Alex!

Alright time to do another blog about a character from Orange Is The New Black! This time I’m talking about my favorite character(and it’s honestly not even close lol), Alex Vause!

Alex worked for an international drug ring and was apparently very good at it. She ran drug mules and she was very high up. Not the best thing to be great at but I think it shows her brains. But while that is going on, she meets Piper. I’ve heard Laura Prepon say that Alex fell in love with Piper after she made her a drug mule but I disagree. I’ve watched their meeting and their early days over and over. She loved Piper first and then she used that love to manipulate Piper to carry drug money and I think it’s something she’ll always regret.

Something Laura has said over and over and over about Alex that I do agree with, is Alex is a badass. I think she kind of had to be. She was born to a single mom and they were poor. As a child she wasn’t the confident gorgeous woman we meet later on. She wore glasses and was kind of a nerd. She was really picked on and bullied a lot. Her father was not involved with her life. He was apparently a well known musician. The one time she met him, he actually came on to her and was just an asshole. She ends up crying in the bathroom and then in that moment where she is so vulnerable she meets the man who would be come her boss in the drug ring. I don’t think that’s coincidence.

Something I feel in the flashbacks but also in the current, Alex is constantly searching for where she belongs(as are pretty much all of these women). I think as crazy as it might sound, I think she thought she found that in the drug ring. She was doing something she was good at, getting to see the world, making good money, getting to meet lots of beautiful women, and I think in the early days it felt really good to her. But it was an illegal drug smuggling ring, there was no way it could be home.

But when she met Piper, she found her home(When I wrote this I’d completely forgotten that Piper described love as coming home after a long trip lol. They truly are each other’s home!) and the longer they are together, the more you see what she’s doing weighing on her. She knows what she’s doing is very bad and could destroy her and Piper’s life. She’s brought this woman she loves more than anything and anybody into this mess and she can’t get her out of it and still be with her because she can’t get herself out of it because she knows she’ll likely be killed. In the scene where Piper breaks up with her and decides to go back to the states, Alex talks about how stressed she was and you can she how stressed she is. But that wasn’t how she was earlier but now she has way more to lose than she ever had before and it’s killing her.

Here is the thing about Alex, yes she’s a badass and she’s tough and she’s confident and wicked smart(and did I mention completely stunning?) but the other side of that coin is she has a huge a heart. You see it over and over. You see it with Piper. Piper has done terrible things to her and broken her heart multiple times and yet she still loves her. She still takes her back every time Piper come running to her. She needs Piper but she also loves Piper, despite all her flaws. But you see it other times as well. When Piper fires Flaca, Alex stands up for Flaca and tells Piper what she did was disgusting. When her old drug boss sends someone in to kill her and she ends up killing him, it eats her up. This man tried to kill her and probably would’ve had Lolly not shown up but after his body is found all she can think about is that they don’t know his name and his family doesn’t know he’s dead and can’t grieve for him. That always just boggles my mind! She also is eaten alive by the fact that Lolly went down for killing him and there is  scene where she's a holding a potato and crying for Lolly(she also did everything she could including confessing to Red about what happened to keep Freda from killing Lolly). After the riot breaks out and the other women take all the guards hostage and they want to do terrible things to them, Alex gets up and walks out and wants nothing to do with it. Going way back to when she was with Sylvia before Piper, Sylvia clearly has some issues. She’s an alcoholic for one. But she just has issues. It seems pretty clear, she isn’t staying with her because she loves her. She stays because she feels sorry for Sylvia and she doesn’t want to damage her further. The same thing happens in Season 7 with McCollough. The whole fling starts and continues, not because Alex loves or even has feelings for McCollough but because she feels sorry for her and she sees how damaged she is and she doesn’t want to damage her further. When the fight is supposed to break out during the kick ball game at the end of Season 6, Alex and Nicky(who I will talk about later on in another blog) are the only two who don’t want it. Alex is many things but she’s not a fighter and she doesn’t like hurting people. Killing that man who almost killed her, almost did her in and it was completely justified. I don’t think she’d ever be able to kill someone without there being a reason. I think she’d fight, kill, and be killed for Piper but outside of that I don’t think she’d ever be able to even hurt a fly. She is probably the softest sweetest most loving person sitting in prison on very severe drug charges from being massively involved in an international drug ring lol.

Alex is also very sensitive. She feels things very deeply. If she’s angry she’s really angry and if she’s sad she’s really sad and if she’s happy she’s really happy and when she’s feeling love for Piper it’s intense and radiates off of her. She takes it hard and personally when people say things about her and Piper. But she also picks up on things that other’s miss. Just like the whole her old drug boss sending someone into prison to kill her, she knew it was going to happen long before it did. She knew what those people were capable of and she knew at the length they would go through to get rid of threats to them. She always knew when there was something up with Piper(I mean not that Piper hides it well but lol). Multiple times she found Nicky doing things and she seemed to know right away what was bothering her and what she needed to hear. She’s so wise and always seems to know what needs to be said. One of my favorite conversations between her and Piper happens while they’re playing cards in Season 1 Episode 10. She tries to get Piper to smell her cards and this flirty hand play where she’s picking on Piper and Piper is playfully trying to get her to stop and it ends with Piper’s hands on top of her’s on the table and them smiling at each other(and can I just say the way she looks at Piper at that point just melts my heart lol). Piper removes her hands and says “It’s weird how normal this feels” and Alex says “What?” and Piper says “I feel like I’m 23 and no time has passed!” and Alex says “Well I think when you have a connection with someone, it never really goes away you know? You snap back to being important to each other because you still are.” and I think it’s such a beautiful line. She has many time comments like that.I think it's also funny that despite Piper's insistence and Larry's insistence when she comes to see her to get his bluff in on her, she has zero doubt that Larry and Piper will never get married lol(probably partly comes from a place of hope but she also knows Piper very well and she knows Piper doesn't love Larry like she loves her). 

