“Bed Bugs and Beyond” kicks off with Flaca thinking she has crabs on her arms, which are actually bed bugs. The prison is sent into a complete frenzy as they have to burn all the mattresses and even the (gasp!) books. The majority of the episode deals with the inmates’ hilarious responses to the outbreak as they try to fight off the bed bugs the best they can with limited resources.
This is the first episode this season that follows the familiar one-person focus narrative. This particular flashback episode belongs to our favorite guard at Litchfield, John Bennett. In present time, he learns that Daya’s mom Aleida is pushing her to let Pornstache’s mom adopt the baby. Bennett hates this idea and feels as if he has to take responsibility for his own child. The reality of the situation is that the relationship between Daya and Bennett is illegal! The pair needs to wake up from this fantasy land and realize it’ll never work.
In Bennett’s flashback, we get to see him goofing off and dancing to the classic jam “Hollaback Girl.” I don’t really get the point of this, but I guess they want to show his carefree early days in Afghanistan. We see Bennett becoming friends with an Afghan solider, who later warns them of an attack and subsequently gets shot. In the same moment, we see one of Bennett’s friends throwing his body on a grenade while Bennett hides away from it as much as he can. I like the fact that this flashback has some relevance to his actions today. The flashback doesn’t give as much insight and development into the life of Bennett. As a whole, it’s not the best flashback episode we’ve seen so far on the series, but it was nice to get to see the attractive man for a longer period of time than usual.
Bennett asks Daya to marry him, and I won’t lie, this scene made me think that somehow the couple would come out of this whole situation on top. After the proposal, he decides to pay Aleida’s partner Cesar and the many kids staying with him a visit. He finds that not only does he have a baby with another woman, he also has some scary methods of discipline. He pulls out a gun on Daya’s brother and orders him to eat his vegetables, aka French fries. Bennett can’t keep the baby on his own, and Cesar would probably have to keep the baby at his house for a period of time. This scares a shaken Bennett, especially when Cesar kicks out his baby to give her current crib to Bennett for the baby on the way. The last we see is a tearful Bennett, who is pulled over on the side of the road. We then see the crib thrown out on the side of the road. Ouch, that was a perfectly good crib!
Now that we’ve covered the flashback portion of the episode, let’s get back to some of the other inmates. Piper and Alex have decided to have a completely honest relationship. Piper chooses this moment to break the news about how she called Alex’s parole officer to tell him that she broke parole. Piper is the reason why Alex is back at Litchfield, and there’s no good excuse to do something so cold. Why in the world would Piper think revealing this information is even slightly a good idea?
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We also get some drama about the fate of Litchfield when Caputo learns the prison is shutting down in a month. While this is all going on, Big Boo and Nicky continue trying to find a way to smuggle the heroin out of the prison while also making some money. Let’s just all agree that this is another storyline that can’t have a positive end.
So this is my daily Orange Is the New Black episode review! I’ll be back tomorrow with a new review. First, I’d like to hear everyone’s opinion on this episode in particular. Who was your favorite character this episode? What did you think about the whole Bennett thing? Do you want him to come back? Comment and let me know so we can talk about it.
EPISODE RATING: 7/10
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