'Orange is the New Black' binge recap: 'We Can Be Heroes'

Spoiler alert! The following contains spoilers for Orange is the New Black season 3 episode 11. Already on to episode 12? Read our recap here. 

Are you binge-watching season 3 of Orange is the New Black? We are too! You can read all our recaps here.

"We Can Be Heroes" closes with the guards singing a rousing chorus of Do You Hear the People Sing?, the revolutionaries' fight song from Les Miserables (I'd like to take a moment and acknowledge how on point this season has been with the closing credits music -- the song selections so far have rivaled Mad Men in their poignancy and appropriateness). What the guards might have thought about as they drank their beers and celebrated Caputo being on their side in the union fight is that the revolutionaries in Les Mis fail, and most of the main characters in the musical die. This is not a good portent for the burgeoning labor movement.

Caputo got his big flashbacks in this episode, which served two major purposes: 1. Proving that he's a "nice guy" who tries too hard to be a "nice guy," and 2. Giving us a Rosa cameo! Any episode of this show with Rosa in it is automatically a better episode. Even if it means we have to endure a Caputo/Fig sex scene.

But it's not just the guards and Caputo who are fighting in this episode, as the "panty ladies" push back against Piper and her increasingly criminal business, Berdie and Healy come to blows, Danny fights to keep his head above water and Piper and Alex just fight. As far as the Piper of it all goes ... look I'm not a fan of hers. I was happy that Alex finally dumped her after pointing out what a horrible person she's become (I'd argue that she's always been a horrible person, but whatever). Danny's self-destruction was predictable from his first bumbling appearance, as was the blowout between Berdie and Healy (they keep coming up with worse and worse sexist things for him to say, and the line about her coming in with a different hairstyle every week might just take the cake).

And remember when I was worried about how the show would handle Pennsatucky's sexual assault? Well I probably shoudn't have been. Unlike many shows on the air right now (cough, Game of Thrones, cough), OINTB managed to handle the fallout from the assault decently, first and foremost being that there was fallout from it (sometimes shows use a sexual assault for shock value and then go on like nothing ever happened because they don't care to show the consequences, and yes I am referring to a certain HBO show again). Pennsatucky is in denial, confused over her reaction to what happened, which is not surprising given what we saw in her flashbacks last episode. But she can't hide her bruises from Big Boo, who used what I will lightly describe as the "tough love approach" to get Penn to open up. Once she does, Boo moves on to the next item on her agenda: Making the donut guard pay. And I'm guessing pay he will.

11 down, 2 to go. Can't believe it's almost over.