Season 5 Recap (Spoilers)
DONNOT READ IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED THE SEASON
As a fan of the series, I must say Season 5 starts off a little...predictable. It's no doubt that season 4 left us on a cliffhanger; will Dayanara Diaz shoot the corrupt prison guard? As the new season opens, we start right where we left off. And she does shoot him- but in the leg. But he loses a lot of blood. And as the blood sheds, chaotic circumstances unfold among all the prisoners. Suddenly, the shoe is on the other foot. And the guards are taken hostage by the inmates, and forced to endure the unpleasant environments the women have been dealing with forever.
The standout in this season is NOT name-check Emmy winner Uzo Aduba, who I am growing rather tired of. She's Krazy Eyes, just the same, but her tirades are repetitive and we're at the point now in the series where she's just like Piper and Alex- disposable and at the point where we don't care. She just gets annoying, and I hope Emmy voters don't cite JUST her again on their ballots, because she's not even close to best in show.
That belongs to two other women- Danielle Brooks (Tasha "Taystee") and Selenis Leyva (Gloria Mendoza). The former wants justice for the murder of her best friend Poussey Washington, whom if you remember from last season was killed by a guard in a senseless riot. Because she used to be the assistant for semi-corrupt Nick Sandow (known as Joe Caputo), she bares reason to take the death of her friend to the media, online, and even to the governor's office. Her terms: give the facilities better education programs, food, trained guards and of course justice for her friend's death- and they'll release the hostages. If not, the guards will be forced to be tortured, spanked around, sexually harrassed, and even made to put on a Prison version of American Idol (which has one sexy guard doing a hilarious striptease to TLC's "Red Light Special").
Because all of this started due to Diaz's possessing a gun, it's no surprise the gun ends up missing, and then in various hands- including the white trash druggies with bad teeth. As all of this nonsense unfolds, so do "power trips". Each inmate is able to find a place in the prison that best fits their authority. And so Natasha Lyonne and Yael Stone now end up being the "drug" administrators, Lea DeLaria and Taryn Manning occupy the candy and convenience shop, and Piper and Alex find solace building an outside home in the grass (with many others following suit).
There's also the always reliable (and funny) Kate Mulgrew (Red) - who along with the crazy Latino former housekeeper decide to look up records of dirty dealings, while also getting high on speed.
Older inmmates, like our favorite former Patti Mayonaise and the ruggid former girl scout now well into her 60s, find quiet in the old pool room where the "quieter" ladies can all chill out and let the younger gals go nuts and exchange power trips.
Things start getting tense when the "demands" of the inmates are squandered by Elizabeth Rodriguez (mother of Dayanara) going on television and finding out from the "celebrity" inmate Judy King what really went down in the prison, causing for a media uproar. Rodriguez, by the way, might just be the most despicable character on the series. Here's a women who's finally free, and still see's fit to be awful in public to anyone she meets, and still proves to be a horrible mother.
When Gloria finds out her son was beaten severely in the hospital, her own soul starts to show and she doesn't come off as crude as before. Her performance, along with the gut wrenching scenes with Brooks dealing with her grief, are the highlights of this otherwise messy and somewhat unbelievable season.
While I liked the idea of the roles being reversed in the system, and letting the girls "take over" the prison, it didn't stop it from still showcasing that most of these ladies are still manipulative liars and thieves, who are not suitable for the demands they desire. Most of all, it reaffirmed once again why I am so sick of Krazy Eyes. She's just a one-note character now. There are so many other women on this show that deserve recognition, and are not getting it.
Not as powerful as season 4, season 5 still packs a pretty emotional wallop in the final episode, and there's a lot stuff that I did like- including the unexpected humor from the two Latino hot girls who start a YouTube channel for "just being pretty"- or Red's continuous proof that she's a true scene stealer with all her lines ("Russians don't get angry; we get vodka and get depressed").
Season 5 takes place in just 3 days. It's nonstop lunacy from the beginning. I wasn't even able to reveal all the secrets, like the fate of the shot guard- or the fact that Caputo's exgirlfriend Linda suddenly finds herself as one of the inmates (and one of the inmates' "bitches" for that matter). I did watch it on a 3-day binge fest which speaks volumes for the writers keeping me engaged.
FINAL GRADE: B