She’s also very funny though, some of the best one liners of the show are hers and I’ll post some videos of those if I can find them.

In season 7 though, we see a different side of Alex. Piper is out and she’s in prison and will be for 3 more years. I don’t know that I realized how much Alex depended on Piper until I saw her in Season 7. I think the whole series we see Alex as the strong one and the one who was people’s rock, especially Piper’s. I mean you see a little bit of her not strong side in Season 4 and 5 after killing that guy. But it was not like she was in Season 7. She was lost and unsure of herself and insecure. I think there were two main reasons for that and both kind of involved Piper.

First off, Piper makes her feel all things good at that point in their relationship. They were stable for the first time ever in season 5 and 6. Piper made her feel like she could do anything, like together they could get through anything. Piper grounded her and yet made her dream of the future. Piper brought out all of the good in Alex. I don’t think even Alex realized how much she depended on Piper. So when Piper left, she not only didn’t have the love her life or that much needed comforting touch but she also lost her rock and the person who stabilized her. As I said before Piper is home for her and with Piper gone, prison is just prison. She was really shook up by losing all of that.

The other side of it was, Piper was out and building a life she wasn’t apart of. She was afraid of Piper leaving her and yet afraid of holding her back. She loved Piper so much and she wanted to give her the entire world and she can’t. She seemed to feel like Piper deserved better than she could give her. As sad and hard as it is to watch Alex in Season 7, I think you see the full extent of her love for Piper. She was willing to crush her own heart to free Piper to have more than she could give her.

I don’t know that anyone anticipated Alex being such a popular character. But Laura Prepon and the amazing writing of this brought us a character you can’t ignore! She’s tough and a badass but yet soft and kind and authentic. She just has this personality that sucks people in(which I think in part is because of Laura’s personality). You throw in the beauty of her endless pure unconditional love for Piper and she’s truly a complex beautiful character! I loved her and she was my favorite from the get go and the more I watch, the more I love her!

So I know I’ve babbled endlessly about Alex and Piper(and to a lesser extent Laura and Taylor) for 3 blogs now(what can I say they completely won me over lol) but I just wanted to end this blog before I jump off into other characters and story lines, with acknowledging these two amazing women who so beautifully brought these characters and this relationship to life. When I started watching this show, I was blown away with how much these two character and actors drew me into this show.

Although I didn’t like Piper much at first, I instantly loved Taylor. I had no idea who she was before this show(as well as most of these women honestly) but I instantly loved her. I know from things I’ve read that she struggled with playing a character that was so strongly disliked but she did it beautifully! From the first scene she was in until the last. She could hit every emotion perfectly. She could hit the comedy side and make me laugh until I cried but she also hit the other side so hard I cried with her many times. She was just perfect and I’m so glad it was her that ended up playing Piper.

I had the same experience with Laura, except I adored Alex from the get go. Laura has that personality that every girl wishes they had. That bubbly sexy draw everyone to you personality. It’s just who she is and that radiated out of her while she played Alex but also her love for Alex also radiated out of her. I think that’s why you could look at this woman who had done so many things wrong in her life and yet feel so much love and admiration for her. You could feel the love that was put into her by Laura. Laura also is an amazing actress and she could make me laugh and she could make me cry and at times she made me angry and at times she made me feel angry for her. I didn’t really know Laura before this show either. I knew who she was from That 70’s Show even though I can’t really stand the show(sorry, not sorry lol). But I can vaguely remember seeing her in the show when I’d see a few minutes of it here or there. But that show didn’t really showcase her talents in my opinion(it didn’t really showcase anybody’s talents in my opinion but that’s neither here nor there lol). But she shined in this show as Alex. She truly did!

But the magic of this show, came when you threw these two amazing actresses and women together. When I started watching the show I kept thinking am I the only one who can’t stop watching these two together and when I started reading articles and joining groups and reading on websites I realized almost everyone felt that way. Back when the show was on people were completely obsessed with these two together! There were some issues with the second season and some doubt if Laura would be coming back and apparently fans lost their collective minds lol. Thankfully everything was figured out and we got 7 amazing seasons with her. But to me it just highlights the magic they found by accident with Laura but more than that with Laura and Taylor together.

I talked in my first blog about their chemistry and it is fire! But in watching the show multiple times now(on my 3^rd watch through right now lol) but also in watching them at events and interviews, I see it’s far more than chemistry. They have a very deep connection but more than that they truly love, respect, and care for each other in a way that I think is rare in that world. Yes people meet on movies and TV shows and become friends and love and respect each other and whatever. But what they shared was different. People are still speculating about what their relationship was especially early on in the show and many will probably go to their graves thinking there was more than friendship there. I have my opinions about that but at the end of the day only they know and it doesn’t really matter. What started off as an instant crazy chemistry and connection became a true bond that no one else could understand as they dove into playing these unique intense roles. They were asked to do some of the most intense and passionate and sexual scenes I’ve ever seen and they did it magnificently, especially for two women who have both said they’d never done anything like that before. They were both knew to nudity and those kind of sex scenes. Their very first scene together after meeting just one time was a very intimate shower scene! I can’t even imagine what that would be like. But they also had to do other very intense real raw scenes because they were playing two very flawed frankly broken women who love each other passionately and also fight each other passionately!

