This season was obsessed with systems of power and corruption, and I was really interested in how it played out. There's this trickle-down dehumanization coming from the privatization of Litchfield, and eventually someone was going to get hurt.
That is was Poussey made sense. She's one of the few reliably compassionate, involved inmates and we've seen her protect Suzanne over the last several years. She's middle class and clever and thinks that everyone should be able to talk things out. She's also tiny, small enough that she could never fight off a grown man. She's small enough to get crushed.
And I thought it was brilliant to have poor Bayley be the accidental aggressor, since he is innocuous to a fault. He's dumb and cheery and panics when too much happens at once. If it was Hannibal-Lector-Guard or Sometimes-you-have-to-rape-an-Iraqi-Guard it would have felt like a murder, instead of what it was: a failure of the system. Poor management by MCC led to the walk-out of serviceable guards and the employment of PTSD-ridden guards who see the inmates as enemy combatants. Overcrowding led to violence and unrest. Peaceful protests turned into psychological warfare. Lack of training and oversight led to Suzanne being so deeply traumatized that she throws a fit that distracts an entire room from the fact that a woman is being suffocated in front of them.
And the fallout in the final episode-- SHEESH. I thought Poussey's flashback was great, showing us so much of who she was before she was locked up. And the utter dehumanization of her poor body, just leaving her on the floor like trash while men in suits try to smear her name... I can't. I just can't.
And then in that final shot she breaks the fourth wall and grins at us like:
And I'm in tears. It totally, totally hit me.