Orange is the new black season 2 review/ overview part 2

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Orange is the new black season 2 review/overview part 1

Needless to say Spoilers follow

   We start off seeing Piper Chapman (I may keep switching between calling her 'Piper' or 'Chapman') in the shoe due to her fight with Pensatucky that dropped down the curtain on season 2, before we see her whisked away on to a bus, then a plane ride (which doesn't go great as a male prisoner makes abusive gestures at her, she has to pee on the toilet with no door an is sat by a woman who is scared of flying (what's there to be scared about? It's not like they ever go missing or anything...) and befriends the female Woody Harrelson), then to another bus ride and dropped in to another prison without knowing what is going on (other than being in Chicago due to her well trained eye from the plane) (we also see our first of many sets of breasts of the season. it's almost like they're trying to get more Male viewers, hell, Game of Thrones would be embaressed). She then tops this all off by stepping on the cockroach of her new cell that transports cigarettes to max security. Still, we now nothing, that is until she's outside and spots Alex on the other side of the yard, but won't be getting back out for another week, so she hatches a plan. She finds the creepy man from the aeroplane an gives him her 3 days old panties ('oh, he's a hit-man, I thought he was a rapist, I'm so embarresed') to get alex to meet her at the cage door. So, that happens and Alex tells her that they're there to give evidence against Alex's old boss (a dangerous man) to put her down, but urges 'Pipes' to lie or else they'll probably get killed. Larry's dad (her lawyer) pleads with her to tell the truth, and she decides to go with it. When she gets to the stand though, the defendant gives Piper the evil eyes and Piper gets scared and lies, but safe in the knowledge that Ales will be doing the same. Larry's dad's not happy though and dissociates himself from her, then Alex walks past, a free woman, after she told the Truth! Talk about your backstabs, and Piper is (rightfully) furious. She's committed purgatory, her former lover lied to her, and she could've got out of prison if she'd told the truth (might have been a boring show then though), so she's probably got every right. It had been big news that Laura Prepon (who played Alex) was leaving, because obviously being in 'that 70's show' makes her to big for this, so it was a good send off for her, and leaves Piper with room to boil.

   So, in the second episode it becomes clear that season 2 is much more of an ensemble cast rather than focused mostly on Piper like the first season was, as shown by her not even appearing in the episode, assumedly this is going on at the same time as Piper is in Chicago. This episode also seems to spend a lot of time reminding who everyone is, calling everyone by name and doing 'vintage' character actions, and using all their catchphrases. I suppose this is fin, but I just re-watched the first season a couple of weeks ago because I couldn't remember what happened, so it wouldn't me up a bit.
   So, skippin straight past Boo being licked out by a dog, we'll go on to Red's story (I was going to refer to her as Janeway, but as Star Trek's twitter page wouldn't respond if Kate Mulgrew would be answering OITNB questions at the next Star Trek convention, then I'm not giving them credit) where she has run out of money at commissary and can no longer buy her noodles, so has to go back to the kitchen to eat, and fair play, they feed her (despite her burning one of her old friends in an attempt to get the kitchen back, but pretty soon that gets forgotten about).
   We also see Healey begin his story of self redemption after ignoring Pensatucky about to kill chapman by apologising to Pensatucky (whom had her ass handed to her by Chapman) and trying to make it up with snacks. We also see a moment straight out of game of thrones which sees Larry and his dad having an important, yet boring conversation infront of a bunch of nude people to keep you interested. These aren't women though, it's men in a gay bath house (I suppose they've got to make up for all the lesbianism in the first series and that's coming up yet in this series). this idea is repeated again later with breasts shown.
   The other main plot see's a job fair thing going on, that Tastee is desperate to win as she thinks it'll get her out of prison and get her a job (despite the fact she got out last season, but didn't like it so got herself back in). She does win too, over the super hot Goth Latina girl, but alas, no job.

