60 Days In: Dangerous Liaisons

600 Zone

Don

When we last left 600 Zone everyone was tense after a 20 hour lockdown after a 30 minute power outage. The annoying kid inmate Dashaun was trying him. Don decided to give his distress signal before he beat the kid down and got real charges. Delrico, his cell mate sees Don is pissed and he comes over to let him know they’ve got his back. Don feels calmer, stops giving he signal and it’s meal time. The crew has to come check on him anyway once he gives the signal. The producer has a conversation with Don in code asking about what is on TV tonight. Don replies he doesn’t know, he just watches whatever comes on. The producer asks, “Is this enough?”and Don replies ” It’s all you need.” (The code phrase for” get me the fuck out of here” this season is “I wish we had more channels.” )

Jon

This season’s eye candy is doing surprisingly well. He seems to understand the mission while so many others seem to think this is just some sort of endurance test to earn a check at the end. He’s been observing a new inmate named Jason. Jason is batshit. Jason slides down the bannister of the metal stairs to the second floor. Jason thinks he is officially, “CIA like a sea, Illuminati, A-Air.” I love Jason. If I was in there and a guy, I’d want to be his cellie. He’d make the time pass quickly. He’s having a good time climbing the stairs and sliding back down over and over but Sims, the older male pod boss quickly enforces the jail rules, because someone had to. He politely tells Jason he can’t be up there because people are trying to sleep. Jason tells him to mind his business. It’s not his job to monitor Jason. Sims is huge and he goes up to the cat walk to explain his job to Jason. A few of the other guys try to call Sims off of him.

Jason morphs into a gay Islamic Jamaican with a potty mouth. It’s pretty funny. Probably not as much if you are locked up with him. Jason sashays around a bit, then starts acting like his mother was murdered and he’s all upset and then he’s fine and climbs he stairs again and sits at the top. Sims is about to mete out some consequences. We know this because he has taken his shirt off. And his necklace which has to be a religious medallion because I can’t believe they are allowed otherwise. But it’s a pretty big necklace for a religious piece. They don’t do the whole unlacing of the shoes thing here because all they have are shower shoes.

Jon wants to get involved, but Sims is too big for that. This time a female CO comes over the intercom. She wants to know why Sims is not enforcing the rules. He says he tried but he’s getting violent (I saw no signs of that) and he’s gonna have to beat his ass unless one of them come in and do their job enforce the rules.The CO tells Jason twice to come down OVER THE INTERCOM and he finally does. Jason sashays away to his room as a Jamaican gay man spewing overt sexual advances. One inmate said, “put me on lockdown.”

After everyone is out of lockdown, Jon invites Jason to sit with him. Jason tries to give him some advice by telling Jason his strategy in jail is to just lay low and not let the ignorant motherfuckers get to him because none of them are worth him not being able to go home.

500 Zone

The last episode ended with Too Tall making it clear to one of the inmates, Marcus, he’s the boss in this jail. Marcus is claiming to be a blood, but Too Tall is a blood and he doesn’t believe him. Too Tall ask if he knows who he is, repeatedly before hitting him in the face. It seems like with so many weapons available the art of the fist fight has been lost. Because Too Tall’s punch is rather disappointing. That doesn’t matter though because a couple of his buddies show up to punch him more severely and then there is a game of where three guys try to score a soccer goal using Marcus’s head. Marcus gets up from it and seems not too much worse for wear, but he wants medical attention. The fight went on until the got tired of fighting. No one came it to break it up. No one is coming to the door Marcus is beating on for help. Help is not coming, Marcus.

Matt

Matt is a former Marine. He meets Rob who was also a former Marine who was “blown up in Iraq” where he got his first head injury. I immediate feel compassion for Rob until I remember the guy that buddied up with Zac in season one on the same premise. It turned out he was not a Marine at all. Rob has untreated PTSD and a brain injury. He’s been arrested 10 times since leaving the military. Matt says repeatedly he has to have his back because it’s the Marine code. During a head count the CO tells Rob to roll his pants legs down three times and he never really complies so he announces to the entire class zone that it is his fault they are… Before he can finish Rob starts mouthing off. Possibly talking about how he could take him down in one round. He asks him what he’s going to do about it. The CO engages in the debate in all the ways that escalate it. They lock Rob in his cell, presumably alone. It’s a lockdown. Everyone is pissed at Rob he gets into a verbal confrontation with another inmate who is a blood who says, “When these doors pop, you pop.” Matt is frustrated because he is going to have to defend Rob when they all jump him.

