OITNB S3 E3 “Empathy Is a Boner Killer” is about:

* The backstory of how Nicky ended up in prison. Nicky and a crew of other addicts decided to rob a house and steal a bunch of signed first-edition books in hopes of selling them to get money to score heroin. The crew got caught and Nicky was sentenced to 5-10 years. Prior to being arrested for robbing the house, Nicky was arrested for stealing a cab, after her Mom bailed her out she took money to bail her friends out of jail too but instead used that money to score (leading to the book-stealing break-in).

* Luschek and Nicky decide to restart their ‘partnership’ to sell the Heroin that Boo and Nicky acquired last season. In order to start their plan, Luschek has to get the heroin back from the meth heads (Angie and Leanne). The meth heads tell officer Ford that Luschek has drugs and it percolates up to Caputo who orders a raid on Luschek’s office. Unbeknownst to Luschek, Nicky secretly hid one packet of heroin by affixing it to the top of one of his desk doors with a piece of gum. Luschek immediately blames Nicky who is immediately shuttled off to Max.

* The Latinas have a discussion about attending Daya’s wedding (despite Bennett being MIA).

* Red is forced to help Healy translate for him and his wife. During the resulting discussion (in which Red called Healy’s wife out for not living up to her end of the arrangements), it becomes apparent that Red has feelings for Healy (which is really weird).

* Caputo tries to blackmail Fig into helping him keep the camp open, she suggests Caputo tries to entice the Management Corrections corporation into buying the management rights to the camp (they are a private prison company).

* Taystee and Poussey hold a funeral for all of the books burned during the bed bugs crisis.

* Counselor Rogers hosts a well-attended drama class (much to the chagrin of Healy). During one of the improvisation exercises, Alex and Piper work out the seemingly never ending 'do we love each other' drama again.

The ‘Empathy Is a Boner Killer” refers to Alex not being able to engage in hate-sex with Piper anymore after they make peace (as a result of the improv exercise).

Laundry Efficiency

I realized that I left something out last week. One of the odd things about the bedbug incident is that there was a long period of time where the inmates were required to wear either underwear or paper outfits. In my opinion, this was fairly unrealistic (and perhaps an attempt to ‘get sexy’ by having the inmates half-naked).

Generally, every unit has a laundry and every laundry works nearly 24/7 to constantly churn out clean clothing. There are very few jobs as lucrative in prison as being one of the unit ‘laundry women’ (in my experience laundry men). It would not take too long for the laundry to get everyone’s clothes cleaned (as long as all the machines were working).

"You’re Like Gollum With The Ring"