Oz: The Complete Series

No, I am not talking about that magical place Dorothy met up with the Scarecrow. And no, I am not talking about Jim Levenstein's buddy from American Pie. No, I am talking about the HBO series that ran from 1997-2003.

I had heard about the series Oz for a long time, but I had no clue what it was about. I knew that it was based in a prison and that it was pretty bad ass. Well, that is definitely true.

The term Oz comes from the name of the Oswald Correctional Facility and the "M" City started up by Tim McManus (Terry Kinney) which was nicknamed Emerald City.

In this part of the prison, prisoners live 2-by-2 in glass cells and are allowed out to mingle in a pretty up-scale (for prisons I believe) room. They do their own laundry and even have a computer room. So, a lot of the prisoners want to stay in this part of the facility.

Unfortunately, this also brings about a lot of what people fear about prisons: rape, death, drugs, etc.

The show is very eclectic in terms of characters, but we follow a handful of inmates for almost the entire run of the series.

Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen) was a lawyer on the outside with a drinking problem and on one night kills a young girl when he drives drunk. He is tossed in the prison and is immediately a fish out of water.

Vern Schillinger (J.K. Simmons) runs the Aryan brotherhood in the prison and in the first episode 'rescues' Beecher from Simon Adebisi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). We soon find out that there was no rescue, but Schillinger intended to make Beecher his bitch and after burning a swastika on his ass raped him.

I don't want to make this a large posting so I will just run down some of the other major characters

• Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau) - provides the narration for the episodes while also being an inmate. Was paralyzed during his arrest so is in a wheelchair during the duration of the show.
• Ryan O'Reily (Dean Winters) - an Irish inmate who likes to make trouble with everyone by joining sides with everyone.
• Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker) - a Muslim activist who tries to rise above the violence and drug use happening in the prison.
• Miguel Alvarez (Kirk Acevedo) - a Latino inmate who longs to belong, but also tries to straighten his life out.
• Cyril O'Reily (Scott William Winters) - Ryan's brother who sustained a head injury and acts like an infant child.
• Chris Keller (Chris Meloni) - Is a friend of Vern, but also becomes the on and off again boyfriend of Beecher.

Along with McManus for the good guys we are given Warden Leo Glynn (Ernie Hudson), Dr. Gloria Nathan (Lauren Velez), Sister Peter Marie (Rita Moreno) and Father Ray (B.D. Wong).

It took me a few episodes to get into this series. It comes at you awfully quick and in a weird manner with Hill's narrations. But, it was a very enjoyable series that I am glad I took the time to watch. It has a ton of violence, swearing, drug use and male nudity - so if those things bother you I would stay away. If you can handle them though I would highly recommend checking it out.

As I was watching I started to see a lot of actors that I have seen in other shows together. Here are a few that I noticed:

• Dexter: Lauren Velez, David Zayas and Erik King.
• Lost: Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Lance Reddick, Harold Perrineau and Ken Leung.
  
• The Wire: Wood Harris, J.D. Williams, Domenick Lombardozzi, Seth Gilliam, Lance Reddick, John Doman, Method Man, Clarke Peters, Reg E. Cathey, Toni Lewis, Frankie Faison, Michael Hyatt - to name the main ones.

That is all I can remember for now, but a pretty large amount of actors from the show have teamed up again on other shows - most notably on The Wire.

Grade:

TV Meme: Day 2 - A Show Needing More Viewers

I actually believe that all of the shows that I watch need more viewers. Each and every year I fear that a show I am currently invested in will get canceled - even though the show itself is amazing it may lack the viewers because of one or more different reasons (terrible time slot, terrible promoting, etc.).

The show I picked, however, has quite possibly the most jumbled time slot in any given week - and that is the 9 p.m. time slot on Thursday night.

It originally started on Monday nights and I felt got a decent following, but for whatever reason it was moved opposite Grey's Anatomy and CSI: Crime Scene Investigation in its second season, and to no one's surprise the ratings took a hit.

The show I am talking about is, of course, Fringe.

The show originally teamed with House on Monday nights in one of the best pairings in television, but for some strange reason they decided to move it to the most crowded timeslot of the week - and despite the show actually getting better, the ratings fell in its second season.

For the most part, the show is on a continuous plot line of Walter Bishop's and William Bell's science experiments - and the Fringe team is out to clean up everything that happens out of the ordinary (which usually finds it way back to having something to do with Bishop and/or Bell).

Occasionally, there is an episode that is tossed out that really doesn't have much to the ongoing plot line - but every so often it is nice to get away from that (sort of a monster of the week type episode).

For the most part, however, we have been on the plot line of this alternate universe that William Bell and Walter Bishop had stumbled across in the past. And in two seasons, it is nice to see how things have progressed - and I have to say this show has had two of the most satisfying season finales I have ever seen (the first season's finale was amazing).

The best part of the show is Walter (John Noble) and Peter's (Joshua Jackson) relationship - and give and take. Walter has become one of the funniest and best characters on television, and I have to admit that Pacey from Dawson's Creek has seriously come into his own in his acting.


When the show originally started I felt the low point of the show was actually the lead of Olivia Dunham (Anna Torv) - as the show has progressed, however, she has really grown on me. I also really enjoyed the character of Charlie (Kirk Acevedo), and I really hope they figure out some way to get him back permanently.

What's difficult for me is that I actually watch all three of these shows (not to mention 30 Rock which is usually on around the 9 p.m. timeslot) so I don't want to tell people to not watch the other shows. But, this show has really progressed and is very interesting - not to mention it sort of blows your mind every so often (something that I need now that Lost has finished).