I read an interview Laura did about her and Taylor’s last scene together and she said “Taylor and I were really just in the moment. We were embracing the fact that the series was coming to an end and we got each other through it. Taylor and I are great friends, but who knows when we’re going to be on camera together again? We were reveling in how special this whole journey has been.” and I think that perfectly sums up what they did. They created a relationship off screen of love and respect and care that became an incredible amount trust and what they did on screen showed that. Because they felt loved and cared for by each other, they could go there. They could let go and do what was being asked and it’s beautiful. They formed a team and they became each other’s rock and together they didn’t just get through, they slayed it! I also saw a live Q&A on Instagram that one of the other actors did several years ago and she talked about them having their own language and it doesn't surprised me at all. This other actor didn't show up until the 6th season, so Taylor and Laura had been doing their thing for years. It stands to reason they knew each other well enough at that point, that they wouldn't need lots of communication. 

They’re relationship is beautiful to watch on screen but I think it might be even more beautiful to see off screen(they did a Q&A last year on Zoom about Laura's book on motherhood and I've watched that thing probably a hundred times at this point because I just enjoy watching them talk together and seeing their connection). They truly have one of those once in a lifetime connections and it made this show what it is. Their relationship and their characters individually drew in the fans and kept them coming back, so Jenji and the other writers could expand on other characters and give them their time to shine and so they could tell real raw hard stories that needed to be told! They have both made a new fan for life with me and I’m so grateful that it all worked out the way it did and us fans got to enjoy the benefits of it!

I promise my next blog will be mostly Piper and Alex free LOL!But here are some Alex videos!

 

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2ZDPOxfN7Y

Piper!

Hey guys! I decided to write more about Orange is the New Black. I really want to talk about the individual characters. This blog I’ve chosen Piper. I know I talked about her a lot in the first blog but it was mostly about her and Alex together. But I find Piper by herself very interesting.

The first time I watched the show I couldn’t stand Piper the first 3.5ish seasons. At first they make you feel like Alex was the monster but as you see more of their history it becomes clear that while Alex made her mistakes, Piper was the one who was terrible and that kind of continues after she’s in prison.

But I realized some things about Piper the second time I watched the show through. First off, Piper was raised in a very dysfunctional home by very dysfunctional parents. She actually sees her father cheating on her mother and she tells her and her mom takes it out on her. But her mom stays. There is a message sent to Piper from very early on that the image everyone else sees is more important that what is actually going on behind closed doors. She was told she was to be “the good blonde woman” and marry a man and have kids and have that picture perfect family. I think as a result of that we see that Piper is a people pleaser and a perfectionist from a very young age. I believe Alex was the first person who just let Piper do what Piper wanted to do and be whoever she wanted to be. She loved Piper as she was, so Piper didn’t need to be anything but herself.Although they did terrible things, she gave Piper the space to just have fun and not care about anything and Piper thrived. She thrived with Alex and having fun. She was happy even though there were things going on she wasn’t comfortable with it. I think that scared the hell out of her.

The other thing I realized was Piper was really lost and she was terrified to give herself the space to find out who she was. Her parents clearly don’t want her to be with a woman. I think after she left Alex, she decided she could push herself back in that box and be that “good blonde woman” and marry a man and have some kids and she would find somewhere in there to be happy. But the interesting thing to me is there is a flashback from right before she found out she was going to prison(and also right before her and Larry got engaged) where she’s drunk and she goes into the bathroom and calls Alex and leaves her a message where she says in part something a long the lines of “You know things are bad when you are calling your ex girlfriend from the bathroom!” and she also tells Alex she misses her and she can’t get her out of her head. So even before she goes to prison she was struggling on the inside. She wasn’t happy with the life she was building and that beautiful outward appearance was just that, an outward appearance. Eventually that facade was going to crack even if she never went to prison and never saw Alex again because it wasn’t her. I’ve heard Taylor Schilling say multiple times that Piper just tries on different things, she doesn’t really change. I think that’s very accurate. I think it’s easier for her to move on to a different facade than to really take the time to get to know herself. I started to say at the beginning of this part, she doesn’t know who she is. But I think the reality is Piper knows exactly who Piper is, she’s just terrified of the real Piper. She’s terrified of disappointing the people she loves. So she tries to force herself into all of these different boxes even though none of them fit and they always end up with her not happy.

Along the way though you start to see these blips of the real Piper and of her seeing and accepting those parts of her. It’s slow going, especially early on but if you watch close enough you can see it. I think the first one is a conversation she has with Alex(I’ll post a youtube link to the scene) but basically Larry wrote an article about her being in prison and the stuff she did. Apparently he talked about the life she had with Alex like it was just about having some fun and adventure and not something Piper really enjoyed and embraced. She says to Alex something along the lines of “That stuff we did, it wasn’t just an adventure or a phase. It was my life!” and in that moment it felt like the first time she acknowledge that, that life was part of who she was/is but also I think whether she was ready to admit it or not, it’s when she completely realized that things weren’t going to work out with Larry because he didn’t know her or understand her and he never would.

She starts to really fall for Alex again and then Larry does this radio show and reveals that he knows about her and Alex. So she calls him and they fight and he tells her Alex was in fact, the person who gave them her name. She panics, she acts like she panics about the fact that Alex lied about giving them her name but I feel like she more panics at the fact that she is truly and completely in love with Alex. They talk and things seem and good and they talk about the future and she really panics then. She can’t leave prison with a woman, so she decides she has to get Larry back and they decide to go ahead and get married. But then Larry has a visit with Alex and he goes in there thinking he’s going to get his bluff in on her. He expected to find some psycho stalker or something and what he actually found was a gorgeous woman who he can’t get his bluff in on but worse yet he finds she’s actually very in love Piper and knows her very well and what she tells him makes him realize that Piper’s in love with her too and that Piper had sought Alex out, not the other way around. So he breaks up with her and he says “You shouldn’t marry someone out of fear” and I think it’s perfect. He wanted to marry her right then because he was afraid of losing her to Alex and she was going to marry him because she was afraid of being anybody but the perfect housewife with a husband.

