OITNB S2 E9 "40 Oz. of Furlough" is about:

* The backstory of how Vee (Lorraine Toussaint) met, set-up, and betrayed Red (Kate Mulgrew). Also, Vee is moving her illicit operation from providing only cigarettes to now also the sale of serious drugs.

* Piper (Taylor Schilling) is furloughed for 48 hours. During her furlough, she visits Larry (Jason Biggs), attends her grandmother's visitation and funeral, and goes to visit Red's store (which turns out to be shuttered and for sale).

* Officer Mendez (Pablo Schrieber) returns to full duty at Litchfield and immediately starts cracking down causing Officer Bennett (Matt McGorry) to overreact.

* Red tries (again) to put her full gang back together again after apologizing and encounters resistance only from Big Boo (Lea DeLaria).

* Doggett faces new charges as a result of anger management problems and finds a surprising ally in Healy (Michael Harney).

40 Oz. of Furlough refers to Piper's continuing shift from seeing herself as a society girl to embracing her criminality (which is bizarre by the way). This shift is symbolized by her choosing a 40-ounce bottle of Malt Liquor at a store instead of a bottle of wine.

5. "Mendes Is Back Bitches"

Sorry Jenji, but there is ZERO chance that the Federal DOC, no matter how corrupt their Assistant Warden was, would allow someone charged with sexual assault would be returned to be in a supervisory position over the inmate he assaulted (and consent is irrelevant in a prison context because prisoners are not capable of consent in the traditional sense).

Federal prisons are not islands they are island chains and the people in those chains answer to higher ups. All prisons have rules, even for the administration and most inmates have phone privileges and all inmates have quasi-legal grievance procedures (as I have mentioned before).

Bennett was right that it is not legal to have someone who has yet to be adjudicated for a sexual assault be placed back in charge of the inmate that he was accused of assaulting.

I don't care if he was done with suspension or if Litchfield was having problems with staffing or really anything else. It would NEVER happen.

4. "Shake Out That Pink" & "Nobody Likes To Live Like An Animal"

On the way to her 48-hours of freedom, Piper is given a full body search by Officer Bell (Catherine Curtain) and Bell asks her to cough harder and "shake out that pink."

Later in a discussion with SoSo (Kimiko Glenn), Leanne (Emma Myles), and Doggett (Taryn Manning), Leanne says, "Nobody likes to live like an animal."

One of the main themes of "40 Oz. of Furlough is how prison dehumanization prisoners (both through incarceration itself and also in the ways that they are treated by the administration and the CO's).

Whenever you get a visit, leave the facility, or are moved to a new facility you get strip searched and the searches are exactly that humiliating.

Yes, the CO's do often call you degrading and humiliating names and treat you like an animal or worse.

Yes, when in prison you are constantly forced into humiliating and degrading situations (often as a result of safety concerns).

It might seem like this is a good thing until you remember that over 90% of all inmates are going to return home at some point. The absolute worst thing you could possibly do is convince former inmates (like me) that we have no relationship to the rest of the human race.

There is also the other side of the problem.

Shaming and humiliating inmates make it possible for all non-inmates to feel like it is okay to deny people like me basic human rights, citizenship rights, and dignity upon return.

When you treat people like objects, label them, and reduce them to a sub-human status it makes it okay to brutalize and destroy them.

In other words, crime is wrong for the same reasons that treating criminals like sub-humans is wrong. Two wrongs do not make a right.

This might sound like PC nonsense to some of you, but in my experience, it has real world implications. Inmates return feeling isolated and apart from the rest of humanity and people treat returning citizens like they are and always will be criminals.

It is not a virtuous circle.

3. "Do You Know How Long It's Been Since I Had A Vegetable That Actually Crunched?"

Piper mentions to Larry that she hasn't had lettuce that crunched in a really long time.

Or really vegetables that you recognize at all.