'Orange is the New Black' binge recap: Drama and 'Empathy'

Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for Orange is the New Black season 3 episode 3. Already on episode 4? Read our recap here.

Are you binge-watching season 3 of Orange is the New Black? We are too! You can read all our recaps here. 

"Empathy is a Boner Killer" (an Orange is the New Black episode title if I ever heard one) is a very successful episode about failure. Whether it's Nicky's failure -- in the present or the past -- to stop letting drugs control her life, Healy's failure of a marriage or Caputo and Figueroa's failures to run the prison, nothing is going as planned (unless you're Piper and Alex but I'll get to those two crazy kids later).

No one's failure was bigger or more consequential than Nicky's. Oh Nicky. Nicky, Nicky, Nicky. The great heroin plan of 2015 failed spectacularly, as first the meth heads got their hands on it, then Luschek stole it back, then the Meth heads ratted out Luschek, who got caught (that other guard was really good at identifying random drugs that are stuck to gum) and blamed Nicky, who got sent "down the hill" to Maximum Security. This story is presented against flashbacks to Nicky the Addict, who is not a person you would want to be around. She leaves her friends in jail, steals money from her mother, blames her mother for her problems, lies, steals, crashes cars, all in pursuit of her fix. Litchfield Nicky calls herself a "bloodhound for oblivion," which echoes her mother's sentiments in the flashback that she is "wired" for her own self-destruction. Whether or not Max is going to destroy her remains to be seen, but it would be such a shame to lose Natasha Lyonne from this show, who is just an incredible performer. Here's to hoping we either follow Nicky to Max or that her stint isn't too long.

In other failures, Caputo brings out his favorite trick of blackmailing Fig in order to try to save the prison, and Healy enlists Red to help save his marriage to his mail-ordered bride. Healy legitimately utters the words, "I just want this corpse to be sleeping in the same bed as me," speaking about his wife, which is all you need to know about him as a person (can I vomit right now?). Red gets annoyed during the whole thing and tries to yell the bride back into submission, which I doubt will work considering how well the marriage has worked out so far.

But if anyone was having a little success in this episode, I guess it's Piper and Alex, although their relationship is so unhealthy I don't think we should use the word "success" to describe them. There's nothing like an improv exercise to get two lying, cheating, back-stabbing, horrible people to forgive each other for all the horrible things they've done to each other, right? I mean seriously Piper is the worst, and I have trouble believing that her justification for turning Alex in (wanting to be with her again, which is so incredibly selfish I can't handle it) would actually make Alex forgive her. But forgive her Alex does, which ends their "hate sex" (hence the title of this episode). What's next for the two of them? Probably something awful, if I had to guess.

3 down, 10 to go!

And in case you missed it, you can read our recap of episode 2 here.