I have the best readers, honestly, and (let’s be honest) pals: they really like these Wentworth recaps so Imma keep rolling them. Starting S2:E4 The Danger Within after the break!

So Bea got a wee bit of payback in the joint last time; not a particularly sophisticated plan but it got her close enough for blood, so that’s better than nothing. She won’t get another easy shot at him, though, and she’s burned a couple of important bridges, Will Jackson being one.

Will’s tucking the ladies into bed in H2; Boomer brings out the hooch to celebrate the gear getting in which pisses Franky off no end. Even in prison, selling drugs is supposed to be on the down low, yo.  Ah but she’s just busting Boomer’s balls, she has REAL booze for them even! Tiny airline bottles of joy, but no fanks from Liz: she’s onna diet. And not really talking to Franky after Su-Yun died.

Party time, excellent! And it’s to one of my fave older dance songs “I See You Baby (Shakin’ Dat Ass)” and there is so.much.arse.shaking!!

Visiting Time again and Simmo’s pretending she isn’t in pain while her hubs hugs her far too tightly. Didn’t she end up in there because he was screwing someone else? I guess she’s let bygones be bygones. NOT letting things be is Vinny, who is out for blood and sending someone to take care of Bea. Or Franky, I couldn’t really tell.

I saw this same scenario on Sons of Anarchy and they came up with a completely unexpected answer, although I don’t think it will work here.  The one biker gang boss tried to kill a couple of other biker gang bosses, so the Other Biker Boss 1 decided the solution was to sell guns to the First Biker Boss instead of starting a war and all the First Biker Boss had to do was allow Other Biker Boss 1 to kill HIS SON. And he went for it. It wouldn’t fit exactly here because BRAYDEN ALREADY KILLED DEBBIE. Sheez

Bea’s on a revenge workout regiment, lots of angry sit-ups and dips and crunches. I don’t know how much that will help, but whatever, abs of steel can’t hurt. Neither can the meditation.

Franky’s reminding Simmo she’s still under Franky’s thumb, any time she wants to finish the pool game! Franky likes to play all cool and collected, but her harping on that pool ball Simmo tossed at her is telling us she’s anything but. I’m kind of worried about our Franky; she’s so on edge these days.

Ferguson’s in Bea’s cell taunting her again; Brayden totally did it! And the New Governor is getting in trouble already, so she’d like Bea’s promise that she won’t cause any more trouble. And she’s going to release Bea back into the general population…WHAT? Even if she isn’t aware the Holts are maybe gunning for Bea (or Franky. Or both), that’s still crazy early.

Simmo catches Bea looking at her Vision Board Bea’s got hidden under her mattress, it’s pictures of known Holt associates, including Simmo herself.

Simmo yells at Bea for a bit for using her to get to Brayden; but Bea doesn’t wanna hear any of that. She proposes a friendship of convenience; they watch each other’s backs and if they hear of danger for the other, they warn each other. Simmo looks tickled, but really: it’s a very smart move of Bea’s. She’s in much more danger than Simmo, who Franky knows how to handle.  Simmo’s got all those Holt connections that can tell her when someone’s coming after Bea and WAIT: didn’t that just happen? Why didn’t she warn Bea? Oh jaysus the words aren’t even out of my fingers and Simmo spills about the hit: yay Simmo!

I see Bea making her own connections in there, away from Franky (and let’s face it) and her pretty useless protection and it’s making me wonder. Will she be capitalizing on the all the goodwill she earned right before she wrote on the inside Jacs’ neck?

New arrivals at Wentworth Correctional! One looks like your typical crankwhore with a complete leg cast and the other…does not. Young, properly fed, well dressed; she definitely looks out of place. This is Jess Warner (Georgia Chara) and she looks TERRIFIED. Oh and in the back we have another unusual newbie; Maxine Conway (Socratis Otto), who is transgender and also dressed far too nicely (but that’s a BAD wig).

Fletcher agrees with me about the hair system; he wants Maxine to take off the wig for the entrance photo. She’s shaking, though, she doesn’t want to, and Deputy Governor Bennett backs her up.

Everyone gets photos, but Jess can’t stop crying. She’s only 22 or so but Will stays calm and gets her info. She’s almost hysterical so he calls Medical while she protests her innocence. She pulls herself completely under control when she sees the nurse from Medical with a needle. She thinks she’s working Will over and I’m pretty sure Will’s seen a few of her type come through. If tears don’t work, she switches to sex.

