Top 5 Crazy Eyes Moments on "Orange Is The New Black"
Jenji Kohan’s prison dramedy is currently my favorite show. What I love the most about it is how it treats all of its characters with humanity and respect as if they were the story’s protagonist. “Orange Is The New Black” doesn’t judge. Instead, it exposes the hurts, secrets and desires that we all carry within ourselves, whether we’ve been to prison or not.
So, as a tribute to these wonderful characters, I decided to start a series highlighting some of their best moments (not that’s it’s easy to choose)!
And why not start with a character who is certainly one of the most unique, compelling and hilarious ones in the show, and who earned actress Uzo Aduba an Emmy award?
Here is my list of the top 5 Crazy Eyes moments!
- Crazy Eye’s and Piper’s “song” (Season 1, Episode 3)
Crazy Eyes is determined to win Piper a.k.a Dandelion’s heart, so she comes up with a catchy “song” that paints an image of the two of them as a couple in simple terms.
“Chocolate and Vanilla,
Swirl, Swirl”
- Crazy Eyes’ reaction to her nickname (Season 1, Episode 11)
Up until this point most of us assumed that Suzanne was used to the nickname. However, during a conversation with Piper, she delivers this gut-wrenching question when we least expect it:
“How come everyone calls me Crazy Eyes?”
Piper just stares at her silently, while we all die a little at home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6HumSy-Eis
- Crazy Eyes’ backstory (Season 2, Episode 3)
Jenji and the writers raised our curiosity to the max when they didn’t show Crazy Eyes’s backstory in season 1, but they soon quenched it (partially, anyway) at the beginning of the next season.
Suzanne’s flashback shows her as a child living with adoptive well-off white parents. Despite her mother’s constant love and encouragement, Suzanne grows up in a world where she looks and behaves completely differently than everyone else. A special moment happens in the hospital scene, where an African-American nurse offers to fix Suzanne’s hair, symbolizing the African-American mother she never had. Which, at the end of the episode, comes back in the character of Vee, who again offers to fix Suzanne’s hair and thus starts developing a bond with her.
- Crazy Eyes explains her erotic space opera (Season 3, Episode 7)
The new counselor, Berdie, asks the girls to write a scene about a past experience to be performed in one of their sessions. However, when Suzanne writes an obscene sci-fi story deemed too salacious even for prison, she’s called over to explain herself. Her answer?
“It’s not just sex. It’s love. It’s two people connecting…with four other people and aliens.”
- Crazy Eyes performs Shakespeare (Season 1, Episode 11)
When a group of delinquent teenagers visits Litchfield, the inmates are advised to “act tough” to discourage them from committing further crimes. Crazy Eyes, however, takes this “acting opportunity” a little too seriously and aggressively performs an excerpt from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in one of the girl’s faces.
What are you favorite Crazy Eyes moments? What character should I write about next? Let us know on Twitter! @talknerdywithus @barbarasoares89