Great. I’ve kept the spirit of Orange Is The New Black alive by meticulously writing weekly about a season I binged watched over a couple of months ago. Now we are winding down on the series and next week will be my final Orange Is The New Black review until next year and I feel like we have all been locked away in the SHU. We’re gradually saying goodbye to all the ladies of Litchfield, waving our teary hands and refusing to let go. But not before we enjoy the penultimate episode which boasts the best line in the history of the show;
“If you want to assassinate someone, vision is a basic requirement. It's like step one, pick a person to kill. Step two, kill THAT person”
Has there ever been a character so wonderfully bad as Vee? Fans of Orange Is The New Black could offer you tonnes of roles that they love but rarely has someone stuck out so viciously and maliciously as Vee. Played ingeniously well by Lorraine Toussaint, Yvonne “Vee” Parker is an effective criminal inside the prison, raising her little drug gang to promienence in the prison whilst terrorising the other groups. Her backstory also highlights her completely lack of morality. She is willing to betray once interests collide and it makes her villainess so tantalising, calculating and cold that you’ll devour as much abhorrence for her as you can.
Whilst I don’t want to talk about spoilers, the end will make you scream. The vicious terror of Vee’s reign rained down on Red’s skull. What? Not Red?! Is she dead, is she ok? The whole horror of the manipulating bitch that is Vee is fully realised in this episode. Not only does Orange Is The New Black offer ambiguous villains and heroes meaning it’s impossible to pin down exactly who to hate (heck, we’ve even warmed to Pennsatucky.) But they also show that not every sentence is a story. That, in fact, some sentences are justifiable and we can boo and hiss as much as we want with Vee.
Because… well..fuck Vee.