Vera’s helping Kat the crankwhore (Elissa Stephens) settle in, unfortunately there seems to be a little packet of drugs hiding right by Kat’s knee under the cast. I have run this scene back approximately eleventy thousand times and I don’t see a break at all, izzit healed or did they just not give us enough time to see? She’s super comfortable swearing at Vera, she must be a regular!

Fletcher is very uncomfortable with Maxine; he tells Vera he is NOT searching “him.” Vera wants to know when he has EVER searched a female prisoner? She would not have been sent to Wentworth if she was pre-op, so simmer down, Fletch. Vera will be back in a mo. Maxine is almost as freaked out as Fletcher.

The women are enjoying a little vitamin D out in the yard when Bea comes out blinking into the light. Liz can’t believe she’s out of the Slot already, people are gonna talk about that extra slack Ferguson’s extending to our Queen Bea. We know it’s not a gift, exactly, though, what with hit out on Bea, which she alludes to but doesn’t give up as a certainty.

Liz brings up what I wasn’t smart enough to be thinking: we have three new people in today, which one is our potential hitperson? The one with the maybe fake cast and foul mouth? Or the young one with the ability to fake emotion convincingly? I don’t think Maxine is innit; she’s too quiet and let’s just say Vinny Holt’s gang is probably slightly less enlightened than Fletcher.

Oh gawd, Bea brings up Nash and Liz gags; it’s all she hears about! But everyone is distracted by the new arrivals being brought into the yard: Miss Doe Eyes first, then Maxine and all you hear is people shouting “what are you??” and Boomer… shut it. I know you’ve been asked that too and I bet it didn’t feel good.

Bea watches the new inmates with a worried eye, while Liz watches her. There isn’t much our Liz misses, she sees ALL.

Nash calls Dory over. They bond over the bird again while he rubs her finger and I must be catching some of Dory’s middle schoolness because I immediately thought “he rubbed her RING finger!!” CO Faulkner (Tony Briggs) breaks it up, and then heads to listen to the game with CO Miles. Show time!

Boomer and Ugly go check out the drugs, LOTS there, yay! In that case, Boomer can “authorize payment” *unzipping zipper* and how often to you think these guys wash their junk? Like, regularly?

DoeEyesJess is in the lunchroom being followed and “helped” by Bea; she’s really shaky still, but we know she can shut that off like a toddler facing a timeout, so. Bea does not help Maxine.

Bea asks Simmo if she recognizes anyone, no, but she throws Sky’s name in there too. I could see that, Sky is only loyal to the smack and she’d be a great choice for the Holts, she’s already embedded with Franky’s crew and easily led by her addiction.

Maxine tries to eat lunch, but people are whistling and calling her a freak and just as Kat calls her a freak, she leaves. I’m surprised Bea hasn’t gone over and made friends, Bea is all about the kindness. Boomer can be a real ahole sometimes, you know?

In the laundry room, Liz has a new sewing machine, yay! Which leaves the old one in the way and too heavy to move solo, so Fletcher taps Maxine to help. Let’s just say he doesn’t ask her very nicely, but she comes right back at him: if he wants her help, he’ll learn some manners. He rebounds to snark something appropriate and it’s a showdown of the highest order. Maxine wins and it is GLORIOUS.

They’ve dragged in into the hallways and guess what comes up? NO, GUESS?? That’s right, Maxine’s phantom penis. I’ve mentioned this before, in a recap for Après Ski from Bravo; gay people get allllllll the fun questions in small towns (prison is like a small town), don’t they? When WAS the last time you asked a straight couple who rode who like a drunken cowboy last night? Right about half past never, right? But it’s considered completely appropriate to ask “who’s the boy?” in a gay, lesbian or queer relationship, as though anyone needs to explain the inner workings of THEIR relationships. I can only extrapolate that the invasion of privacy towards transgender peoples is about eleventy thousand times worse. Essentially the same basis: hey! You’re different from me and I’m curious, so you’ve become a Curiosity to me, not a person, and since you’re smiling / grimacing and not telling me to fcuk off (I bet you’d get tired in a hurry of having to telling well-meaning but rude AF people to fcuk off), Imma just ask! Still got your junk?

This isn’t Maxine’s first rodeo, “you should try it. It does WONDERS for the complexion.” Fletcher walks away trying to figure out if that was a shot.

Franky’s got her eye on Jess already. “Hey kiddie. Spose a fcuk’s out of the question? I’m in H2, door’s always open.” *friendly wave* That Franky, always willing to make new friends.

