No matter how many episodes of Orange Is The New Black I watch, I’m never quite prepared for the emotional rollercoaster ride of a journey that it take us on. Experience isn’t enough to give my brain a little nudge to say ‘mate, brace yourself’ whenever the opening credits start rolling, because no matter how well we think we know these amazing characters, the inmates of Litchfield Penitentiary, there’s never an episode without one of those soul jolting moments that catches me off guard.
The episodes of season five promise to do the same except this time around, the entire series is one amalgamated sensory overload as opposed to the steady sequential telling of one inmate’s story at a time with the handy contextual flashback scenes that we’ve grown to love. We slip back in through the prison gates to find everything just as we left it last summer: Poussey is gone, Caputo is at a loss and Daya has a loaded gun pointed at the head of one of those asshole new prison guards.
But this time your thirteen-episode binge takes you through an unusually detailed play-by-play of what happens to all of the characters over a three-day period. Yep, just three days. While there’s a riot going on.
So much happens but at the same time, very little happens. It’s probably the first time you’ll get a real feeling for what the theme song ‘You’ve Got Time’ refers to – what those of us who have never experienced life in a women’s prison can only assume to be an endless stretch of trying to find ways to keep yourself occupied while trapped in an environment where you have very little control. At least, that is, until a peaceful protest gets messy, an inmate is killed in front of everyone and you start a prison riot to take control.
For all that it might not quite resemble what a real prison riot would look like (guards trapping themselves in the kitchen, sharing a tub of peanut butter seems a bit too far fetched to me) it's a great television riot, though. Or as Morello describes it: ‘it’s like a party, but terrifying’. There are references and echoes to the things that have happened in the real world, things of huge social significance like police brutality, alongside the themes of race and gender that Orange Is The New Black has come to own.
Season five of Orange Is The New Black is intense. Everything seems a bit darker, a little harder to keep track of and a little overwhelming. But what hasn’t changed is its ability to still make you cry happy, sad and funny tears all at the same time. Ready to get stuck in? Here are a few other key things you might want to know about what’s coming up. And yes, spoilers etc, but we've tried to keep it to a minimum.
Justice for Poussey?
So, when we left off, Litchfield fave Poussey had been killed sending shockwaves throughout the prison (and through our laptop screens). As you'd expect, Taystee spends a lot of the series mourning her best friend. Her broken voice calling out that 'they didn't even say her name' will stick with you for a while. Souso also spends most of the series upset and even more lost than she was before she hooked up with Poussey last season.
Without giving too much away, Poussey isn't forgotten. Far from it. People are (and remain) angry by how her death was handled and *want *it to be put right. But as you might expect, it proves difficult to do in the middle of a full-scale prison riot.
Any new cast members?
No new cast members this season, and no, I'm afraid Ruby Rose doesn't somehow magically make a miraculous return to the prison. Instead, you just get a different sort of look at the characters you already love.
The riot brings the prison community together, united in standing up to their oppressors, but at the same time, new cracks and factions start to appear under the pressure of being free in an environment where within a regime (as disgustingly flawed as it was) the inmates continually struggled to find order amongst themselves even then.
How are Piper and Alex doing?
You guessed it - the on again off again relationship of the programme is indeed still on again. And I don't know about you, but I'm pretty grateful for the attention to be on Alex's struggle to keep the death of that shady CO under wraps.
Nevertheless, Piper is just as irritating as she has always been. A bit too ignorant to keep herself out of trouble, and even with Alex by her side to balance out her disposition, Piper still manages to do what Piper does best, and make the shittiest of situations about her, somehow.
**Like this? You might also be interested in… **
How All The Characters In Orange Is The New Black Ended Up In Prison
How Much Of Orange Is The New Black Is Actually A True Story?
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.