In Season 2, Alex and Piper end up in Chicago for Alex’s ex boss’s trial and they make up. Alex tells her to lie about knowing him and on the stand after being asked about her relationship with Alex, she gives this beautiful speech about Alex being the love of her life and how nothing else mattered but her and everything else was just background. It’s a great scene where she finally admits to how much Alex meant to her and still means to her. It wasn’t just fling or a fun few months, she loved her very much.

Unfortunately Alex is offered a deal at the last minute where if she testified against her old boss, she would be given early release and she takes it. So that leads to drama and there is several episodes where we don’t see Alex.

But another big episode in my opinion for Piper, is she’s given a 48 hour furlough so she can attend her grandma’s funeral. So this is the first time you see Piper trying to fit back into her old world and you see how different she is even in that short amount of time. She and Larry start to have sex but he admits he had sex with someone else and it’s someone she knows and I think it’s a moment of realization for both of them that their relationship is truly and completely over and I think the thing that shocked me was how okay Piper was with it. It’s a hard trip home for Piper as she realizes how much she’s already changed in such a short amount of time. In Episode 10 of season 2, you see flashbacks of Piper and Alex’s past and you find out about how they started while also finding out that the person Larry had sex with was Piper’s best friend Polly. I think the interesting thing about it to me is I feel like her thinking of those memories makes her realize that Alex loved her more than Larry or Polly ever did. It feels to me to not just be about her feelings about Larry and Polly but also her sadness about not having Alex and feeling alone knowing that Larry and Polly are together. Unfortunately later on after talking to Alex and finding out that her big boss got off and Alex is afraid for her life and planning to leave and not come back, she has Polly call Alex’s probation officer and tell him she’s about to run and he shows up at her apartment and she has a gun. As crappy as it is, it’s one of the first times you see her show how much she needs Alex and also in a weird way how much she cares about her.

Season 3, sees Alex back in prison and Piper tries to hide that she’s why but eventually she can’t take seeing Alex blame herself and she comes clean and of course Alex is really upset. But it doesn’t take long for them to make up. In episode 4 of Season 3, it’s her birthday and her family comes and it’s a terrible visit. But Piper finally lays out some truth for them that they needed to hear even though they didn’t want to. She tells them she’s learning stuff and growing in prison and that she has a community and a girlfriend that she love and that maybe she’s exactly where she needs to be. It was very nice to see Piper not put up that old mask with her family and acknowledge her truth. But it’s a sad scene for me as well. You see how much Piper’s dad’s inability to just love her really hurts Piper and you see how badly she just wants him to accept her and love her and be there for her and he just isn’t(and I think that feeling of him never truly accepting her fuels a lot of the bad decisions she makes). Later on she goes to see Alex and brings up that she called her, her girlfriend and she asks her to be her girlfriend and it’s very beautiful. Unfortunately the rest of season 3, Piper is pretty terrible and they end up breaking up and terrible Piper keeps hanging around until mid season 4.

Season 4 is a huge a season for Piper. She doesn’t have Alex. The business she started is falling apart. She just keeps screwing up and that ends with some girls beating her up and branding her. But that finally wakes her up and she just gets better and better after that. There is a scene where Red is fixing Pipers branding(they gave her a swastika and Red made it into a window) and of course she’s really upset and in a lot of pain and frankly quite traumatized but she looks up at Alex and says she’s sorry and between that and Alex’s face as they’re hurting her and Red’s face…. I cried through that scene the first time. But I think it’s the first time you see Piper acknowledge doing something wrong and causing Alex pain. It’s a hard and sad scene but it’s also very beautiful and the acting for all involved is just impeccable! But it all helps Piper realize she’s tried of trying on different facade’s and she just wants to be her and her and Alex get back together and they’re good.

Season 5 is the riot after the death of Poussey. Piper and Alex are at odds a lot about how to handle it. Piper wants to be involve and Alex wants nothing to do with it. But they’re able to do it a new way and I think they find they can want different things and still love each other and be together. In some ways, I really wanted to see Piper just ignore it all and her and Alex have those 3 days to just be together(and Alex wants that too). It was the only chance they were going to have to be together like that for years(especially knowing they were going to Max in season 6 lol). But I also loved the part Piper played in the riot and that she supported Taystee as she fought for justice for Poussey. It showed a new side of Piper. I think it’s the first time we see some of the real Piper. She wants to help people and she wants to see people get the justice they deserve. She might get too caught up in things but it’s only because she feels so strongly about things. I already discussed her conversation with her mom about Alex and her proposing and how their relationship changed in Season 5 and how committed she was to Alex at that point and continues to be. So I won’t get into that lol.

