OITNB S2 E5 "Low Self-Esteem City" is about:

* The backstory of how Gloria Mendoza (Selenis Leyva) ended up incarcerated at Litchfield (Food Stamp Scam).

* The continuing battle between Big Boo (Lea DeLaria) and Nicky (Natasha Lyonne) over who can hook-up with the most people.

* Vee's continuing sly manipulation of the Litchfield population as she maneuvers to take control of the prison.

* Red's attempt to reconstitute a power base around the greenhouse and the Golden Girls and her continuing singular understanding of what Vee (Lorraine Toussaint) is up to.

* More context on how to understand Healy (Michael Harney) from his wife's loathing to his co-worker's disdain for him.

* The continuing battle between Caputo (Joe Sandow) and Fig (Alysia Reyner) over budgets and the upkeep of the facility (and the introduction of Caputo's bar-band "side-boob").

5. "Caca"

Look, I have already mentioned how ridiculous I find the whole Fig "embezzlement" subplot but this is getting way out of hand.

Prisoners, believe it or not, have a quasi-legal grievance process which, when exhausted, actually allows them to take a case against a prison (or it's officials) to court. Most likely, after being forced to shower with sewage backup and then told they can only shower for 30 seconds at a time, there would be 100s of grievances filed.

As I mentioned before, there is no way Fig could cover embezzling enough money to finance her extravagant lifestyle (or her husband's campaign) but even if she could pull that off, the fallout would leave a paper trail of grievances.

And before you dismiss this, a mass of complaints at once screams to the powers that be that something big is about to hit them in the face (and Fig is not the grievance officer and grievances would move through the federal system in an orderly process as they escalate). In addition, every prisoner would talk to their people on the phone about the problem (because prisoners are extreme germaphobes) and those people would start making calls.

By the way, there would also be all kinds of motions and complaints filed as well. Every prison has a law library and a few jailhouse lawyers (many of whom are surprisingly effective).

This is just an absurd storyline.

I am not saying that prisons are well-maintained or that prisoners organize quickly or naturally but I am saying they would never stay quiet about showers that flood with human waste. People take cleanliness very seriously in prison.

4. "You Don't Have Any Friends Sam"

I have a lot of empathy for Sam Healy's problems. He has been emasculated at home and his wife literally loathes him. He is clearly one of those guys who nobody liked in high school and was probably bullied for most of his life (heck, I was one of those guys too until my Senior year).

But, I have no empathy for how Sam processes his frustration, anger, and rage by replacing his lack of control in the rest of his life with the god-like power he can wield over the ladies of Litchfield.

Healy probably wouldn't bother me so much if he weren't a fictional stand-in for so many correctional officers that I met when I was incarcerated.

Don't get me wrong, there are a TON of great and professional Correctional Officers (If you could ask my good CO's they would tell you that I thanked all of the professional ones personally whenever I left any facility). On the other hand, there are a ton of CO's just like Healy or worse.

At every jail where I was incarcerated there was a brute squad made up of CO's who got into correctional work just so that they could legally beat inmates up. I remember my first day in jail a guy tried to escape and made it to the intake garage before, despite offering zero resistance, he was beaten down by the goon squad.

When I was transferred for a few days to a different jail (I had charges in two counties) I saw the goon squad beat someone down after an inmate fight that there was enough blood on the ground that it was flowing into my cell.

When I was in prison I saw CO's go out of their way to make inmates time harder, who went out of their way to humiliate and shame them every chance they got, and, of course, there were a ton of racist CO"s too.

You could almost always tell which CO's were trouble because they often looked roided out or always angry (kind of like some inmates who had anger management issues). Another good tell was if they always were wearing or displaying black gloves (always ready to put them on so they could beat someone down).

Officer Bennett (Matt McGorry) gives an example of how an officer can react with excessive force during "Low Self-Esteem). So often, the maximum amount of force is used (often on purpose) in situations when it is entirely unnecessary.

I am sure many of you assume that you can just avoid the Mendez (Pablo Schreiber) and Healy types and to some extent that is true. However, there are three shifts a day of officers in your unit, and some of those will have control of you at least for a few hours every day and it is unlikely you will only have the good CO's.

In addition, if you happen to get on the wrong side of a CO, they often will go out of their way to find you.

Of course, the even more dangerous ones, in many ways, are like Healy. These are the officers who won't ever try to physically hurt you but who love to use the power that they have over your life to destroy inmates (usually, like Healy, trying to compensate for the lack of power in the rest of their lives).

I can say with little hesitation, some of the worst things I saw happened as guards either looked the other way (like Healy during the fight between Piper and Doggett), instigated by CO's, or came directly at the hands of CO's.

When you give someone with violent or fascist tendencies the ability to treat a captive group as sub-human they will often commit worse atrocities than the prisoners they are controlling.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

3. Stop the "Welfare Queen" BS

So, Mendoza ended up in prison because someone snitched about her Food Stamp scam. Of course, the larger part of her backstory was that she is a single mother who was being physically abused by her boyfriend (who then burns up in a voodoo-induced fire).

But, I would like to focus on the Food Stamp part for a few minutes because it has become an issue that is very personal to me.

In the case of Gloria Mendoza, she is running a convenience store where she gives customers a cash payment for their EBT SNAP or Bridge cards and then turns the receipt over to the state in order to get paid back the larger EBT value in cash.

Yes, it is fraud but, like many of the "scammers" in the real world, she is doing it for good reasons (to create more security for her kids).

Unfortunately, in the real-world food stamp debate, we talk way too much about the scammers and way too little about the people who need and use assistance properly. In other words, we punish the vast majority of food stamp users for a small percentage who misuse food stamps.

And, even worse, many times, these "food stamp gourmands" are totally made up by the marketing arm of Fox News and the Ayn Randian Congressional Caucuses.

And, let's assume these serial haters of the poor are 100% right and poor people use their benefits to buy expensive foods. It doesn't make me mad at all that every once in a great while a poor person buys a lobster with food stamps and has a really amazing meal.

Why in the world do we base policy around the cheaters and not around the real needs of people in our communities? And don't even get me started on all of the new paternalistic "work requirements for food stamps.

In addition, I am very troubled by the entire misleading (and often racist) "welfare queen" narrative. Where do we as a society get off demonizing the poor from middle-class or rich ivory towers?