“Hugs Can Be Deceiving” begins with Piper’s (Taylor Schilling) return to Litchfield after her time in SHU and her trial in Chicago, but the episode devotes a great deal of time to Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren (Uzo Aduba) and gives viewers some insight as to why she acts oddly and is so different from everybody else. Flashbacks show Crazy Eyes’ past with her adopted family and how she has been seen as inferior and weird her entire life.

The first flashback in the episode shows Crazy Eyes as a young girl at the hospital with her white adoptive parents. Her mother is giving birth to the baby girl that they thought was impossible to have. Crazy Eyes is ecstatic at the thought of being an older sister, but her parents don’t let her hold the baby for long, so Crazy Eyes begins to yell until a nurse kindly talks to her as though she is a normal girl, which seems to be one of the only times anyone speaks to a young Crazy Eyes this way. Another flashback shows Crazy Eyes at 10-years-old attending a birthday party with her younger sister. The other parents don’t approve of having her at the party, angering Crazy Eyes’ mother, who accuses the woman of being racist since Crazy Eyes is the only black girl there. She is allowed to stay at the party, but the rest of the girls make fun of her and call her stupid. The last flashback of the episode shows Crazy Eyes at her graduation, frozen with fear and unable to sing in front of a laughing crowd; Crazy Eyes hits herself in the head and gets off the stage, similar to her performance on stage for the Litchfield Christmas show. The girls in the prison make fun of her the same way people did her entire life.

Through all the pain and embarrassment, there is one person who is able to make Crazy Eyes feel good about herself: Vee (Lorraine Toussaint). Similar to the nurse in one of the flashbacks, Vee treats Crazy Eyes with respect and as an equal, calling her Suzanne and telling her she doesn’t need someone like “dandelion” – Piper – in her life because she is a “garden rose” while Piper is simply a “weed.”

Piper has finally adjusted to prison life and even scares a new, naive inmate, Brook Soso (Kimiko Glenn). Watching Soso look like a lost puppy in the cafeteria, talk about her old friends and her entitled past is almost a mirror image of the Piper who first arrived at Litchfield in season one. Piper tries to trade Soso for a blanket, introducing the new Piper to viewers. It’s revealed that Crazy Eyes punched Piper in the face during her fight with Pennsatucky (Taryn Manning), making it seem as though both Piper and Pennsatucky were equally beat up after the fight, saving Piper from more punishment.

Vee gets an entire cake made by Gloria (Selenis Leyva) and the kitchen staff by trading them a pack of cigarettes she received from Crazy Eyes. The two use this cake to get closer to Taystee (Danielle Brooks), Poussey (Samira Wiley), Janae (Vicky Jeudy) and Black Cindy (Adrienne C. Moore). Could Vee and Crazy Eyes be the new dynamic duo in charge of Litchfield? It looks like it could go this way, as the episode closes with the Spanish women glaring at Vee after they realize the cigarettes she gave them were old. Though things have changed a great deal since Vee’s last time in prison, it seems that this woman, who even brought Red back to life, may be putting things back the way the were before.

– Jennifer Hogan

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