   So then Piper returns, and she has a aura of fear around her after getting sent to shoe for nearly killing Pensatucky. She uses this fear to scare people too, but it doesn't take very long (about 1 episode) for everyone to realise that it's just Chapman, and she's not scary at all. More importantly though, Vee comes in to the prison, who is Tastee's sort of adopted mom, and former drug lord of some kind who used her children to do the work for her.
   Vee's not the only new character though as we get introduced to Brook Soso, who is an activist sent to prison for some kind of activising and likes to do hunger strikes and stuff, anyway, I'll probably not be mentioning her again.
   This is also the episode that starts what seems to be the main story if the season. Black power (I hope that's not racist) vs. The Red army. It's certainly not Vee's first time inside and Red and Vee are old friends (or so you're led to believe for now). Vee uses Crazy eyes (who, incidentally is also the flashback character for the episode, and the kid playing her has got in nailed down (also, her parents don't age much)) and Tastee to help get them together, although at this point you don't know what the end goal is, just to play uno or something. What we do know is that Vee and Red are a conniving pair, trying to one up each other in some way or another at every turn. (BTW, Red's in charge of the greenhouse now)
   We also see Bennett getting blackmailed for the baby information by the kitchen Latina's, so he has to hide pills in his fake leg for them (as you do). If there's a third major story of the season, it's probably Daya and Bennett's relationship.

 

   So, Morello's accent isn't some kind of eastern European, it's Boston (like in 30 rock). This episode has a lot on Morello, and we finally get to see why she's in here, and who Christopher is. She see's in the newspaper that Christopher is getting married (and on their date no less), so whilst waiting in the hospital car park for Rosa (more on her later), she decides to go and pay Christopher a visit. She doesn't get to see him, but does have a bath, 'cause, why not? We do find out though, that there never was a relationship or marriage, and that Morello had been stalking Christopher after 1 date and that's why she's in prison. It's quite a revelation, but the one problem I have is that in the first epsiode when Nicky first tells Morello they all know that the wedding is BS 'cause Christopher never comes and visits, she says that he hasn't come after the first month. So, which is it? Why would a stalkee visit her stalker in prison? Maybe OITNB should pay more attention to their mythology.

   Back to Rosa then, she is the Bald cancer sufferer we first met in season 1 when Chapman was dropped in to her first room with her, and she becomes a much bigger character in this series. She makes a hospital friend while waiting due to some young kid's I Phone running out of charge so him having to talk to her out of boredom, but they end up becoming close, and teaming up to steal a drunk Nurses Purse.

   We also see Chapman assigned to her bunk, to share with Red, who's not had to have a sleepover before, needless to say she's furious, but she gets put in her place by both red and Kaputo, as she's no longer in charge of the kitchen and nearly killed someone, he's pretty low on giving her special treatment any more. We also see Chapman use what's left of her 'fear me' vibe to get her stuff back, including setting Boo up with Brook for her blanket so she could have some extra points on her and Nicholl's sex contest (they draw (plus, Brook says 'girl power' but does do the peace finger sign)).

   And then there's Red's hole (purposely ambiguous). Looks like she took over green housing duties not to just form a mismatched gang of golden oldies, but because there's a way to sneak stuff in, with one of her sons climbing through some rat infested tunnel in the middle of the woods to bring in some piriteze (or whatever). At least it's something for the old people to do while they unwittingly join the Red army, all while black power isn't really coming together because Tastee doesn't trust Vee yet, despite the flashbacks showing them having a great relationship before, but now Tastee doesn't trust her? She is starting to come around though by this point, slowly but surely.

   So, it's time to learn more about Mendoza (that's the woman who took over the kitchen from Red), and her flashback shows something very concerning. She worked in a shop, and their delivery for the day was like, 5 small boxes. From personal experience I can tell you this would never be the case, pah, I scoff at 5 boxes, I dream of 5 boxes, try about 1000 in a store that size. I suppose this could be a shop that has about 10 customers a day, that would make it okay, which is slightly beleivable as they have spirit readings out the back and some kind of stamp collection racket going on, I digress.

   Chapman's grandmother is about to die also, so she tries to get furlow (is that how you spell it? I can't be bothered to look it up) to get out and see her one last time (furlow is where you're let out for a few days for personal reasons). Everyone in the prison has tried to get it before for one reason or another, parents death, spouse's death, child's death, all the deaths. It is however, Chapman that gets it (much to the chagrin of everyone) as part of Healey's way of trying to make Chapman forget that he allowed Pentasucky to try and kill her. Sadly, this works, and after a brief argument over it, Piper never brings it up again.

