Confessions of a Prag

I'm toward the end of the 4th season of Oz, and I think this show just seriously jumped the shark. I'd heard the last couple seasons took some strange turns, but a fucking magic aging pill? Really? Curiosity and the absurdly talented cast are probably going take me through the end, but I'm afraid I'm going to come out thinking the show died with Adibisi.

Which sucks, because it was some really gripping shit for 3 and a half seasons. Beecher, Shillinger, Sister Pete, O'Reily, Keller, Hill, Wittelsy, Keene, all great characters. And no matter how crazy things get from here out, I have to admire how utterly ruthless they are in killing off characters, not necessarily violence-wise (although some of it does get pretty inventive) but story-wise. No one is sacred and no one is safe, and the deaths tend to be genuinely shocking even when they aren't purely for shock value.

Also, what an amazing revolving cast. Most of the casts of The Wire, as well as a ton of future Sopranos and Lost stars, the entire Miami PD from Dexter, and Ernie Hudson. It's an embarrassment of rapey, stabby riches.

A few episodes in, I thought I'd soon be totally annoyed by Perrineau's Greek chorus schtick. Somehow that still hasn't happened.

Beecher vs. Shillinger has gone from totally riveting to ridiculous (they're locked up together but somehow it's their entire extended families that come up shanked) but fun.

For all the holy shit! deaths, some of the survivals are just as surprising. I had O'Reily pegged as lasting 3 episodes at the outside, but he showed some surprising longevity. Then when Cyril came along I was sure he'd be gone within an episode or two, but he hung tough.

It's about 2 episodes past the pill and they're already doing their best to write it out of existence. It's sloppy but has to be for the best.

God, Carver is such a fuck-up on this show. Actually, none of the current Wire alumni have had much luck.

I haven't gotten to that one yet, but it certainly looks like him. It's also hilarious, and emblematic of the decline of the show. For 3 seasons it was gritty and compelling. As it wears on, it's fun and crazy, which is far from the worst thing TV can be, but very far from what got me hooked in the first place.

Actually, pretty much all of the nudity is in the hole, where it's not sexual. And while there's a fair amount of manlove going on, one of the things I've found least believable about the 4th season is the amount of action the inmates have been getting from women. O'Reily is a few years into a life sentence, but still finds himself at the center of a love triangle with 2 women, Keller has a revolving group of female visitors despite preferring men, one of the inmates is marrying Ms. Sally's assistant, and I'm starting to think Em City beats the hell out of eharmony in matchmaking potential.

Finished the 4th season, and man that finale racked up a body count. The end of Perry's storyline was pretty bugfuck, but I like what they're doing with Said. Beecher's parole ended somewhat predictably, but I like that we still haven't seen the outside of Oz "for real". There's been some definite improvement since the Pill, but there almost had to be. Overall, the weakest season so far, but still pretty darn good.

And Jesus, it really seems like the Wire based its entire casting process on giving work to everyone who's character on Oz had a particularly messy end.

Okay, I just heard that Perry actually isn't dead, and the kitchen explosion will bring him back out from Amontillado-land. It almost seems like they're deliberately going way out in left field. Like having an IRA bombing in an American state pen wasn't odd enough.

The idea is that every time I finish a disc I'll jot down a few lines about what I thought of it. I wish I'd started earlier, since I'm afraid it's going to all sound kinda bitchy, and they really can't do much to tarnish the first 3 seasons of excellent TV.

As far as spoilers go, it's been pretty long since it aired, but I still try to be vague about plot specifics or clear about what part of the series I'm going to talk about beforehand. So long as your not leading off a post with "When Beecher died of cholera...", I wouldn't worry too much about it.

Season 5, Episode 1 - "Visitations"

I have to respect the special kind of balls it takes to write the lines "Dear Lord, we ask you to continue to bless the recovery of the Reverend Jeremiah Cloutier, who survived the gas explosion, which in turn freed him from the wall he'd been bricked up inside of..." and have them delivered totally straight-faced.

I'm digging loco Alvarez, but I'm not digging Omar White's psychosis. As good as the actor is with it, they can't get rid of him fast enough.

