Cindy and Flaca become the new radio hosts for Max and Cindy is able to send a coded message to Suzanne to meet her and Taystee in the yard, but their eventual meeting doesn't go well when Suzanne gets upset at them due to Frieda manipulating her behind the scenes. Madison struggles to find a new way to get drugs into the prison for Carol, but Alex ends up giving her the solution; she needs to use Luschek and that phones will be more valuable than drugs. Piper worries that she's peaked and decides to write a memoir about her time in prison while Maria struggles to cope with being in psych. Daya starts becoming dependant on drugs and ends up in a romantic relationship with Daddy. Pennsatucky manages to blag her way into Florida by blackmailing Linda with information about what she did during the riot.
Outside of the prison, Caputo and Fig grow closer to one another to the point that she asks him why he's leaving.
The flashbacks reveal Badison's childhood which saw her being bullied for her anger issues and struggling to fit in. It also explores her time spent at a boot camp for 'troubled teens'.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Adults Are Useless:
- Madison's high school teacher does call out the bullying against her but then ends up calling her Fartison by accident. This, along with the class making fart noises at her, sees Madison freaking out and breaking anything she can get her hands on.
- Her parents aren't all that helpful either; her father accuses her of acting like a child and goads her into losing her temper again.
- Call-Back: Fig mentions that she was always jealous of Courtney Cox being pulled up on stage during Bruce Springsteen's 'Dancing in the Dark' music video as she was also in the audience. Caputo later takes to the stage to sing karaoke and ends up pulling Fig up on stage to sing with him.
- Comically Missing the Point: Caputo has to explain to Fig that Courtney Cox wasn't chosen at random to be pulled up on stage with Bruce Springsteen, she was planted in the crowd on purpose.
- Do Not Call Me "Paul": Madison would rather be called Badison.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Madison's schoolmates call her Fartison after she farted one time and even her teacher accidentally calls her it.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: The flashbacks reveal that Madison is incredibly angry as a teenager and is eventually sent away to boot camp when she ends up hurting her mother in a bout of rage.
- Meaningful Rename: Madison attempts this as a teenager, introducing herself as Badison while at camp but no-one buys it and they call her Sadison instead.
- My Biological Clock Is Ticking: Blanca is worried that she'll be too old to have a child by the time she gets out of prison.
- Shout-Out: Fig states that it was Bruce Springsteen choosing Courteney Cox to come up on stage with him during his 'Dancing in the Dark' music video rather than Fig, who was also in the audience, was the reason she became bulimic.
- Start of Darkness: While Madison was already a fairly troubled teenager, she took a turn for the worse after accidentally setting a teenage girl on fire while bullying her.
- With Friends Like These...: Frieda claims to be friends with Suzanne but is really only using her as protection against Carol and Barb. She ends up making Suzanne so paranoid that she doesn't even want to spend time with Taystee and Cindy.
