The animals are still trapped, the cage is still full. Season 6 begins a week after the prison riot of season 5 ended. Episode 1 flashes back between the present day and the raid of the pool, where 10 of the inmates had been keeping Piscatella Brad William Henke hostage. Knowing that an investigation was to follow, the inmates and the guards each construct different stories around What Really Happened during that raid. On his way out of the prison, Picatella was killed by a stray bullet fired by another guard, Natoli. The CERT team who busted into the pool room and the 10 prisoners create stories to cover up What Really Happened. Herrmann Jason Altman , the leader of the CERT team, adjusts the crime scene to indicate that Piscatella had been murdered by the women. Only Cindy Adrienne C. Moore and Suzanne Uzo Aduba know that Piscatella had been killed — and not by them. The last women left in the pool room, Cindy and Suzanne see the CERT Team move the body. As such, Cindy and Suzanne try constructing their own version of events: They were in the closet the whole time, and avoided the pool house. So, those are the sides, and those are their stories. The rest of the episode focuses on the new social dynamics present at max. Gone are the friendly-ish and schlubby guards who had donuts and flirted. These guards are depraved. They make sport — literally — of their prisoners. Two of them are gathering intel for the draft of this season of Fantasy Inmate, a game in which guards compete with their inmates seven points for attempted suicide, for example. The guards in max exhibit a flair for sadism. For her role in killing a guard, Daya is beaten up regularly. Another guard beats Taystee Danielle Brooks up for no reason. After Mendoza Selenis Leyva and Maria Jessica Pimentel get into a fight during their recreational hour, the same guard uses the inmates for his recreation. He and a henchman hose them down in the shower and force them to make out. Jack had never been authorized to make such a deal in the first place. Already, I can tell the violence against women this season will be brutal. Plus, in their current cells, the inmates are separated from each other. So, in these circumstances, how are our girls doing? In a word: badly. Frieda attempts suicide, and then is restrained in a straightjacket that looks like it cannot be legal. Daya is being beat up regularly, and also hit on by a new inmate called Daddy VIcci Martinez , not that Daya is interested. Back to Badison, whose real name is Madison. Badison provides Red with what she needs above all: an adversary. Red, on the other hand, is still all steel — even in these circumstances. Orange is the New Black, so far, is proving to be a strange show to recap. So much of the pleasure of the show , not in the plot points many of which can be summarized in a sentence. Orange is the New Black excels at creating idiosyncratic and memorable characters, and then allowing their personalities to fill up the boredom of confinement. This counts for guards and inmates. Of course, there certainly is plot. We can boil down the main themes this episode into the following. After getting off the phone with the governor, Mark Bellamy Michael J. Burg announces that he and his two-person team have less than seven 7!! Daya has already taken the plea for a murder sentence and will spend the rest of her life in prison. As for the other women? Essentially, the main women in OITNB are about to be framed for starting the riot — and over the course of the episode, each woman comes to this conclusion independently. Using some intense lying tactics, Mendoza and Ruiz try to convince the investigators that they were responsible for saving the prisoners, and the other was responsible for starting the riot. Cindy is being framed for second degree murder. So, Cindy tries to get by on her original flimsy story: She and Suzanne were hiding in the closet the entire time. She even has a lawyer provided through her rabbi connection. He gives her a helluva decision. Cindy can get immunity if, and only if, she puts the blame on Taystee, effectively sentencing her best friend to life in prison. In a flashback, we see how Cindy was knocked up by her high school lover, who had a girlfriend at the time. Cindy is someone who protects herself when it suits her. And so, she sells Taystee out. But can we really blame Cindy? She was a pawn in a system stripped of justice. Piper, meanwhile, has time for an existential crisis. Staring at her busted-up face in the mirror, Piper realizes that. How many months has this been, man? Outside the prison, former Litchfield regulars are on their own journeys, one physical and one emotional. On the physical end, Charlie Coates James McMenamin and Dixon, who is one of three redheaded guards this season, are on a r