Rob got a 48 hour lockdown in his cell alone. They took his bed. Matt says this is just going to rile him up. Matt sits outside his door and chats with him. The rest of the pod looks at him like he’s a traitor.

Nate

During a lockdown, Nate gets a new cellmate. I’m not sure if he had one before but he’s getting one now. His roommate somehow knows there are a lot of bloods in this zone. He tells Nate his brother was a blood and he was killed by some other bloods. This is not good news. Desmond says that his brother dying fucked his whole world up. Nate says he is a marine and lost some Marine brothers as a way of connecting to Desmond who seems awfully young. He says his dad was in Fulton County Jail when his mama was pregnant with him. When I worked at a middle school in Savannah I had lots of students like Desmond. They all had probation officers I would meet with.It was heartbreaking. If felt like there was so little I could do to help them get on track and some of their crimes were unspeakable and signs that they had been sexually abused themselves. They got no counseling expect from teachers who may have taken an interest in them. Most didn’t. Most had already written them off. They were 12 or 14 years old. Desmond said his granddaddy died in prison. His father is in prison now. He’s really pouring his heart out to Nate who he just met five minutes ago. He can only take so much.

South Annex

Every season the girls, or at least some of them quickly figure out who else is in the program. This season, Mauri and Michelle are already onto each other. Today the CO comes in and demands that all beds are made and all rooms are clean in compliance with the jail rules. Or they will be on lockdown. Now that the mentions it, the pods look like my house; yet, the guys have a bed check every time the come out of their long daily lockdowns. Michelle says the jail is so nasty she is worried about her physical health being there and her mental health is also suffering. Michelle suffers from panic attacks and while she seems to think she isn’t doing well in there in her interviews, I’m pretty impressed. Her inmates are cheeking meds and sharing them, mostly with a girl named Sydney.

Mauri

The graphic before Mauri’s first scene made me laugh out loud. It said, “Mauri is having trouble fitting in with her cellmates.” To me it read like a first grade teachers notations under the conduct section. “Johnny stuggles to make friend because he tends to hit them.”  It Mauri’s case, Mauri’s cellmates don’t believe her cover story. She said she was an embezzler, but they feel her “cheap wig” belies her story. They plan to interrogate her. Later she asks one of the podmates if there is a problem and she says no. Then another pod mate comes down and takes a shower and mentions they all know she is asking about them. She finally tells Mauri that they all have it in for her. Mauri freaks out and gives the distress signal.

Can we talk about the distress signal? They told them to but their hands behind their neck and make sure they are around a camera. Both Don and Mauri put their hands behind their neck and stared into the camera all wild eyed and scared. In season one it was a white towel draped around your neck. That is something people do. No one stands with their hands behind their neck staring down a camera. It looks stupid and obvious and these people have seen season one.

The producers come get Mauri for an “interview” and she breaks down. She says all the girls think she feels like she is better than them because she’s the only one not taking drugs and drinking. She’s having thoughts of being bullied in school. She dropped out of high school because of bullying. She really needed a place to cry. She’s trying to be strong.

Mauri decides to deal with her issue straight on. One of her pod mates, Bri is telling one of the women that she chooses to be depressed when she could choose not to. As a social worker this irritates Mauri. She defends the girl and starts a mild back and forth with Bri. Mauri says she had no idea that Bri didn’t like her but now that she does they can agree to just keep their distance. It seems to work.

Michelle and Jessica

We haven’t seen much of Jessica this episode but now they are both alone at the same table with no others particularly close by. Jessica is has apparently made Michelle by her toenails. WTF? Also she is standoffish and doesn’t get rowdy with the other girls.  Jessica decides she is sure Michelle is with the program, she wrote on a piece of paper the names of the two females on the production crew. Dayum girl, never write it down. Michelle looks at the note and she is not sure what to do. And that is where the episode dramatically ends.

Next week: Next week, there is a shakedown in 600 after Don’s cellie covers the camera. And just like in season one, there is a huge sewer flood in the South Annex! What are the chances that happens on two different seasons at two different jails?  But it did, and sewer water is raining down inside the girl’s pods. This apparently causes Jessica to want to quit. She uses her distress signal. JESSICA! The one handling everything the best!  Jon has an altercation with Dashaun over cookies.