In Season 6, there is a flip for Piper and for Alex and for them as a couple. I think because they are stable and they’ve been together for a good stretch, it opens up things so they can start thinking about the future. For Piper, it’s not just after she’s out of prison but what she’s going to leave behind. Which at first for me was like….huh? Why? But as the season went on I started to understand it. She’s seen the very worst of the system. She’s seen how it destroys lives. She’s seen how terrible and brutal it can be. But she’s also seen that there are things that make it better and bearable. I think she sees it as a terrible place but also a place where the found herself and she grew despite the heaps of shit around there. I think her goal was about finding something for the women that would come after her that could bring light and joy and happiness and the chance to learn and grow. She ends up deciding to try to get kick ball started, which again at first I was like….hmmm alrighty then. But after awhile I got it. It was something small but it allowed them to get outside. It allowed them to spend time with a group of women doing something fun and constructive. It gives them something else to think about besides all the other bullshit that comes with prison. But something even more beautiful happens as a result of the kickball game she get’s started. There is this rivalry between two of the jail blocks that is spurred on by sisters who killed their little sister and now hate each other. They come up with this plan to have a fight break out during this kickball game and they make the women who are part of their group think they’ll be there. But they don’t go. The real plan is have this fight break out and when they are getting people back in, they slip into another jail block group of people and kill another character. In the end, they can’t do that because their hate for each other is too much and they kill each other. Piper got out before the kickball game(so she didn’t even get a chance to enjoy the fruits of her labor) but Alex is out there and she’s supposed to fight for one side. But when the signal is given, the girls just decide to keep playing kickball and not fight. The most beautiful moment though is they show Alex standing there with tears in her eyes as she thinks about Piper who she’d just said goodbye too and you just feel her pride for what her wife had done. The look on her face makes me happy and breaks my heart. It’s such a bittersweet moment! I hope the next time she talked to Piper that she told her what happened because it was truly a special moment to see those women decide to just have some fun for once and not worry about fighting or drugs or trying to stay on someone’s good side or any of the other bull shit we’ve seen them deal with the whole season. They’re just having fun and I think it was a beautiful thing for Piper to leave behind her! Season 6 was my least favorite season but that last episode was chalked full of beautiful moments!

I think season 7 Piper is the most interesting and the best version you see the whole series and she became one my favorites right up there with Alex! As soon as she gets out, we see Piper being pulled in two different directions. On one side is the new Piper. The person she has found herself to truly be in prison. The Piper who is extremely committed to her wife and their future. She doesn’t know what that will look like but she knows for her to be happy and complete her future has to involve Alex. We see her multiple times defending Alex and their relationship and sticking to it. But the other side is everyone else including Alex are telling her she needs something else. She needs to date, she needs to have random sex to fill whatever void she had(which was actually the void of not connecting with her wife and there was nothing but connecting with her wife that would fill that…), she needs to make amends with people she doesn’t really care to make amends with(meaning Larry and Polly), she should find a job doing this or that, she should move on like prison never happened and Alex and her love for her doesn’t exist. The thing though is you see Piper consistently refusing to buy into most of it. She does try to the open relationship thing(which is a disaster surprise surprise lol). But ultimately, we see Piper more sure in what she knows is right for her than we’ve ever seen her. The only thing is I do wish is that Piper would’ve picked up on Alex’s insecurities. I think had she picked up on them, a simple “You are my wife and the love of my life and you are all I need and want and we’re going to get through this!” would’ve gone along way in avoiding the drama between them in that season but it is TV lol. When she finally pushes everyone else’s opinion away and does what she knows is the right thing to do, everything comes to together beautifully. She ends up in Ohio near Alex and she gets her own place and a job and she goes back to school and she and Alex look super happy!

So when I went back and looked at Piper’s entire character arch, I realized part of the things I didn’t like about her at first are things I don’t like about myself. I see a lot of myself in Piper when I really sit down and think about it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not nearly as selfish as she is or manipulative or self destructive. But Piper isn’t good with handling emotions. She grew up in a family where the relationships were all very superficial. You see that in flashbacks. You see that when she talks to her mom about Alex in season 5 and her mom tells her a story about her(meaning her mom) and her dad that you’d think if they had a normal relationship she would’ve heard about long ago. It’s very clear they don’t talk about anything and certainly not emotions. Even her relationship with Polly is very superficial. They shop together and talk about random crap together and make soap together but they don’t go deeper than skin deep ever. I think that’s why you see that Piper is not at all upset when their friendship falls apart. She was part of her life because she needed to be able to say she had friends but she wasn’t really connected to her. I think her relationship with Larry was largely the same. She’d never even told him she’d dated a woman, let alone that she’d been in love with her and traveled all over the world with her and certainly not that she’d committed crimes with her. I think something that becomes clear when she’s goes to prison is her and Larry don’t know each other at all. So when it comes right down to it, Piper does not know how to deal with emotions or hard stuff and she runs. I can relate to that. I do a little better than her but I’m a runner. I run from other people’s emotions and don’t know how to deal with them and I run from my own and don’t always know how to deal with them. I’ve really hurt people by doing that. I’ve destroyed relationships by doing that. I also relate to her fear of aceepting who she truly is. I feel like lately I’ve finally started to let that fear go and jump head first into getting to know and accepting myself. But it’s taken 33 long years to get there lol. Like her, the reality is I’ve known a lot of these things about myself, I just couldn’t accept them and they terrified me. They still terrify me. It’s scary when you know you are expected to be one thing and have one life but you know that’s not your truth. I think we see the big thing Piper is running from is her sexuality. I lost count how many times we heard her say “I’m not gay” through out the show lol. I don’t know if she’s actually gay or maybe bi but she’s not straight and I think you see her struggle with that for most of the show and you see why when you see how unsupportive her family is when she is dating Alex. I think the scary thing for her with Alex is their relationship is anything but superficial. Alex knows her and she knows Alex and I think that terrifies her. Alex was the first and only person in her life that she had a deep relationship with and it was fun and exciting but having someone who knows you so well, the good but worse yet the bad too, I think is intimidating and after a lifetime of superficial fluffy relationships, she doesn’t know how to handle a deep relationship like that and so she sabotages and runs. I feel like with Piper she doesn’t want Alex to see her flaws because she feels it will make her unlovable. I mean when her past was exposed and she had to deal with that, everyone else fell away from her. But what she doesn’t see is Alex has seen her flaws and she loves her anyway. We all have flaws. We all have things that we see as ugly and unlovable. We all make mistakes. We all run from hard things sometimes. But Piper taught me that doesn’t have to be a permanent thing. You can learn from those things and you can move forward with a better understanding of how to avoid them. We can all grow and change and find our own path and I think that’s one of the many gifts Piper brings to the show! She taught me that people that appear ugly(I’m talking personality here) at first glance are often far more complicated than that and some times they just need time to put the pieces together. Piper is a beautiful complicated character that I grew to completely love as I took this journey with her! Taylor Schilling is a phenomenal actor and she really did a magnificent job bringing this character to life! Here are a few of my favorite Piper moments!

