HBO and Oswald State Correctional Facility and Tom Fontana (Spoilers, natch)

Cafe Society
1

I named the thread so it’ll show up in a SDMB search. Just doing ‘OZ’ won’t cut it.

Thanks to the miracle of filesharing, I have spent two weeks watching EVERY episode. I watched the last one last night.

Now I can’t wait to delete these stupid things from my hard drive.

It started out as great television.

The final season just degenerated.

The final show was just… terrible.

Unpredicatble and unsatisfying.

Ugh. Just how badly did this show degenerate in the final season?

When did it jump the shark?

Augustus’ death, end of season 5?

Doubling the male nudity back in season 4?

Adebisi’s death at Said’s hand, also in season 4?

Agnemennon’s marriage? Cyril’s talking sock puppet? Cyril’s aborted stay of execution? Warden Glenn’s sexy secretary unexplained disappearance?

The Chinese immigrants? Said’s death at a smuggled in gun?

Supreme Allah’s egg allergy death?

Morales’ death at the hands of a killer nurse?

When Poet came back to OZ? When Nappa couldn’t figure out Adebisi infected him? When Dr. Nathan fell in love with Ryan O’Reilly?

When Beecher stupidly risked parole and ended up BACK in OZ, when Keller betrayed him, then turned down a chance to BURN Keller?

Or am I nuts and the show never jumped?

It’s still one of the best shows ever broadcast but OZ went out like a punk, yo.

2

I agree with pretty much everything you said. Oz was amazing. I watched the first few seasons in a state of awe, and couldn’t believe it wasn’t up for an Emmy (still can’t believe Lee Tergesen or Eamonn Walker were never even nominated).
And then…
I can’t pinpoint when things turned bad, but I can say that I didn’t even bother to watch most of the last two seasons. Any time I tuned in, things were getting more and more ridiculous. Of course, I watched the series final out of a sense of loyalty, but it was so utterly craptacular I had to watch part of Requiem for a Dream afterwards to remember what quality writing/acting/cinematography is.
I guess if I had to choose a turning point, it would be Adebisi’s death. Not that I missed him very much, but that seems to be when things started going downhill. Fast.

3

I can pinpoint the exact moment Oz jumped the shark . . .

Season two, when Schillenger and the neo-nazis literally nailed that pedophile priest to the floor.

Gross, stupid, and the beginning of a long downhill slide.

The show was still enjoyable, but I think this was the moment that signalled it’s transformation from serious prison drama to gory over-the-top soap opera.

4

Fibber McGee, I couldn’t pinpoint it until you just nailed it (pun intended.) Season 1 was great, season 2 was good but it started to slip, as you noted, 3 was just as good as 2 imho, but 4 was disappointing, and the rest is just garbage. It’s really astounding how bad the last season was.

One thing that annoyed me was that all of season 3 built up to this race riot thing that was mostly dropped in season 4.

5

Ah, but who could forget the plotline–was it in Season Two?–in which some inmates were artificially aged through some experimental drug in some deranged program to accelerate their sentences?

Almost made me want to put ground glass in my own food.

6

As far as Augustus’s death goes, I think Fontana & Co. could have made much more out of featuring guest monologues in the episodes from the final season. Shirley Bellinger came back, and Schibetta, but I would have shanked someone to see Adebisi come back and frame an episode. If only to explain how he kept his hat on his head. Having Augustus return each week was a real letdown.

I despised the last season love story between Rebadow and Stella (Patti Lu Pone). I couldn’t be arsed to care about them at all.

As far as the final season goes, I did not at all buy the reconciliation between Ryan O’Reilly and his father. Cyril should have been executed the first time; drawing that out was pointless and made the second and final execution pretty meaningless. However, Alvarez broke my heart with Torquemada, when he just gave up after being denied parole.

7

I think it was a growth.