Piper gets surprising news and a boost from her friends. The jury returns with a verdict; and the big kickball game is on.
This episode provides examples of the following tropes:
- Asshole Victim: The Denning sisters, incarcerated for the brutal murder of their younger sister, were willing to sacrifice their blocks in a kickball-game-turned-literal-deathmatch for their own personal vendettas. At the end of the episode they're the only ones getting shivved.
- Bittersweet Ending: The kickball game goes about peacefully without any major fights, Piper and Alex get “prison married,” Carol and Barb kill each other, and Piper and Sophia go free from early release. On the bitter side, Blanca is instead thrown into an ICE unit, Lorna has gone into early labor with blood running down her thighs, Gloria and Red are still in SHU, and Taystee is found guilty of Piscatella’s murder.
- Driving Question: Cal asks Piper, “What are you gonna do now?” Fade to orange.
- Mutual Kill: Carol and Barb kill each other over the ice story.
- Once More, with Clarity: The ice story in the last flashback showed that it happened to another waitress that the Dennings worked with.
-
Reality Subtext: All over Blanca's storyline. Under the Trump administration, controversies around the treatment illegal immigrants and the ICE have been in the news non-stop. - The Reveal: It turns out the "ice glass" event that Barb and Carol both claimed was their own was neither of them; it was a story told to them by another waitress.
- Shout-Out: At the beginning of the wedding, Nicky says "mawwaige" pretending to start Peter Cook's sermon from The Princess Bride
- Wham Shot: The announcement of Polycon's new immigration holding units cutting to Blanca finding that instead of release, she's been sent to ICE.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: Blanca thinks she's getting early release, only to be put into Poly Con's new ICE unit.