 

 

 

 

 

I'm so obesessed, might need help LOL!

I know I haven’t written anything on here in over 2 years. I have no excuses. I just flat haven’t felt like writing publicly. I’ve been doing a lot of writing privately and really enjoying that but writing publicly has just not been on my radar until now. I’m not going to make any promises because who knows what will happen. Maybe I’ll fall in love with this again and maybe it’ll be one post and then I disappear again for awhile. I don’t know, I’ll do what feels right.

So on to what has motivated me to write!

Oh my gosh guys I am obsessed with a new to me show! I haven’t felt this in love and obsessed with a show in a long long time. There are other shows I love and am watching currently but this show has taken over every inch of my world and my brain and everything else! The last show I felt this strongly about was probably Gilmore Girls and that show came out 20+ years ago! The show is Orange Is The New Black! I'm so obsessed, that it might be nearing an addiction lol. 

I know I am way way behind. However I’ve been going back and watching shows everyone was obsessed with a few years ago that are over now. I watched Game of Thrones first and it was sooo good as well! But OITNB is next level. I brought up Gilmore Girls and I’d say one of the reasons I love this show, is one of the reasons I’ve always loved Gilmore Girls. It’s packed full of complicated unique beautiful rich interesting characters. I find in some shows when there is a huge cast the characters can be really flat and one dimensional and kind of all become similar. But in OITNB the characters all pop and are unique from one another and it’s a very special beautiful thing!

The main character is Piper Chapman. She is going to prison for 15 months for trafficking drug money internationally several years earlier with an ex girlfriend. So basically it starts off as she’s getting ready to surrender and then you see her enter jail and wouldn’t you know it that the ex girlfriend Alex, is there too lol. But there is a whole bunch of other amazing characters in prison as well! 

Alex is my favorite character by a long shot. She’s a bad ass and she takes no shit from anyone but she also has a soft side and sensitive side. She has very few weaknesses. In fact, I’d say she has just one...Piper!

I can’t lie, Alex and Piper’s relationship is for sure what sucked me into this show. I love a good love story. In my life, I’m pretty jaded about love. Love can be great and beautiful but when it goes sour it can be very damaging and traumatic and painful. That person knows you well and they know your weaknesses and they know what to do and say to break you. I think the interesting thing about Alex and Piper is the writers didn’t just show you the happy unicorns and rainbows side of their very passionate often times dysfunctional relationship. You saw them loving each other and yet you saw them fighting each other and you saw them doing things to intentionally hurt the other. I mean the whole reason Piper is in prison is because Alex gave them her name to get her back for breaking her heart! Later on you see Piper turn on Alex and have her ex best friend call her probation officer and get her thrown back in prison. But then they have these really beautiful moments and conversations and you just know that at the center of this crazy relationship in a beautiful powerful love that they neither one can completely let go of.

The interesting thing to me as I watched the this relationship play out through all 7 seasons, is the shift in Piper. In the first season, we see flashbacks of them meeting and how things progressed and ultimately how it fell apart the first time. For Alex, she clearly loves Piper from the second she sees her(In real life, I don’t believe in love at first sight but this is a show lol). They meet in a bar and you can see Alex spot her in the background and you see her entire demeanor shift(all the credit to Laura Prepon’s acting with that!). Piper was attracted and intrigued as soon as Alex approaches her(I love the way she can’t look into Alex’s eyes for too long and keeps looking down at her lips, I don’t know if it was purposely done or something Taylor was doing without thinking about it, but it works so well for the scene!)and when this stunning woman keeps pursuing her she clearly loves it! Alex is actually in relationship when they meet and the first time Piper goes home with her and they have sex, her girlfriend shows up and attacks Piper and throws her out and what not. But later on Piper shows up at the bar again and when Alex goes to the bathroom she follows her and they have this really great scene where she tells her if you love her and she’s your future wife, tell me to back off and Alex doesn’t. In Season 7, we actually get a flashback of what happens between Alex and Sylvia(the woman she was with when she met Piper) after she catches Alex and Piper and we find out that Alex and Sylvia had had a fight a few days before and Sylvia had taken off. But at the end of that scene Sylvia hugs Alex and it’s clear she doesn’t want to hug her back but eventually she like half hugs her but the whole time she’s looking out the window watching Piper! For me, seeing that flashback just reaffirmed what I felt from the earlier flashbacks and that was Alex completely and totally loved her from the start like no one before and no one after! We see her with other women throughout the show but it’s never the same. There is another flashback from not long after she gave them Piper’s name, where she’s in bed with another woman and Piper is sitting in the bathroom at her home and she’s drunk and she drunk calls Alex and leaves her this long rambling voicemail and tells her she misses her. As soon as Alex hears this message she makes this other woman leave. For Alex, it’s always been Piper and it will always be Piper. She’s done a lot of crap in her life(hence why her and Piper are sitting in prison lol) but the one thing about Alex that you can’t deny is how much she loves Piper.

