Orange is the New Black

Tough, occasionally oppressive, and--against all odds--still funny when least expected.

The fifth season of the series continues in the pitched, passionate style that's Orange at its juiciest.

In its fifth season, the most important takeaway is that Orange Is the New Black” is a show that continues to take gutsy, filthy risks--port-a-potties are a major plot device this season, with all the scatological torture that implies --when it could be resting on its beige-uniformed laurels. It works.

Wwhether they say so or not, everyone seems aware that prison sieges don’t end well. That knowledge invests the season with purpose. More than ever, Orange is like a speeding vehicle with a wheel missing: It doesn’t always steer steadily, you can feel the chassis shimmying and straining, but the velocity is urgent.

Despite the chaotic start, the new season mostly upholds the series’ honest, humorous look at the prison populace.

This season was almost told in real time, with the 13 episodes taking place over the course of about days. ... It’s a choice that does elevate this season and give it new focus and directive. ... But, as the show has always struggled with tone, in later episodes the series delves far more into horror tropes than you might expect, in legitimately horrifying ways.

This season of Orange gets better and better the longer it goes (though, weirdly, the slasher homage is dropped into the middle of the otherwise very good back half of the season), and the final three episodes go from strength to strength. ... There are a lot of plot holes and missteps along the way. But that doesn’t negate the power of the closing passages of the season.

In some cases, the heightened stakes of the season help deliver some of the show's best performances yet and beats of staggering emotion. In other cases, a series that has reliably been careful to treat even the ugliest behavior with nuance pushes to such extremes that it threatens to undermine a lot of what came before.

Orange Is the New Black is a frequently great, occasionally maddening TV show. That’s still the case even in a season that only covers three days in the lives of its many, many, many intricate characters.

Viewers are likely to be just as polarized by the riot, which undermines the humanity of some of Litchfield’s inmates by showing them embracing violent vengeance. Like it or hate it, though, this season of the award-winning show manages to feel more relevant than ever.