OITNB S5 E13 “Storm-y Weather”” is about:

* Riot troops finally breaching Litchfield to bring an end to the riot. As expected, this is not pretty and especially after discovering the body of Humps thing get very nasty. Alison and Janae are two of the first inmates captured.

* The women in the bunker deciding how they will deal with the breach.Some of them stay in the bunker and others (Yoga Jones, Norma, DeMarco, and Nicky leave although Nicky returns).

* Pidge and Ouija aligning with the Nazis and deciding to fight back.

* Angie and Leanne doing increasingly stupider and less sensical things (like setting the records “on fire” even though records are mostly computerized these days).

* Flaritza coming to grips with the end of their Vlogging careers (at least temporarily).

* Chang trading in the port-a-potties for freedom (because apparently even after breaching the prison nobody thought to cover the entire fence line for escapees).

* Nicky helping Taystee and Cindy bring back Suzanne from here near comatose state.

* Doggett & Donuts sitting in his house, hanging out. No, seriously, they watch television and hang out, as if nothing has happened.

* Piscatella admitting his wrongdoing, seeing the error of his ways, and then promptly meeting his maker. Oddly enough, this made me sad.

* The vast majority of the prison being captured, organized in the yard and then moved out. It turns out, as expected, they will be split up and shipped to different facilities (most likely).

* Caputo and Fig informing the CERT team about the pool area after they are told that ten inmates remain missing after the post-riot count ("count" is what is called when officers verify that every inmate is present). The remaining women in Freida's bunker, preparing to be attacked by the CERT team.

5. “We’re Ten Short”

The DOC reports to the Governor’s aide, Caputo, and Fig that after securing the facility that they have counted multiple times and every time they come up ten inmates short.

Far be it from me to expect a Department of Correction to be able to count, but before they attacked the bunker they were short more than ten inmates.

Except, that makes no sense.

After the facility is declared secure, they are missing the following inmates:

1. Doggett - at Donuts house

2. Chang - God only knows where

3. Blanca - Frieda’s bunker

4. Nicky - Frieda’s bunker

5. Red - Frieda’s bunker

6. Frieda - Frieda’s bunker

7. Piper - Frieda’s bunker

8. Alex - Frieda’s bunker

9. Gloria - Frieda’s bunker

10. Suzanne - Frieda’s bunker

11. Taystee - Frieda’s bunker

12. Cindy - Frieda’s bunker

No matter how you count that, they are 12 inmates short. This is really odd because there would be no way the DOC would not know this. They would have an exhaustive count list.

A smart reader suggested that Linda would have been counted which would reduce the number by one. That would make sense except that Linda cannot be counted (which is another real problem). Linda could not be counted because she doesn't have a lock (also known as a bunk assignment number) or a number. They don't do count by simply counting bodies, they count bodies attached to numbers and locks (which is why they were all aligned in a predetermined order on the yard.

Don't mean to get overly technical, but this is why Linda would never have been thrown on a bus and why the count would never have been officially wrong. Could they lose people, of course, but they would know that they lost people (records are kept on computer backed up on DOC servers and probably also in the cloud just like all other data).

Has to be a continuity error. My suspicion is that someone on the writing staff counted the women in the bunker but forgot that Chang and Doggett slipped out through the fence.

Also wanted to give a quick shout out to Uzo Aduba for her well-deserved Emmy nomination. I am also happy Laverne Cox got recognized, although it is hard to imagine how it happened given how she was barely used at all this season.

4. RIP Desi Piscatella

No, seriously, in an odd way, I feel empathy towards Desi Piscatella. I am not sure I can explain it entirely yet. But, I feel empathy for him.

Part of it probably has to do with my belief that all human beings are extremely complicated. We have seen Desi be brutally cruel, deeply loving, and even (in his own strange way) silly and vulnerable.

It would be easy to write Desi off as a psychopath and forget that he is also the kid whose parents tried to force the gay out of him. That he is the person who deeply loved an inmate and then lost him. Of course, he is also the man who tortured another man to death and who out of pure meanness scalped red and broke Alex’ arm.

But there is an even bigger reason not to write Desi off.

Desi represents the point of view of the majority of the public.

Desi is a stand-in for all of those people who love to talk about how great it will be when someone “gets what they deserve” once they get to prison (usually meaning prison rape or a stabbing).

Desi is the physical manifestation of all those people who insist that we treat our prisoners too kindly and aren’t tough enough on crime or criminals.

And I deeply care about every person who feels this way, I used to be one of those people myself, and while I vociferously disagree, I don’t throw people away.