Jess is working Fletcher HARD, and where he’s usually on alert for that sort of thing, perhaps the loss of the promotion and Ferguson jamming her boot so firmly up his arse have unnerved him. Maxine glares.

Vera comes in to take the newbies to the shower; Maxine doesn’t want to shower with the gang; “you understand.” Simmo does not understand; “this is a jail, honey. Not the Shangri-la.”

But Vera does, so she tells Maxine the alternate times and hopefully nobody gets unruly. Maxine smiles at Bea before she goes into her room AND WAS I WRONG?? IS SHE THE HITPERSON?? Nah, she seems too nice!! She does have muscles, though, dragging that sewing table around. Hmm. Hahaha, okay, Simmo thinks Maxine smiling at Bea means Maxine is pre-op, but oh. No, wait, maybe it’s because of the shower and maybe that’s what she meant and that’s not funny. I bet Maxine didn’t want to shower with a bunch of people trying to stare at her ladybits.

Later, Bea’s gathering stuff in a dark corner by herself while I scream “WHY ARE YOU ALONE IN A DARK CORNER BY YOURSELF????” and a noise startles her. She’s kicked a screw, where did that…she looks up just in time to see a sewing machine come plummeting down straight towards her head.

Okay. So. Maxine knew where that sewing machine was and is one of the few that could wrestle it around, but I still don’t know. That seems like too easy of an answer. I will say there is no way 80 pound Sky lugged that anywhere. Kat could have used her crutches as leverage and Jess could have used those blinky, blinky lashes: they moved 260 pounds of Fletcher just two minutes ago.

Liz doesn’t agree that it’s too pat, she thinks it’s “the bloke” which Dory calls “the worst disguise EVER.”

Sky’s cozying up to Maxine in the yard, receiving two boxes of something under Liz’s watchful eye, seriously: does Liz ever miss ANYTHING? Liz stops Sky after, Maxine was buying a razor blade. Is that for her hair removal?

I think I’m twisting myself into a knot trying to exonerate Maxine, I just DO NOT see Vinny Holt having a transgender person on the payroll and I do NOT see the prison being too stupid to check to see if Maxine was pre or post-op.

Miles tells Fletcher that some drugs have done missing from Medical; I didn’t quite catch the name but it is of the type that causes seizures and possibly kill someone. Could the timid Jess have snagged that as a way to poison Bea? That would be apropos for the blinky fake-tears crowd.

Bea snags Miles as she’s walking away; will she be doing the prisoner’s Special Spend this time? Oh, this must be when the prisoners get to request things with money from their accounts. That’s maybe why Fletcher didn’t want to do it, I bet hair dye and bras feature heavily. I say that because I would buy at least one of those as soon as possible. A friend of mine was in jail and she said they don’t give out brassieres at all! WHAT?

Bea doesn’t want any more hair dye or lingerie, fanks, she wants information from Miles. She wants to know the background of the new prisoners brought in and if they have any ties to the Holts. Miles says she’ll look into it, but only because she has money on Bea making the rest of the week alive. That’s cold, CO Miles, stone cold.

Watching that little conversation is Ferguson, who now knows that CO Miles is compromised and Bea is scared.

Franky’s boxing in the gym when Bea finds her; she wants to buy a weapon. What does she need it for? Brayden isn’t coming back so who is it for? For protection and sure it will cost you and that’s business as usual for Franky. The only thing that seemed off about that was when Franky asked how she could know Bea wasn’t planning to use it on HER and Bea shot back “how do I know it isn’t YOU?” and hm.

It’s fun times in the garden lot, with everyone placing bets on whether Maxine has a penis or not, sigh. Miles is in for 50 that Maxine is all woman and honestly. Dory walks in to find Boomer on her knees, about to make a withdrawal from the Bank of Ugly Beej Installment Plan, so now she knows about the drugs and everything. Dory’s FURIOUS that Franky’s using the garden project as a way to run drugs, the women are really enjoying it and if it gets shut down because of this…Franky tells her to chill the eff oot, hey, maybe she can arrange for some alone time for her and Nash! Do THAT!!

Fletcher’s dragged Kat down to Medical. He thinks she took the drugs and he wants a strip search and cast x-ray but Rose tells him he needs consent to do that. Fletcher is out of control. Will comes in, Fletch attacks him for Ferguson writing him up for leaving the sewing machine in a dangerous place and this is ALL in front of a prisoner and Ferguson walks up just then. She’s had enough: her office, now.

