Favorite Characters: Nicky Nichols (Orange is the New Black)

Season 3 of Orange is the New Black, released earlier this summer, of course got me thinking again about that fine show.  Not surprisingly, this led me to thinking about one of my favorites from the series; Nicky is an obvious supporting character and benefits from some of the advantages thereof, but in my book, she’s too awesome not to love.

By the time Piper comes to Litchfield, Nicky has been there long enough to be unimpressed by it.  She generally varies between a lackadaisical deadpan and bemused irony, making her own, slightly disinterested fun where she finds it.  She helps Piper find her footing during her earliest days in prison, filling her in on finer points like Litchfield’s racial separatism (“Just pretend that it’s the 1950s, it’ll make it easier to understand.”)

For the most part, Nicky has gotten to the point where she can take prison in stride.  While she may have smart comments about her work detail, other people’s feuds/affairs/catastrophes, or Litchfield’s latest dehumanizing cost-cutting measure, they don’t tend to actively bother her.  But she’s not like Poussey and Taystee, either, who are lively and always finding ways to entertain themselves.  Nicky is a little more ground down, most likely because she’s been there longer; she conveys a lot of genuine amusement, attraction, and even delight, but she does it in a more muted way.

Nicky’s main indulgence is girls, in whom she partakes liberally.  She has a steady supply of sexual partners in the name of pleasure and fun, though she naturally has her favorites – there probably aren’t many people in Morello’s life who care about her as much as Nicky does, and she has a definite thing for Alex.  This brings her a little hardship, because she’s prone to falling for women who are already hung up on someone else, but it never gets her down for long.  And she’s not one to let second-choice status stop her.  She has a detached, casually vulgar flirting style that she employs on whoever she pleases, and when there’s relationship drama to be had, she comments on it way more often than she gets involved in it.

Because this is Orange is the New Black and you may have picked up the pattern from the other character write-ups I’ve done for the show, Nicky isn’t all about laidback comic relief and enthusiastic sex scenes.  The most humorous characters in this series still have their demons, and Nicky is no exception.  In truth, going to prison might have saved her life, because it forced her to give up heroin due to nonexistent resources.  Though she does well enough when there’s no temptation, it’s clear that her addiction still has a powerful hold on her, and if the opportunity presents itself, she’s not entirely confident in her own ability to resist.

Her own introduction to Litchfield came with a big dose of withdrawal, and she looks to Red, who helped her through it, as a surrogate mother on the inside.  Nicky’s relationship with Red might be more intense than her connection to any other character.  With Morello and Alex, I think she’s able to internalize the fact that she likes them more than they like her and come to a kind of peace about it.  Red, however, she cares for deeply, and she knows that Red feels the same.  This means that when she and Red clash and she falls out of Red’s favor, it’s a hard blow, as she feels the weight of what she stands to lose.