Season 5 drags its feet early on, but it settled into a rhythm I was happy with by episode 4 or 5. Enjoyed it for being just outlandish. Reminds me of Hamsterdam in The Wire. There are some really powerful moments mixed in there, too. A big one is Poussey's library memorial. Brooke has grown on me a lot over time, and I haven't fully appreciated that until recently. Mostly, though, it's an absurd cartoon that provides an entertaining ride. It's really dumb and it falls apart under slight scrutiny, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It's a character focused dark comedy. If the threads are loose I'm willing to give it a lot of slack if it's making me laugh or at the very least showing me something new while these interesting chars do their things.
Couple of other random thoughts and specific criticisms
Jenji Kohen is the horniest person on the planet.
Piper's hollow token activism rears its head again. She keeps getting away with getting portrayed as naive and out of her depth and that's kind of supposed to be seem irreverant instead of how it actually is which is shitty. Her romance subplot with Alex is finally in a place that I would call inoffensive since they spend most of their time focused on each other and being cute together and out of the way, except when Piper can't help but stick her nose into the commotion. She's become less of the focus each season, which I'm grateful for, but I still see no redeeming qualities in her and has developed, but hasn't grown, and she doesn't become less insufferable over time, she just finds radically different ways to be insufferable each season.
Characters that I'm now completely over, moreso than even Piper: Dy, the meth heads, and Lorna. I'm done with all of them. Dy has been the show's dumbest character for a while, and I can't stand her this season. OITNB uses gaping lapses in char consistency to get away with moving the plot forward when it's convenient, it's guilty of that a lot, but no more often than with her. Her shooting a guard and then deciding to wash her hands of everything is baffling. The meth heads and Lorna share the same problem in that they've been allowed to get more and more one dimensional and flanderized over time, and they are so far over the edge that there's no salvaging them anymore. What prospects do these characters have to do anything interesting or redeemable at this point? It would require tearing any suspension of disbelief apart to rework them into actual characters again. Also, a gigantic fuck you to Lorna and the late-game decision to have her tell people with severe mental illnesses they don't need to take their meds.
Taystee is generally awesome, but I cannot follow her character's logic in episode 12. Throwing the deal in the trash because they cannot arrest and charge Bayley on the spot is childish and betrays how intelligent her character otherwise is. They try to explain it away as her being proud and too attached to one single demand, but it's not believable. Taystee is smart enough and generally mature enough to understand how things work, so dumpster-ing everything the way she did just seems odd.
What did the Muslim girl do to get sent to prison? I honestly don't remember if they covered that in a flashback last season. Also, her flashbacks this season were pretty strange.
There's a lot of problematic stuff regarding sexual assault in this season. First there's the playful use of it as a punishment for the guards, which is gross. Like really disgusting. Plus Pennsatucky and Donuts is disappointing and not handled well. I think I can see what they wanted to do with them, but even giving the writers that much credit, it feels wrong. Penns has developed into probably one of my favorite characters on the show, and this feels like a grave disappointment.
As always, Boo, Taystee, Gloria, Frieda are all amazing. Even though I'm disappointed with some of the directions they're taking Pennsatucky's character I still enjoyed her seens, too. Even Alex is super tolerable this season.