Was fairly amused by the parade of cocks scene.

Hill's mom is the Oracle 2.0! Took me the entire episode to figure out why she seemed so familiar.

S5, Ep 2 & 3 - Laws of Gravity & Dream A Little Dream of Me

The Perry storyline has sailed waaaay over the left-field wall, but at least it seems to be over. But then, I thought that when they buried him alive and blew him up.

So far, the thing with the fifth season seems to be that what doesn't work is laughably implausible, but what does is great. Really digging the shifting alliances/gang war stuff, and Said letting his inner Adebisi out to play.

My wishes for Omar have sorta come true, as he's becoming more than a psychotic nuisance. Poor Pete Cibetta, though. Guy can't catch a break.

Season 5, Episode 4 - Next Stop, Valhalla

Now they've run out of horrible things to do to the inmates, so they're giving them dogs. So they can do horrible shit to them.

Season 5, Episodes 5 and 6 - Wheel of Fortune, Variety

The duet with Beecher and Schillinger absolutely killed me. And Peter Marie's got some real nice pipes.

Timmy Kirk needs to get to hell and burn already. I am liking that they've sort of gotten over trying to humanize Schillinger. Simmons can play the piss out of any ball of crap that gets thrown his way, but I think I like him best as purely evil. Sort of shaping up to be the Season of Rape.

Season 5, Episodes 7 and 8 - "Good Intentions" and "Impotence"

Overall, I really liked the 5th season. My initial assessment is that its an improvement over 4, but thinking on it, it's mainly because the weak/implausible stuff is clustered at the end of 4 and beginning of 5.

Hill's death was a real shock, even if it hit several minutes before he actually got the shank. His status as the chorus made him seem like the safest of the inmate characters. Should be interesting to see what this does to Redding.

I really hope Aasif Mandvi makes his getaway clean from Robson (big "uugh" to his self-correction, btw), but seeing as how the show has always allowed prisoners an absurdly long reach when it comes to arranging murders/rapes/arson out in the real world, I have my doubts.

Things I'm totally over at this point:
Everything with Rebadow/Busmalles.
O'Reilly's family issues. If he's not directly scheming on other inmates, I'm snoozing.
Beecher pining for Keller. It seems like there's been 2 whole seasons where he's been out of pocket but we're constantly hearing about how much they wuv each other.

I can't believe they closed out the seeing-eye dog storyline without any of the pooches being brutally murdered or raped. Show's going soft in its old age!

Season 6, Episode 1 - "Dead Man Talking"

In theory, I like the idea of dead characters pitching in for narrating duties, but it really didn't seem like they were having Keene say anything that wouldn't have had the exact same impact coming from Hill. Hopefully this is more than a cute gimmick. And Jesus, we get another Beecher/Schillinger relative murdered because they can't seem to take advantage of any of the 9000 chances they've had to just shank each other.

Season 6, Episode 2 - "See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Smell No Evil"

Season 6, Episode 3 - "Sonata Da Oz"

The mayor character was a shitheap on all fronts. For one, it's not believable that a big time, barely-closeted Aryan would be mayor of a major American city in the 21st century. For another, it's absurd that he could have held the office without realizing that pardoning a public official for a major hate crime is a political impossibility. For another, it just served to give us "Schillinger has a member of Beecher's family killed and then finds out something that makes him regret it" all over again. For another, its resolved with a political assassination that seems simultaneously tossed-off and way too big for the world of the show. It's a fairly short storyline, but it's kind of shocking that in the final season they're still having these non-starters and rapidly writing them out.

On the plus side, shooting Said goes to show that it still has balls the size of cantaloupes. I love how there isn't even really a build-up to it (as opposed to Hill, where I was similarly impressed that they'd go through with it, but it was set up rather conventionally). And they actually let Beecher go? I know he'll be back in the mix in no time, but I was actually just as shocked by this.

I'm all for other people posting whatever they want. I hoped this would be more of a general series discussion than my personal OzBlog. Hopefully people are just deferring getting specific until I finish the last few eps.