   Not all is going well in Healey's life though, we see his home life with his mail order bride is still poor, at least she's learnt English now, which is a big step up from the first season, but she's more interested in haning out with her friends (bah, women) than coming to a romantic Italian restaraunt with him. It's okay though, because he does what all men of his age do when they're alone (on TV anyway), which is go to a bar to get wasted by himself, where he is fortunate enough to see Kaputo's band. At first, the wry look in Healey's eye makes it look like he's going to use this leverage to his advantage, but, scene skip and a drunen Healey is chatting to Kaputo about music, at first, they're getting along well, talking u his band and stuff, but come the next day at work, Kaputo is already sick of Healey and his music chatter.

   There's more biuld up to black power though, as Vee turns Tastee on Pussay, her BFF after an accidental romantic moment between them where they kiss (see, it turns out Pussay is gay, which had never been mentioned before, and seemingly a crazy amount of the people in here are (and I don't mean they've turned lesbian because they're in prison and, what else they gonna do? I mean, they're already lesbians when they come into the place, seems lie a lot is all I'm saying)), and Vee gets Tastee back on her side after Vee not being around when Tastee got out the first time (probably because they hadn't cast her yet (or decided she existed as a charcter)). Vee then goes to the kitchen and plays Mendoza like a pro, tears and all, but Red shows up not long after and lays a truth bomb down on Mendoza, the war continues...

   Also, there's a good old fashioned burning to death.

   So, based on Tastee's turn on Pussay and creation of black power without her, we turn to Pussay's past, to see she was in the military or a military child (though adult) or something, speaking German and being a lesbian, which woud eventually get her sent home because obviiusly, it's no way to be... These military show sure wouldn't want to watch this show if that sort of thing angers them.

   Back in current day we see her on to Vee and what she's doing (starting a cigarette business in the prison) and she looks like she might be going over to the Red army, but she couldn't do that to Tastee, even if she left the library to work in maintenece just to make fags.

   We also see Bennett taking advice from Healey (never a god idea) on how to deal with prsioners, it sure is a good thing that edtrotion storyline was only covered for one episode then dropped otherwise he could've been in real trouble, except now, Daya wants him to come clean so the baby will be known as his, seeing as it currently stands as either he goes to jail for the child to be recognised it's his, or, he stays out, but as far as the law, and state etc. knows Pornstache is the dad, meaning he'll get visitation to a child that has nothing to do with him, other than that he was set up to cover Bennett's rear end in the first place. Also, where is Pornstace? I know, based on what happened it would be awkward to bring him back, but he was one of the main charaacters last season and it seems wierd without him, at least Alex had the coomon decency to show up for one episode (I jest beacuse he, and she, both come back later in the series).

   There's also a brief storyline for the hot goth latina girl, where her biyfriend doesn't come and visit her in the prison, if it was me, I;d be in there every day, but this leads her to kissing one of her friends, which means that everything is looking up, until they decide its 'stoopid'. Bitches be crazy.

   We also see Pentasucky put in her place by Healey, just because she got new teeth, doesn't mean their relationship can be over, she's gotta make people come to his councilling thing seeing as he wants to care again (don't worry, he gives that up). She also gets put in her place by her former friends (you know, the ones she always talked to in the first season), but it's alright, she has Brook on her side, but, just like everyone else, Pensatucky hates her too (damn hippies).

   

Watchdogs diary, week 1

   Of which there will probably only be 2 weeks, if I keep going at the rate I am.

   I've been saying for some time now that I have been waiting with baited breath for this game, which was supposed to be the big game of the new systems releases, nevertheless, it's here at last. Does it live up to all I hoped and dreamed, well, to an extent, yes, but instead of doing a review or a wiki, of which you can find a million on the Internet, I decided to jot down some notes into the form of a diary (as it says at the top). The main problem I'm going to have here is reading my own handwriting that looks like an ant with inky feet and a suicide bomb crawled across a sheet of paper and decided to make a political statement in the middle of it.
 
