I came to like Piper more this season since she's started shedding the whole naive puppy thing and is embracing her circumstances. While Soso was an extremely annoying character, she did a good job serving the purpose of showing just how much Piper is starting to fit in. Some of the stronger scenes this season were between the two of them.
I didn't mind their storyline the first season, but this part of it really became grating by the end of the second season. In what world is having your baby's father go to prison for several years for statutory rape, likely forcing him to register as a sex offender, and having him lose his job preferable to having him visit the baby in secret? Kids trust their parents. It's not like Bennett is going to have to lay out his whole life story the moment the kid can speak. Yeah, it was shitty to pin it on Mendez, but it's not like Mendez was an innocent soul. He was arrested because he was actually breaking the law. The pregnancy was just secondary to that.
And apparently why her entire family is also. That type of stupid has been inceptioned three layers deep.
FTFY?
I think the only way I'll enjoy Piper's character is if it fundamentally changes. Right now it's gone from scared hipster girl to annoyed and depressed and confused blonde chick. I'd rather she start getting more integrated into the system and start making a life for herself inside instead of being so attached to the outside. I'd love to see her get pissed enough to deliberately kill someone, get sent to max and have to outsmart the stupid but brutal inmates there. Meanwhile all the garbage characters in her RL are thrown out and the audience and Piper don't get relief from seeing the outside constantly.
I'm not sure if it's about her redemption. Going into the show, Piper didn't necessarily have anything that needed redeeming as we were frequently reminded that she made a minor mistake a decade ago and had since built a life for herself. I think it's more about Piper figuring out who she is as a person, embracing her mistakes, and realizing she isn't the yuppie she was brought up to be. Unsurprisingly, there is some similarity between Piper's trajectory and Nancy from Weeds. Hopefully next season doesn't end with Piper burning the jail to the ground.
I don't know what the book / true story says, but in my 'ideal way this show could go' she loses her release semi-purposefully and is basically turned into a lifer. This would then make the show both about a semi-good girl breaking bad, and also about how the US prison system criminalizes minor offenders.
I'm right there with you. We want female "Oz", what we're getting is Paris Hilton's "The Simple Life" behind bars.
