Look, as I told Otto, I don’t care if you like OZ or not. I don’t even care if your reasons for not liking it are reasonable. You don’t have to defend your opinion to me. It’s not my show, I’m not the producer, the writer, or an actor. I don’t have to answer for it. So I’m sorry if you wasted an hour of your life watching an episode.
Loved the show, and not just because of all the hot guy-on-guy action. It’s classic sopa opera, so if you don’t like that, male full frontal nudity or lots of violence, I can fully understand why you don’t like it.
The fact that Lee Tergesen aka Tobias Beecher never got an Emmy while The Sopranos cleaned up is a travesty. Even in the crappy episodes (pretty much everything frpm the third season on), he gave a great performance as a lawyer-turned-bitch-turned-crackhead-turned-madman-turned-Muslim, etc.
And though I was but a wee child when I watched it, I kind of stopped looking for reality around the time the 12th prisoner was murdered. Or when Augustus Hill spun around in the giant plexiglass cube.
I trust, then, you won’t be returning to this thread.
Anyhoo, Oz certainly had novelty value, and it certainly had an excellent cast. I don’t mind if they portray a ridiculously exaggerated version of prison life, for the same reason I don’t mind if the CSI guys solve more murders in one season than real-life crime techs crack in a whole career. It just got too silly (I’d forgotten until now the subplot about Rebadow winning the lottery, not the mention the IRA guy - another odd resident for a state prison - assembling a bomb) and too dependent on shock to be taken seriously.
In disagreement the thread title, it was good. It simply ran two seasons or so longer than it should have, if Tom Fontana was struggling that hard for ideas. The death of Adebisi should’ve really been the capper, avoiding that whole Querns thing (actor Reg. E. Cathey was really out of his league with this cast, and it showed).
I think that’s it. I finally got around to watching it (via Netflix. I still don’t have HBO. I’m on the final season) and it appeals to the part of me that likes soap operas.
I can ignore the idiotic narration and suspend disbelief for the story lines and the characters that I don’t like and the obvious flaws for the fun. The cast (did anyone not end up on Law & Order?) is pretty ok to very good.
As I vaguely recall, (and please correct me, because I don’t really remember) this was one of HBO’s first dramatic series and a lot of the acclaim was about it being a series on cable and pushing the sex/violence envelope in a direction that network tv couldn’t.
You’re on the final season? The DVD is out? Why didn’t someone tell me! 
See I was always under the impression that it was supposed to be a realistic look at prison life. Now that I see it should be watched like a ridiculous soap opera, I might be able to tolerate it. The clincher the other night that prompted my post was a scene between the irish inmate who had breast cancer and was in love with the doctor… got his apparently retarded twin brother to kill for him. It was shot so terribly I had to laugh but now I know I was supposed to laugh at it. Thanks guys.
I don’t know if it was supposed realisitc or not. I imagine it is not. Someone upthread said he couldn’t suspend his disbelief that far. Look, I’m going to sit on my couch and believe that (1) the lead Mulsim prisoner guy chose to stay in prison rather than be paroled, (2) my kids are NOT tearing up their rooms and (3) this Ben & Jerry’s Black & Tan is full of slimming vitamins and fiber. You can’t stop me.
As far as L&O I do believe that between SVU, Criminal Intent, Regular and Extra Crispy that we’ve seen most the major players in the franchise. I played that game as well, Mr. Bus Guy. I would yell out “You can’t discuss a plea bargain with him. You just raped him in the shower and he paid to have your kids killed!!”
AuntiePam, just checked against Television Without Pity. Apparently, I’m on season 5. Sorry.
Compared to some soap operas, it was practically a documentary. While, to use a previous example, it is highly unlikely that someone would be bricked into a wall behind a refrigerator it is technically possible and doesn’t break the laws of time, space, or physics or push the limits of medical science.
The final season, the sixth, is not out on DVD yet … I think it comes out in September or October. And man, that was one death-filled season. Ah, here we are … September 5th.
I liked Oz a lot, but it was definitely unrealistic and filled with urban legends that were taken at face value. Like “feeding somebody ground glass will kill them slowly over the course of months as their insides get cut up, and they won’t notice it in their food!” and “You’re guaranteed to give somebody full-blown AIDS in a month or two after you stick them once with a syringe of AIDS blood!” or … um … some others that I can’t recall at the moment. Oh, or “We don’t know if lethal injection is painful or not. Let’s request the electric chair for your brain-damaged brother instead.” If I didn’t notice somebody carving into my gums or my stomach with a scalpel after being injected with that stuff, I don’t think anybody’s going to notice that they’ve stopped breathing.