Piper loves Alex as well and in reality, for her it was always going to be Alex as well. She’s engaged to Larry when she show starts but it takes little time for it to be clear they aren’t right for each other. She tries for a bit to force it to be right but it’s just not and it was never going to be. There are times in the early season, you see her front slip and you see how much she truly loves Alex. But Piper, is clearly afraid to be all in with her. Alex mentions many times she’s(meaning Piper) a runner and she can’t handle it when things get hard, so she runs. Even when they are trying to make it work in prison most of the time, you just sense she’s not all in. But over time slowly you see things start to shift. Finally towards the end of Season 4 and for sure in Season 5, it feels like Piper is all in. The entire 5^th season takes place in 3 days during a prison riot. Towards the end of this season and the riot, Alex and Piper are fooling around in the shower and a crazy prison guard takes them hostage along with some other people. This guy tortures Red(another amazing character that I will for sure be talking about later) and breaks Alex’s arm and it’s very intense scary thing where they could’ve very well died. After the guard is taken down and their free, Piper goes upstairs(after a bit of tiff with Alex) supposedly to try to find some pain meds for Alex. But instead she sees her mom outside the prison with a group of people and she calls her and they have this beautiful exchange where she basically tells her mom that while she wasn’t afraid to die before, she is now because she’s afraid of missing out on life with Alex and she wants to stay around for her.  It turned me into a teary pile of goo to finally see her acknowledge to someone else outside of prison from her real life how much she loves Alex and how much Alex means to her. I feel like it’s a moment I was waiting for the whole series. I mean I could see how much she loved her. I could see she wasn’t going to be able to just let her go but she was terrified to admit it. She goes back down stairs to where Alex and the others are hiding and proposes to Alex and Alex says yes and then after a surprisingly easy Season 6 for them(as far as their relationship anyway), they get married at the end right before Piper is released!

But if things were easy in Season 6, I think it was to have us fresh as daisies for the crazy roller coaster ride their relationship was in Season 7 lol. Season 7 finds Piper and Alex dealing with a lot! Piper is of course trying to adjust to life on the outside and adjust to how life has changed since she’s been gone and figure out what she wants for life next and dealing with her jerk of a father(I swear he is awful the whole season!) and it’s a lot. The life she had when she turned herself in 13ish months before is gone. Larry and Polly(her ex best friend) are now together and building a life together. Her brother has a wife and a baby. Everything’s just completely different and it’s hard for her to figure out where she belongs in that world now. On the flip side Alex, on top of dealing with not having Piper around anymore and figuring out what prison looks without her, she is dealing with guards using her to sell stuff. It starts off with a guard forcing her to sell drugs and he actually shoves a condom full of heroin down her throat at one point, which was brutal to watch honestly! Then another stupid guard gets her out of that but starts to force her to sell phone chargers. Everything just spirals from there. Piper and Alex aren’t really talking, they don’t know what’s going on with the other. They’re both really lost and sad and vulnerable and that breeds fear and distrust. I feel Alex fears Piper leaving because things are hard but I think her bigger fear is that she’s holding her back and ruining her life. Alex introduces the idea of having an open relationship and at first Piper doesn’t like the idea but eventually she tries it and tries sleeping with some random guy which was a disaster and another woman which was an even bigger disaster(I kept wanting to scream at the screen, that it wasn’t sex she was missing, she was missing connection and you know she could try talking to her wife….). So she gave up on it but that whole thing put even more insecurity in their relationship it felt like to me. Piper goes on a really bizarre camping thing with her sister in law and one of the other women invited a woman who is lesbian named Zelda(and this clearly a set up lol) and her and Piper strike up a friendship. Alex has gotten herself a cell phone and she begins seeing videos of Piper and Zelda and starts to get jealous. Eventually she reaches this point where it feels like she is so afraid of losing Piper and of being hurt by her, she decides to beat her to the punch and strikes up a relationship with the creepy ass female guard who she’s been selling phone charges with. To be honest, this relationship was so weird and has so little chemistry, I couldn’t stand to watch. I found myself looking away, it was so weird lol. There is flirting with Zelda and Piper but Piper refuses to do anything with her. She actually was great this season and I kept wishing Alex could see how she was defending her and their relationship to everyone all season long and how committed she actually was. There is this really cute scene where Piper sends Alex this envelope full of little pieces of paper with cute things about why she loves her. They call it a sentence for every week left in her sentence(or something along those lines lol) and they talk on the phone about it and you see them finally really connect for maybe the first time all season and it's a really great moment. This wakes Alex up finally and she tells the stupid guard that they had to stop doing what they were doing, all of it. The stupid guard gets mad and shows up at Piper’s place and tells her about sleeping with Alex and she sees Piper and Zelda and then Piper runs to Zelda and they sleep together(I also could not bring myself to watch that crap either lol). The next day the guard meets up with Alex and tells her she went to see Piper and that she was seeing someone else and Alex gets really mad and shoves her into a shelf and tells her to stay away from her wife(and I celebrated lol). But she calls Piper and they fight and she says she needs to see her in person. So Piper comes and they talk and Alex tell Piper she doesn't have feelings for the guard(which was pretty clear to me) but Piper can't say she doesn't have feelings for Zelda and the leave unsure if they can move forward. In the mean time, the stupid guard gets Alex transferred to Ohio to get back at her. So Piper comes for visitation again and Alex tells her she’s being transferred and that she thinks it's a good thing and they should break up. It’s an awful scene, you see the devastation of Piper immediately but Alex keeps her poker face up...until she walks away from Piper and the look on her face as she waks away and breaks kills me inside! Laura Prepon and Taylor Schilling can both do so much with just their eyes and this one of those scenes where Laura knocked it out of the park. I want to cry and I want to hug her. Such a hard painful scene! Anyway Piper leaves and she's of course very upset. There is this really emotional scene where Piper shows up at Larry’s and she tells him about Alex and he says some less than helpful things(Not that Larry is known for being helpful lol) and they kind of argue over who she was as opposed to who she is. It's a very interesting conversation(in which they both kind of admit their relationship was never going to work) and at one point she makes the comment that when she met Alex it was like she grew a new limb. In the end, Larry gives her a great piece of advice “Do what new Piper would do” and she packs up her life and she moves to Ohio and she starts build a life for herself and her Alex get back together...and I bawled lol. She was done running.