   So, you start by being introduced to all the hacking in the game (okay, this is something I should have mentioned before, as it's the hook of the game. It's very much one of those post GTA 3 games that is using that same basic idea but adding in something different to make it stand out, think Saints Row or Sleeping dogs. The hook here is hacking, such as people on the street to get their bank details or listen in on their boring phone conversations (you can also get a bio on each character, and should I be stealing money from someone with terminal cancer? well, it's only a videogame, so I don't see why it matters). More importantly though is hacking things on the road, such as traffic lights, bollards and other electronic road things which make car chases/ escapes much more fun. The most fun element is the stealth side of things, where you can utilise hacking in to (handily placed) cameras to distract guards, set off explosives, disable their ability to call reinforcements and generally mess them about, allowing you to take them out without being seen (until I inevitably balls it up)), with Aiden Pearce (that's you) hacking some randomers bank account, which he gets very frustrated with when he doesn't get as much as he wanted (even though he'd already got thousands (some people)), it doesn't help that this opening cut scene takes forever either, or that you don't really know what the story is going to be about until you get to the end of the first chapter (of 5). You escape from some stupid American sporting venue that is a nicely done to tutorial and then you meet Jordi (not LeForge), one of Aiden's buddies. At this point I'd like to point out I'm only mid way through chapter 2 as I have spent the majority of time doing side missions whilst rewatching Orange is the new black season 1 in preparation for Friday (woop), so there may well be plot twists I don't know about yet, and therefore some of my comments may seem uninformed.
   Obviously when you first get out in the open world that you're going to do is drive around, and it was here I found out that the music is terrible, all generic American rock/rap that I don't care about. It's also where I found out the driving was way too serious, cars handle much more like an actual racing game than you usually have in a free roamer where it's supposed to be somewhat forgiving (that said, after a few hours I got used to it). The driving areas are brilliantly destructible too, and pretty much with the exception of walls, you can drive through anything, allowing for some nifty short-cutting. One of the areas of the map is called Pawnee too, so shout out to Parks and Rec fans (don't know if that's intentional or not).

   Back in to the story then, and it's off to meet the family, your sister and nephew. Aiden hasn't seen them in over a year because the daughter died, and Aiden's been out to to get revenge against his sisters wishes ever since, so it's all emotional and stuff, except that you don't know any of that stuff yet, so why would you care? Anyway, the nephew will only talk to his mother and no one else, despite the fact you came to wish him a happy birthday (what an ingrate, Aiden's only trying to be a funcle, as shown by his 'just got out of bed' beard, coat that drags on the floor, baseball cap and face covering doo rag (or whatever they're called, you know what I mean, thug types on TV always pull them up over their mouths before they go and do something thuggish).
   This put me off the main story for a while, and hence started me on a path of side mission after side mission after side mission.

So, that's NVZN and it's pretty lame, but what isn't lame are the gang hideouts or CTOS hubs. CTOS hubs are little puzzles that you solve by moving stuff around so you can get up to what you need to unlock, and some of them are pretty tough. Gang hideouts are great, this is what I was referring to earlier when i talked about taking people out with the security camera and explosives and such, except that you have to identify certain target(s) that you have to 'take down' instead of kill (as it, beat them half to death with your night stick). This means sometimes you end up being spotted and shooting your way through to the buggers and just leaping at them. For these missions, I'd recommend bringing a silenced pistol, a sniper rifle, and the grenade launcher for when things get out of hand. In fact, just add the AK47 and that's pretty much all the weapons you need anyway. You don't really need grenades because you can set the enemies off in their pockets. There's also criminal convoys, which can be great fun, but extremely frustrating, where you have to stop a group of enemies from reaching their target location. Sometimes you can just kill them all, but sometimes you have to do a take down on one or two of them, which can lead to broken controllers (it hasn't yet, but it might). This is because you can't really blow the other cars up, because you'll probably take them with you, you can't leap out of your car to get them because their buddies will gun you down, and you can rarely fight your way trough all of them, because by the time you've fought through all the cronies, the target has normally high tailed it out of there. However, this is the best method I've found, because they don't always run, you just have to play your chances. Tying the other side missions up then are fixer contracts, which seems to be a cover all for everything else they didn't have their own category for, which includes (but is not limited to) checkpoint races, point to point races and stealthy following. This probably explains why there's 2 1/2 more of these than gang hideouts, despite the fact gang hideouts are a million times more fun. Plus, there's collectibles and street games (including a form of chess (score!) and 'online trips', which include that spider tank thing you may have seen, but I haven't tried them yet so I can't comment.