Will gets outside to see his bike with the tires slashed, I’m sure he’s meant to think that was Fletcher, but I’d put money on Ferguson dividing and conquering again. Will stares at the CCTV cameras and then heads back in to see who did what to whose flash bike.

He’s sorting through all the camera feeds when he stops to listen to Fletcher and Vera talk and ohhhh no. He brings up Meg and him and you know Will’s gonna know what that means. And he does. Damnit! Will was just settled down again!

Will finds Fletcher in the hallway, but only pops him once and runs off, that’s surprising. Good! But surprising.

Speaking of surprising, Bea’s looking for Franky in the rec room when Franky jumps in behind her and pushes her up against the stacks. Jaysus, she’s gotten a zipgun for bea, it has an actual bullet innit, but just one, so she’ll have to be careful.

Miles has Bea’s info on the newcomers: Maxine tried stabbing her boyfriend, Kat tried to hold up a 7-11 and there is no information on Jess, it’s been marked private.

Oh ffs, Maxine is in for her shower and Boomer’s come for the party. Maxine doesn’t look scared, anyway, good for her. Maxine leaves, she doesn’t care about the packet of biccies Boomer has riding on whether there are franks and beans in the mix.

Bea’s snuck into Jess’s cell, she wants answers. Okay, we get Jess’s story and it’s a little complicated, so bear with me. Jess’s file is sealed because she has a previous conviction for murdering a child. She was let off because they found the real killer, which is why she isn’t in Protective Custody. She’s in jail now because she defended herself firmly against the child’s father, who went after her. Got it? Good! She cries and cries, but we know she can turn that off, so.

Will isn’t talking to Fletcher, but at least he isn’t hitting him any more either, so, good call! Fletcher immediately attacks Vera, she must have said something! He’s just tooooo easy to manipulate, he would have been a terrible Guvnor.

Liz bursts in on Maxine, ah ha, I was right! Maxine wanted that razor for hair removal! Liz says something about Jacs, which worries Maxine: “Jack?! *sotto voice* Is this a tranny block?” Liz is so RELIEVED! She laughs and explains that Jacs is dead, because Bea killed her AND STAY AWAY FROM BEA. She was planning to, jeez, Liz!

Bea’s in for a shower and Jess is giving her a very wide berth. Bea has to put the zip gun down to get wet, though, that’s no bueno. Maybe she should sneak it inside her ladybits instead? Bea’s shower is taking FOREVER!!!!

Oh and next to her is the cast Kat was wearing, that’s it!! It’s Kat! RUN, BEA!! Kat jumps her in the shower, getting a few slashes in and EEEEE holyshiteholyshitehollleeeshite it’s almost all over when a fist comes out of NOWHERE and knocks Kat the fuck OUT. It’s Maxine who helped Bea and we see ladyparts and I don’t know if that was strictly necessary but YAY MAXINE!!!!  Oh thank goodness.

Ferguson gives Bea the good news in Medical, Bea was sure lucky “that transgender person” was there to help her. Bea doesn’t need anyone, she thinks and a confusing conversation with the Governor follows. Ferguson is pushing Bea to form alliances, numbers are important in here and is she suggesting herself, or that she run a crew to oppose Franky and the Holts and Bea and I just don’t know. Why would a governor advise an inmate to gang up?

 

Will’s walking Bea back to her cell, he thinks the zipgun he found was Kat’s and he has interesting information onnit. It was boobytrapped, anyone who used it would have lost an eye and probably a hand as well. Huh. Was it defective or booby-trapped? Did Franky know?

Bea goes right to Franky, who DID know the gun was defective, but she thought it was for Simmo to take HER out.

The paranoia in jail must be off the charts.

“I’m not stupid enough to put a weapon into the hand of my enemy.”

“Yeah? Well I’ll remember that” and Bea struts away.

Bea approaches Maxine in the common area to thank her for saving her life, ohhhhh, MAXINE was the one who put the zipgun in Kat’s cell! She’s awesome!  Bea tells Maxine she shouldn’t be shy about showering with the other women: she looks great.

I’m not crying over Maxine’s face then, you’re crying!!

There is one thing Bea could do for Maxine…Makeover time! Woot!

Closing montage: Miles got the ladyparts pot; Dory got the Nash with a side of O Face and Maxine made a bunch of friends. Alls well that ends well, which makes me nervous for the next episode. Until next time you lot! Cheers