I think the beauty of that ending is, when McCollough(aka the stupid creepy guard) got Alex transferred she did it to get back at her and she did it to try to break up Alex and Piper. But what she actually did was give them a beautiful gift. It got Alex out of that prison with so many crappy people and so much drama and into a new place with a bunch of people she knew and liked and she got a new start to finish her time. She’s with friends where she doesn’t have to worry about extra stuff and can just concentrate on her future and what she wants to do next and on rebuilding her relationship with Piper. I think it was even bigger for Piper though. I felt like the whole season Piper was trying to figure out who she was(really the whole series) and where she belonged. Alex being transferred to Ohio gave her the chance to prove to Alex she was done running. She gave up everything to follow her. But I think bigger than that, it gave Piper to the chance to start over and to build a life for herself. Piper had never stood on her own two feet. She never had to. She was with parents and then she was in college and then she was with Alex and then with Larry and then prison and then she got out of prison and was living with her brother and sister in law and working with her father. The thing in season 7 was because her family were so far into her life, they felt they had a right to try to tell her what she should do with her life and try to plan it for her and were really pushy(and frankly so was Zelda!). I think all season she felt like she was being suffocated. Everyone wanted her to forget prison and Alex and move on like it never happened, which didn’t allow her to process any of it. Her life was not hers and she had so many voices coming at her for most of the season, she struggled to hear her own. But going to Ohio gave her the chance and space to be on her own and build a new life and find out who she was. I think she needed that as much as she needed anything. I see a lot of people say she should’ve ended up with Zelda but I see a few issues with that. The most obvious was, she is in love with Alex. When she’s talking to Larry they list all these wonderful things about Zelda but her final conclusion was the same as it’s always been, she loves Alex. She actually wasn’t interested in doing anything with Zelda until she was getting back at Alex. I mean she found her fun and attractive(who wouldn’t find Alicia Witt attractive?? LOL) but it was nothing more. She fought for Alex and their relationship all season, it just wasn’t where Alex could see it. It was always Alex. Zelda would’ve been just like Larry, it would’ve just been Piper marking time until she could be with Alex. But also as I mentioned I feel strongly that Piper needed to stand on her own two feet and to create her own life and being with Zelda wouldn’t have looked like that. She had a well established life and it would’ve been Piper just stepping into that life. Piper didn’t need someone else’s life, she needed her own. She'd done that before, that was old Piper. Old Piper was great at doing what was easy to run away when things got hard and it always lead her back to being restless and unhappy. New Piper wasn't that way and she didn't want or need easy, she needed real. Alex was real and their future together was real.  The beauty in all of that, is it was exactly what needed to happen to show Alex she was all in and she wasn’t running anymore. It was Piper telling Alex you are my wife, you are my family now, and you and our future are what’s most important to me and I’m not going anywhere. I feel like fear of losing each other and getting hurt was the driving force in most of the issues they had. I mean in some ways I can see where that would be case. They love each other so much and they have this really special thing and I can see where the thought that at any moment one or the other could do something to destroy it, would completely cause fear. You throw into that Piper leaving Alex the first time at the worst possible time in her life(the day she found out her mom died) and I think that add’s another level of fear to it. In season 7, there was another fear for Alex though, the fear of holding Piper back and ruining her life. She loves her very very much and she wants all the best of life for her and she felt she couldn’t give her that while in prison. So her driving force is to make sure Piper has everything good in life. She goes about it terribly but it’s really a beautiful thing. I feel like season 7, that fear of holding her back not only makes Alex make some dumb decisions but it keeps her from really hearing Piper. When she breaks up with Piper, one of things she does is apologize for the fucked up detour she took her on and Piper says something along the lines of you weren't a detour from my life, you are my life! That was season said, it was Piper fighting for their relationship with everything she had while Alex let fear and guilt and shame rule the day. But at the heart of all of their fear and problems, is actually just a really beautiful strong love and they just need the chance to build the relationship around that and that’s what that ending represents. Piper is on her own and making a life for herself and thriving and Alex is with friends and free of the drama of the last prison. But also she knows Piper is all in and there is a future for her and them and there is something to work towards. I thought the ending was perfect and it was exactly the most natural ending for the journey we took with those two women. For all their flaws and all their ups and downs, they have lived a heck of a life together! They deserved the chance to follow through with that and that move to Ohio gave them that. So what McCollough meant for ill, Piper and Alex turned to good. I think a lot of people were really busy finding reasons to be unhappy and to be annoyed with Piper and not watching the journey she was taking. Season 7 was her season(along with Taystee) and I honestly think while she made mistakes, it was the best Piper we’d ever seen. She realized it was her life and no one else knew better than her what she wanted. She found her voice and she did what made her happy. In that last scene of her visiting Alex, they both looked far and away the most relaxed and happy they had all season and it made my sappy hopeless romantic self cry so much lol.

I’m not sure how this turned into 7 pages of Alex and Piper but here we are lol. I guess if I want to talk about other characters, I should probably do another post! If you read all of this, kudos because it’s super long and rambley and probably all over the place but I really enjoyed putting all of my thoughts about these two women down in writing! I’ve never ever been as fascinated by a couple on TV show as this has fascinated me! They’re so well written, so well acted, and the chemistry between Laura and Taylor is like nothing I’ve seen before and it makes for this really complex, sometimes frustrating, but always beautiful relationship! I’m so thankful for the show and for the people who did all the hard work to bring this world and all of these characters to life!