   Back to the story then and you get to see the big bad, Mr. Quinn, who at first just looks like some old geezer, but then you get a close up and he looks like a mentalist, with different coloured eyes and one of 'those' faces, you know what I mean, when you look at a guy and wonder f he's about to smash a glass of your head just for the 'LOL's'. After this is when you meet your over the phone buddy (who I forgot to mention before) face to face, and, gender twist, badboy17 turns out to be a woman called Clara, with whom you get in to a weird relationship with pretty quick. Now, I don't mean relationship like a sexy time relationship, more of a buddy cop style one, except unfunny, so Will Ferrell's probably in it then. You go from respecting her massively when she's badboy17, then you meet her and get along as two equals, then about 2 missions later Aiden is treating her like something he's scraped off the bottom of his shoe. Is he sexist? maybe, all I know is she's only trying to Help and Aiden is being a jerk just because his sister got kidnapped (forgot to mention that too).

   So, your sister gets kidnapped by a former friend, Damien, another hacker who knows all your old dirty hacking secrets and forces you to work for him using your sister as leverage (just incase you wondered, you save the nephew and give him to some doctor to look after, because that makes sense). Whilst Aiden is doing all this he's also trying to locate his sister sneakily) or about as sneakily as you can when you seize an island for yourself). So yeah, Clara moves in to a giant warehouse on a creepy island where you just leave her whilst you go off on adventures, isn't it good how he treats her so nice? You also get to meet Tobias in the process who, within about 5 minutes goes from attempting to kill you at a poker table, to leading you on a foot chase around the suburbs, to giving you the key to the island, to ringing his phone and telling you to come by his shop any time you want. At least you can knock that story out fast.

   Not long after, when you're doing something for Damien, he lets you speak to your sister, who, instead of being worried about being kidnapped, is now more interested in the fact that Aiden and Damien used to be friends. Come on Nicky (that's her name), Darth Vader is Luke Skywalkers father but that didn't stop him cutting off his hand. Women.

   She had already proved her weirdness earlier in flashback form (which I also forgot to mention) when she is visiting her daughters grave and tells Aiden to not chase down the people who killed her and just leave it be. They just killed your freaking daughter, your brother can get revenge for you but you don't want him too? WTF? surely she needs some kind of revenge/ payback/ justice? But she's all like, 'well, my daughter was killed by criminals, I guess these things happen.' *shrugs shoulders, walks away.
   Not long after this I finished collecting a certain set if collectibles that sent me into a special mission, that at first seemed like a gang hideout, but then you had to defend yourself from 2 waves of onslaught, Obviously the best tactic is to not get spotted, but you get completely surrounded. It was tough, but I enjoyed the challenge in the end, I was however a bit miffed when later on I was introduced to IED's (sticky bombs) that I could have just placed where the cars parked before they arrived (as they always parked in the same places) and blown everyone up immediately and saved 2 hours of my life (oh well, you live and learn).
   So, after that, Damien tells you something or other ans sends you to get something (I can't remember what) from Mr. Iraq, a take no nonsense Gang boss who did the classic villainous 'beating someone to death over a tiny thing' that always happens in everything ever made. So, how are you going to get to him. Basically, you pick on one of his henchmen and blackmail him. When you see his face after he realises what is going on is the most emotional moment of the game yet, he's  heart broken. All he wanted was to do was make his grandmother happy (true story, you get to listen in on their phone conversation) and be a good henchman and now you've come in and screwed his whole life up, just because he happened to be the one talking to Mr. Iraq when you first saw him. Poor bedbug ('cause they're always in girls beds, which made me not so sorry for him). Turns out then that Mr. Iraq is going to be at an auction, and for some reason you have to steal a briefcase. So, you follow the millions of people that have it for a bit, before getting to a marina and having to grab it, which was where I got really annoyed. Basically, after doing so many gang hideout side missions I've gotten really good at the stealth element of the game, so I snook in, unseen, grabbed the briefcase and... Aiden starts looking through it, whilst the marina is packed with enemies, and obviously, after he's finished arsing around with it you're surround and have to fight your way out. My word that was annoying.

   Anyway, that's as far as I've got so far, more to come next week (you lucky, lucky people).