Season 6, Episodes 4 and 5 - "Failure To Communicate" & "4giveness"

"I didn't become a zookeeper to act like an animal". Such a simple, effective reminder that the violence the guards inflict on the inmates, while sometimes very satisfying, is in its way worse than what they do to each other.

Robson's really developed into an interesting character. His bouncing from bloodthirsty to conflicted with Sister Pete seems simultaneously calculated and believable, which is a tough thing to get right. I'm a little confused as to how his set-up on Cutler worked; did he just hang himself accidentally, or did he actually let his prison-bitch be in charge of asphyxiating himself. Either way, what an idiot.

The Macbeth stuff, while somewhat on-the-nose, is pretty interesting. It could be that it's my favorite Shakespeare, but it parallels the scheming and ambition and crises of conscience that go on in Oz. I'm suspecting now that they killed off Perrineau just because he was resisting doing another modern take on the Bard after Romeo + Juliet.

Jesus, Keller. You start off committing what is, relatively speaking, one of the sweeter murders in Oz, and then you go and do Beecher dirty like that. For shame.

Season 6, Episode 6 - "A Day In The Death"

I'm sort of disappointed that they copped out on executing Cyril. I thought the moment with all the prisoners banging their pods was a great send-off.

It's kind of a shame they haven't done more with the "dead man talking" motif. It's an interesting idea, but the choice of ghost for each episode seems kind of arbitrary and interchangeable, and they all spout off facts with the exact same style as Hill. The Schillinger brothers had a little bit of a nod to their former personalities, but that's about it.

Edit: Although I guess the conceit is that they're all reciting excerpts from Hill's book, so I suppose it makes sense that they all speak in his voice.

Season 6, Epsiode 7 - "Junkyard Dawgs"

God damn. They killed Winston, the bastards. Again, have to admire the balls this show displays right to the end, particularly in the way they didn't really arc to it, cute irony of the lifetime achievement award aside. Yeah, it's another example of the show giving the inmates an extremely long reach when it comes to whacking citizens, but that's been consistent from the start. People often throw "gritty" and "realistic" together when describing adult shows, as if they're interchangeable. But much like The Shield, Oz has always been the former but not really the latter.

As far as Beecher/Schillinger/Keller goes, I see what Alex meant when he said it became Spy vs. Spy. Although I guess the show might have been a good deal more boring if they'd have been satisfied just going after each other with shanks 4 seasons ago.

Series Finale - "Exeunt Omnes"

This was spotty, but overall I liked more of it than I didn't. Felt like kind of a precursor to the Sopranos finale, in that it was deliberately open-ended with some characters' resolutions (while quite different with others).

Beecher/Schillinger/Keller - I actually liked this one quite a bit, even if it stretched the realism of the show way past the breaking point. The whole plot with the fake stage knife was absurd, but very Shakespearean (and not just because of the actual performance). I like how twisted the Beecher/Keller relationship was; in the end he sacrificed himself to rid Beecher of both his Aryan and Keller problems, but he can't be too grateful for it, since it's because of him he's still doomed to Oz.

MacManus - Really liked how they left his future in question. Will he be able to pin the murders back on Devlin? As much as I'm glad he feels obligated to do right by Glynn, knowing MacManus I'd say probably not. But given Querns's track record, they'll probably be looking for a new warden fairly soon, so who knows what's in store for him.

Alvarez - This one was really WTF. Having his resolution tied so much to a brand new (not to mention odd) character was a strange choice.

O'Reillys - As much as a scumbag as he was, my total manlove for Dean Winters made me happy to see Ryan get a little comfort at the end. As for Cyril, I really don't see why they went through the whole reprieve thing an episode or two back just to kill him in the exact same fashion now.

Poet - Who gives a fuck about Poet?

As for the whole, it took a sharp left from reality in its latter half, but it was brutal, shocking, and delivered some damn fine performances and intrigue right to the end. It may have been too spotty for the top echelon occupied by HBO's utter masterpieces (The Wire, The Sopranos, and Deadwood), but when it was at its best, it was on par with them.