Tag: Diane Guerrero

Chelsea: Immigration Day, Craig Ferguson, Mike Colter and Diane Guerrero

Chelsea Handler Netflix

Today’s episode of Chelsea was all about immigration, except for the segment about Luke Cage and its star Mike Coulter, and Charlize Theron gave the show’s staff and Ms. Handler a test.  We learned that the Statue of Liberty and Justin Bieber are both immigrants and smelly b*tches.

Other lessons included not saying two thousand and eight, and learning just how difficult the test for American citizenship is. Chelsea started with an ode to immigrants and her first guest was Scottish performer Craig Ferguson.

The Celebrity Name Game host talked with Chelsea about being an American citizen and Scotland. Donald Trump was mentioned and essentially the two got on really well.

After a lesson on whether a gentleman looks at a lady’s vagina, they talked about Craig’s kids. They also talked about Tinky Winky and Po from the the Teletubbies.

Throughout the episode a grim Charlize Theron questioned the staff and Chelsea about the constitution. It was shown in parts and it was not pretty. Suffice to say the average citizen would not be able to answer those questions. Theron was suitably intimidating.

Mike Coulter was up next and he plugged his new Netflix series about Marvel superhero Luke Cage.  (Reveal of the evening was Coulter admitting that his wife works for Netflix. She also came with the actor to his interview on the show.)

The actor talked about how fun it is to be a superhero. He and Chelsea also talked about Cage wearing a hoodie. Coulter admitted that after the Trayvon Martin shooting it was a conscious decision to have Cage adopt this look.

Coulter also talked about growing up in South Carolina. Chelsea asked about Colin Kaepernick and the furor over his sitting down for the National Anthem.

Lastly, they talked about using the ‘N’ word in the new Netflix series and how Mike himself feels about using it.  Coulter gave good interview and was entertaining. He also revealed that he is a Chris Rock fan. He also told Chelsea he would love to do another season of Jessica Jones.

The last guest up was Diane Guerrero from Orange Is the New Black. She was there to plug her new book; In the Country We Love: My Family Divided. The book tells of her family being deported to Columbia; she was the only American Citizen in the family, so she remained on her own.

The actress talked of coming home to find her family gone and staying here and going to school without her parents.  She revealed that her story is an American one. The point being that, as Ferguson pointed out earlier, except for Native American’s everyone in this country came from immigrants.

Guerrero supports her family back in Columbia and sketched her plans for the future.

Chelsea finished with Craig joining her for a “What Have We Learned Tonight” segment. The two talkshow hosts engaged in banter and talked looking at boobs and vagina’s.  Craig explained that Chelsea smells good and she replied that it was money.

Great segment with a splendid turn by Theron in the citizenship question segment.

Chelsea airs Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays on Netflix.

Orange Is the New Black Season 4, Ep 5 – Maritza (Review)

Piscatella and Chapman

Last week focussed more on Lolly, Judy King  and Sophia Burset.  Orange Is the New Black “We’ll Always Have Baltimore” zooms in on Maritza Ramos (Diane Guerrero), Caputo (Nick Sandow) and Chapman (Taylor Schilling).   Flashbacks reveal what Ramos did before she entered the corrections system. Caputo attends the conference in Baltimore and Chapman starts her plan to put Maria out of business. 

At the conference, Joe Caputo is captivated by Linda Ferguson (Beth Dover) and motivated by MCC legend Kip Carnigan (Chris Sarandon). There is a budding romance between Ferguson and Caputo that reaches fruition when he is arrested by a Baltimore “rent-a-cop.” She believes he stood up for her when Danny Pearson (Mike Birbiglia) began heckling Linda during her panel.

As the cops come in and start escorting Danny out of the room Joe intercedes for his boss’s son. One officer grabs Joe and he puts the man on the floor. It is an automatic reaction and he immediately begins apologizing. Caputo and Pearson are taken out of the panel room.

Linda vouches for both men and using the plastic promotional handcuffs makes Joe her prisoner. They kiss and things heat up considerably in a matter of seconds. Caputo switches to a different kind of oral action.

Back at the prison: Suzanne (Uzo Aduba) and Lorna (Lorna Morello) team up to catch the “shower pooper.” Taystee (Danielle Brooks)  discovers the Judy King drone picture while looking for celebrity gossip Suzanne requested.  Chapman goes to see Piscatella and complains that she does not feel safe and tells the new captain of the guards that there is gang activity in Litchfield. 

She gets permission to start a group to help stamp out any gangs. Piper calls her new organization the Community Carers and at the first meeting she loses control.  It quickly  turns into a white supremacist meeting.

Maritza volunteers to help Maria’s panties get outside the fence by using her van.  Ramos drives the guards to their homes and she arranges to drop the lingerie off to Maria’a cousin Alonso.

The plan works well, even after Alonzo gets spotted by Dixon.  Thinking quickly Maritza tells the officers that Alonzo is the gardner. In Spanish she tells the pickup man to follow her lead. One of the other guards, who speaks Spanish tells the young inmate that she is more clever than he thought.

As this episode of Orange Is the New Black progresses, Maritza remembers her life before the prison. She was a small time con artist who broke bottles of Vodka (filled with water) and conned the customers into paying for the lost “booze.”

Ramos worked at a club and made pretty good money out of her small  con. One of her victims  tells her that instead of making $50K a year she could make that amount in a day. Maritza responds angrily. “Hey I ain’t no prostitute, even if the guy looks like a [sic] mean dad guy.”

Later we see her all dressed up and in the backseat of her victim’s car. He and a friend are teaching Maritza how to steal cars off the sales lot. She is to pose as  a salesperson and take a rich “old guy” out for a test drive. Picking her mark (What if his name is Mark?) she sets up the test drive only to be joined by a real salesman.

On the drive,  the intrusive sales rep plays 20 Questions asking more and more about the “couple’s” married life. As things begin to get increasing uncomfortable for her, Maritza asks Edward “Teddy” to stop the car.

She rushes out of the vehicle and feigns throwing up. The two men follow and as they ask if she is alright, she leaps to her feet and steals the car.

Orange Is the New Black does these flashbacks extremely well.  We are allowed to see more of the inmates’ backstories and what motivated them to commit crime.  (In Maritza’s case it appears to be pure greed.)

Chris Sarandon was brilliant as the sage Gandi-ish MCC  legend and Dover is excellent as the barracuda that Caputo is falling for.  Guerrero kills it as the cute criminal who got in over her head prior  to prison and may be doing the same thing again with Maria’s panty business.

Once again the writers have given us a taste of working  in a prison.  Caputo’s reflexive move against the cop was spot on, if not a little “loose” but regardless it was a moment of truth.  Perhaps the only complaint in this episode is the depiction of most  of the correctional officers as being bullying douchebags.

As in any job there are a few that fit that bill but most, like Healy from last week, are just trying to do their job properly. (Speaking of properly, those searches were incorrectly done. In real life each of those inmates could have smuggled a bazooka around and not been found out.)

Orange Is the New Black is streaming on Netflix. Stick with the show and see how Chapman’s new group fares.

 

%d bloggers like this: