I was wondering about the timeline myself but I figure this would have to be after Vee. Maybe when the guy who was living with Taystee and Vee died (I forget his name) Taystee ended up with a foster family, or Vee was doing a stint in jail. I'm willing to suspend my disbelief that far.

No way, it means there'll be no more drugged up orgies now that Judy has left the building. The fun is over!

Agreed, but like I said above my priorities for their treatment as individual hostages are very different than they would be if they were among a larger group of prisoners who all had to be considered. It'd be great to see Dixon and Humps on a path to some kind of rehabilitation and the system shouldn't support…

The moral of season 4 for me was that the COs were almost all unrepentant criminals more heinous than any inmate we've seen on this show. You make an astute observation about the likely intentions behind this parallel but it's ineffective for me. I simply have no sympathy for someone like Dixon—who raped and murdered…

I see a pretty strong connection to the previous flashback. When it becomes clear to her that she can't compete with the academic opportunities given to more privileged students she pours herself into athletics which is a tried and true path for underprivileged black kids to get into (and afford) college when their…

That doesn't mean he doesn't agree with his own words. It was a "those were the good ol' days" speech about historical forms of torture and seemed designed to make the viewers wish he was in more pain—a nice preamble to the reveal of his stroke.

True, I guess a good writing team is able to make intelligent choices for their shows even under constraints—it's just so rare!

I literally have photo albums in my desk at work, and it's been established that this character doesn't care what people think of him. He's more likely to punch an underling for mocking him than feel ashamed. If it's something that makes him happy he may look at the photos to relieve some of the stress of working in a…

You may not. I'm not comparing my motivations to hers though, hence why I said "if I were myself in that situation" and not "if I were Daya". I totally agree with the line of thinking @osofine:disqus laid out, just the caveat of proximity to the gun made me think of how little influence that detail alone would have on…

Of course there are people who haven't seen Friday (which is not a "cult" classic anymore than NWA is an underground band) but there are millions who have, so it's a bad analogy for a meme being born from a video with a few hundred views.

Yeah, there wouldn't have been cameras involved, it would have been a few inmates bumbling around with a secret dead celebrity that would be revealed at the worst possible time and bring the riot to a violent end later in the season.

As long as you don't wear an afro wig while you sing it there's nothing to feel bad about!

If I recall correctly Janae's father wouldn't allow her to accept an athletic scholarship because her track uniform was too revealing (or something along those lines) despite her argument that it would be her only way to afford college—that little scene was separate from the initial flashback we saw for her though.…

Just watch American History X. You won't want to see anymore nazi prisoner backstories after that.

Based on what we know about Poussey I'd say she almost definitely went to a predominately white prep school in the first place.

Did he commit suicide? I remember him walking into the ocean and I literally forget whether he lives or dies.

Needing to see a "deep-seated concern over cultural appropriation" reflected in Janae's previous flashback—what was essentially one situation plucked from the course of her entire life—is a weird prerequisite for making this flashback believable. I'd argue that most black Americans are concerned with cultural…

I don't know anything about this show except what happens in the episodes so seeing Sophia volunteer herself to max didn't feel like a solution to a schedule conflict but a conscious plot choice. After her horrific hate crime arc over the last two seasons I was a little relieved to have her safe from the aftermath of…

She matches Cindy's pettiness and vindictiveness as soon as her character is introduced, although it does come across as endearing and comedic. The show also had no problem showing Janae's father, a man of the Nation of Islam, slapping his daughter.

I thought surely that's what the gunshot was meant to make us think but when his lifeless corpse didn't fall through the ceiling I gave up hope, then he became the "spirit of Poussey" and I was a little disappointed that he was still alive.