow a full season to play out over such a condensed timeline, but in this writer’s opinion, the gamble mostly pays off. The show has always traversed the peaks and valleys of quality from season to season, and sometimes the struggle can be felt within a single episode. That inconsistency is the price of the show’s fluid tone. One moment may have you on the brink of tears while the next will have you literally crying from laughter.
Spoilers for Season 5 Below.
Creator, Jenji Kohan, and co. have built a narrative as diverse as the characters that inhabit it. One particular hour of this newest season is what we’re here to discuss today. Episode 9, entitled “The Tightening”, goes full blown Halloween as a deranged corrections officer infiltrates the facility during the prisoner led takeover to seek revenge on a certain Russian cook with a mama-bear complex, Red (Kate Mulgrew). The officer in question is the “big bad” from season 4, Piscatella (Brad William Henke) who has been lured back into the prison by Red and her partner in crime this season, Blanca (Laura Gomez). While coming to the end of an accidental amphetamine binge (they thought they were taking energy vitamins), the two have been posing as another guard held hostage inside by sending texts from his phone to Piscatella.
The episode wastes no time in setting the stage for the horrors to come. We open to various lurking POV shots of the women as they walk through the dimly lit corridors of the penitentiary. Someone is watching and waiting. The music hits the kind of ominous bass notes you only find in a stalk-n-slash. As Natasha Lyonne’s Nichols walks down the hall hearing someone calling to her from a darkened broom closet, we know this won’t end well for her. She’s abruptly snatched by someone unseen and dragged in behind the slamming door. Other inmates pass by without noticing a thing.
So it has begun, Piscatella sets about snatching each and every one of the people closest to Red in scenes that put a delightful spin on many of the tropes we’ve come to expect from the horror genre. A couple sharing an intimate moment in a shower are quickly snatched up. Another couple is interrupted as one is dragged away, leaving the other confused and afraid. She calls out, “Hello? This isn’t funny!” It’s never funny, is it?
Other homages cover the likes of When A Stranger Calls, as Black Cindy (Adrienne C. Moore) answers an unnerving prank call from the resident meth-heads, Leanne and Angie (Emma Myles and Julie Lake). They ask Cindy, “Have you checked the children?” only for her to respond, “Nope. Pause. I know how that shit goes. The children are already dead, and I’m next. Cause’ that how it goes for black folk in the movies.” Only moments later she turns a corner to find the ghostly image of two girls standing still, side by side, at the end of the hall a’la The Shining. Of course, after she turns tail the opposite direction with a resounding, “Oh, hell no!” we learn it was only the duo known as Flaritza (Jackie Cruz and Diane Guerrero) practicing singing by the flaccid light of their cell phone.
Beyond the obvious nods throughout “The Tightening”, one genre convention the writers nail perfectly is the cliche of the “hysterical woman”. So often in horror films, the female lead is reduced to a blubbering mess as she becomes convinced of the peril surrounding herself and those she loves. Naturally, no one she trusts seems to believe her. They chalk it up to lack of sleep, depression, general hysteria. More often than not, the damsel is one hundred percent correct in her assertion of the danger approaching, and those who doubted her realize it only when it’s become too late. Red is our woman in peril here. She intrinsically knows that Piscatella is after her and her friends, but no one will listen to her. It’s all explained away by her crashing withdrawals from the speed binge. It’s perfect cannon fodder for a show like Orange is the New Black, a strikingly feminist series, to poke fun at one of our genre’s most tired tropes.
At the end, the fun and games of the episode come to a head once we learn Piscatella’s endgame. Of course, he hasn’t been murdering the ensemble One by one. He’s gathered the women up, bound them, and plans to force them to watch as he demeans, humiliates, and tortures Red. The worst is saved for episode 10, and it’s a difficult scene to watch that stands at odds with the lighter tone of “The Tightening”. There’s that famous OITNB tonal ping pong again. Thankfully, before we dive headlong into the real nightmare of Piscatella the Boogeyman, we’re gifted one more horror-centric zinger. Red discovers the hideout where her friends are being held hostage, rips the duct tape from Nichols’s mouth and asks “Where is he?!” Nichols replies:
“He’s off playing Jason from Friday the 13th or Jason’s mom…technically. Spoiler alert!”
