Orange is the New Black: The 21 craziest moments thus far

Piper starts a panty racket

Now this is where stuff starts to get a little wacky. Season 3 is a bit of a turning point in the show, in my opinion. Aside from the prison becoming privatized and a host of new inmates are introduced, the writing just starts to get a little… kooky. One such example is when Piper decides to put together her own small business from inside Litchfield.

Now it’s not that weird that this Brooklyn hipster with artisanal soap aspirations has a penchant for starting small businesses. But these aren’t just any old prison-issue panties–these have been worn and “christened” by Piper’s fellow inmates for sale on eBay. Not surprisingly, there’s a big market for used women’s underwear on the internet, with the help of her brother Cal (Michael Chernus). So she has the girls wear them for a couple days, then in turn they get a cut of the earnings.

This endeavor precipitates a different side in Piper — perhaps not as hard-edged as she’d like to be seen, but definitely more hubristic. She’s kind of turning the corner from that pared-down, gangster version of herself, into her self-proclamation of being “gangsta” (specifically “without the A”). At least when she was first checked into Litchfield she was corny in a way that I understood, at this point it’s getting a little ridiculous.