But I still liked the show. I just finished watching all five DVD set. I do agree that “I got parole and life is great! Let’s have a picnic in a meadow! Oh wait, it was just a dream!” is a pretty irritating thing to do, but hey, whatever.
Hey, I liked most of the show all the way through, exceptions being Augustus’ BS and the Poet’s BS.
It was the best soft core Gay porn ever!
Plus, the show apparently gave a job to every male actor within 200 miles of Manhattan. If you watch any of the current 200 versions of Law and Order, you will constantly see actors who were on OZ.
The stories were more than lame, but like any good soap opera, you still wanted to see what happened next.
I really enjoyed Oz, even the last season. I didn’t view it as reality, but as others said, more like a soap opera set in prison. You don’t expect soap operas to be a documentary about life among the affluent.
Having said that, I really found it hard to suspend my disbelief when:
Beecher is finally paroled, then Keller sets him up to violate his parole and he is returned to Oz. I just could not belive Beecher was either so emotionally attached to Keller he could not break free of him, or he was just an idiot.
I wished that backgrounds of characters and crimes they commited were more realistic: maybe have a man who killed his wife to collect her life insurance policy, honest man who made few mistakes here and there and ended up in prison for embezzlement, gym teacher who raped/assaulted one of his students… instead, we have people decapicating undercover police officers/gay lovers with machetes, guy who murders bride and groom on their wedding day in front of hundreds witnesses and leaves a gun with his prints all over it on the scene-I mean, really?, Russian Jew who stabs eldery couple to death on the street in broad daylight, without a mask, gloves or anything, for what, a few bucks, and it is ruled as 2nd degree murder despite the fact that he followed them and had a knife with him, -a guy who killed his parents with a hammer and ate one of them (flashback scene was too fast and unrealistic in that case as well, I doubt that a single blow to a head like that would kill them instantly, even if they were old, it would probably just cause them some injuries but I think it would barely be enough to knock them unconsciousness)… Also the very unrealistic part was the very first murder shown in the show: it was a small shiv, it was one quickly made stabbing wound and barely any blood, yet guy obviously dies. And why the guy shanked him in front of so many witnesses? The guards cuffed him immediately. Mark Mack’s case-he vandalizes a Jewish tombstone on a cemetery and kills a man who worked there and caught him. An African American man. Mark was Aryan and hated both Jewish people and people of all races other than the Caucasian one and murder obviously wasn’t premeditated, yet a guy turns out to be African American, a subject of his hate, and works on a place that represents his other biggest hate (cemetery with a Jewish tombstone)? Such coincidences don’t happen in real life. A second crime that Poet commited-he was sent back to Oz, charged with 2nd degree murder for shooting a guy who was about to pull out a gun and shoot him in front of dozens of witnesses! Even if he didn’t possess a gun legally he wouldn’t be charged with murder, especially since he became sort of a celebrity after being released. The only inmates with realistic backgrounds/crime they commited were Tobias, Chris, Vern and Richard L’Italien. And sort of Shirley I guess. Crime that Andrew Schillinger commited seemed unrealistic to me as well, although I heard that it was inspired by a real-life murder. I totally loved Augustus’s narrations though.
I really enjoyed Oz. I liked watching the lives of different prisoners as jail changed them. I also agree with those who say it is a prison soap opera because I always felt the same.
As Mississippien said, everyone has their own cup of tea. If you didn’t like it because of inaccuries, I understand. But as far as entertainment value goes, it held my attention from beginning to end.
I don’t think so. It seems to me the real problem they had was they had such a limited space. They never could really change things around very much. They were limited in so many ways.
A zombie thread about a canceled tv show that featured a talking ghost? So many jokes, so little time.
LOL. Didn’t even look at the dates. Chuckle away, Superhal.
Yeah, it’s amazing how claustrophobic Oz feels, but I always thought that was done on purpose so the audience would feel as confined as the prisoners. Ditto for everything happening outside the prison, including major life events, happening offscreen.
I liked the part where the tormented guy got high and took a shit on J. Jonah Jameson’s face.
I don’t think I liked anything about the show until I read something somewhere about one of the big mysteries in TV was how Adebisi’s hat stayed on.
Most disgusting part was when Goren’s midget partner showed her bush and I thought she had a mongoose between her legs.