OITNB S3 E6 “Ching, Chong, Chang” is about:

* Chang’s backstory, she was a less than attractive young woman and so her brother couldn’t arrange someone who was willing to marry her and no longer wanted to be responsible for her. Eventually, he hires a matchmaker but the man sees her and bails out (the matchmaker was Madame Gao from the MCU FYI).

Chang ends up working for her brother, somehow becoming a gangster, and ultimately getting brutal revenge on the arranged groom who was supposed to marry her but backed out (it is unclear if this is what got her arrested).

We also find out that Chang secretly wants to be a writer, that she is really good at being invisible, and at making lemonade out of lemons. Unfortunately, when Chang finally tries to reach out to the other inmates through her writing, they reject it.

By the way, I would never have used the very offensive and pejorative title of this episode in the recap but for Chang’s response to Doggett. When Doggett says “Ching, Chang, Chong” Chang responds, “Fuck You Cracker.”

* O’Neal and Bell finding out that Litchfield is hiring new part-time CO’s. Basically, the MCC people are making Caputo feel secure and important at the same time that they are cutting back the inmate's wages and benefits. He is so happy to be appreciated that it is easy for MCC to run circles around him on his CO’s.

* A glimpse into life working at Whispers, I found the entire thing to be an excellent demonstration of how wage exploitation works.

* Lorna Morello starts a scam to get men to become pen pals with her, visit her, and put money in her commissary account. This is 100% something people in prison would do.

* Lolly shows up and asks for a Kosher meal (which, yes, is a real thing in prison). The Kosher meals are much better than the normal meals, so it starts to create a run on Kosher meals.

* Red and Sam have a discussion about why relationships in prison are always suspect, especially between CO’s and inmates. Ultimately, the resolution of this discussion results in Sam getting Caputo to go along with letting Red go back to working in the kitchen.

Red Velvet Is Bullshit

I wanted to take a second to mention that Jenji and the writers nailed the way crux of the financial problem that both states, federal, and private prisons face. Facility costs, employee salaries, and employee benefits are responsible for over 60% of prison costs in the United States.

You will hear people on television and in the papers talking about per-prisoner costs, but that just isn’t true (it is like saying social spending is more responsible for deficits than military spending which is total nonsense).

Over the last few decades, DOC’s have done everything they could possibly do to cut prisoner costs to the bone (warehousing, privatizing medical costs, cutting back on programming, privatizing food, making prisoners pay for everything possible, reducing pay for prisoners, basically everything you can imagine).

Obviously, a privatized prison company would cut prisoners as close to the bone as possible and then cut everything else they can possibly cut (including CO salaries and benefits). One of the interesting elements of this episode is that it highlights how BOTH prisoners and CO”s are squeezed in many of the same ways by the system.