Red versus Mendez. Alex versus Pennsatucky. Piper versus the world. Orange is the New Black is full of conflict, from minor tiffs to rivalries that drive the plot for much of the season. The racially divided factions that form the prison’s segregated makeup are rarely the source of much tension at all. The big rivalries occur either within these factions or between inmates and guards. The chess match between Red and Mendez is some tremendously engaging stuff; it takes place mostly in the latter section of the season after Red has endeared herself to us, and so we’re heavily invested in her struggle against the injustices and abuses at the hands of Litchfield’s most corrupt guard. It’s a war based on mutually assured destruction, and the ending is surprising and necessarily messy, and not really an ending, because that’s the type of show this is.
Piper has run-ins with just about everyone at some point, from Red to Crazy Eyes to Alex to Miss Claudette. The biggest fight she has is with Pennsatucky, and it sort of starts out as Alex’s fight that then extends to Piper over the course of events that are worth watching rather than explaining. Pennsatucky’s deluded religious prophesying is a source of a great deal of resentment in the prison as well as in the audience; we come to see her as almost the show’s biggest villain, and then in classic Orange style they show us some of her story and situation and we come to have at least a little bit of sympathy for her plight as we do with everyone else. But her strong personality and Alex’s impatience for bullshit and then Piper’s growing resentment toward the entire prison comes to a head, and the unresolvable differences result in the most shocking moment of the series to this point. I know the show’s billed as a comedy, or comedy-drama, but it’s this intense, dark stuff that it’s at its strongest and most captivating.
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