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Raw wizardry of
'Oz' ending
The gritty
prison drama paved the way for other groundbreaking shows
By Matthew Gilbert
The Boston Globe
Feb. 23, 2003
When
prisoners misbehave at Oswald State Penitentiary, also known as Oz,
they're thrown into the Hole. A windowless cell containing only a
wooden bucket for human waste, the Hole is Oz's core of existential
horror, its cement portal to loneliness and emptiness. It's where
bad men are sent to choke on their own anger, to be quieted by
darkness. It's where the animal is tamed.
And the Hole, so stark and symbolic, is one of the many reasons I've
been a huge fan of "Oz," which ends its six-season run at 9 tonight.
Yes, HBO's prison drama is fueled by shower-room shankings, an Aryan
cult, and grotesqueries such as the excretion cocktail mixed by one
Hole-bound inmate. Most viewers have turned away from the show's
in-your-face imagery in disgust, including the Emmy voters, who
consistently ignore stunning acting by Eamonn Walker, Christopher
Meloni, Rita Moreno, Dean Winters, Lee Tergesen and J.K. Simmons.
"Oz," so feral and explosive, is the black sheep of quality
television.
But who said art had to be pretty or that the road to human
understanding was paved with yellow bricks?
"Oz" will go down in history as one of TV's purest dramas ever, a
bold portrait of the human condition in the raw. It is drama
stripped to its barest essentials, from the minimalist set design
and costuming to the terse, explicit dialogue. It's a naked version
of the same tensions that are clothed in colorful New Jersey mob
regalia for "The Sopranos," especially when it comes to the power
plays by which one inmate is made into another's "bitch." And it
contains the same cutthroat maneuvering of "Survivor" but without
the picture-postcard settings or million-dollar payoffs. "Oz" is
human conflict unadorned, as shorn of excess as its one-syllable
title.
The show looks like a laboratory built to conduct psychological
studies. Through the glass walls of Oz's Emerald City unit, as if
through a microscope, we can see the forces of hatred wrestle with
the forces of redemption. Neo-Nazi Vern Schillinger makes newcomers
parade in women's clothing, but then Sister Pete fosters forgiveness
through her therapy sessions. Ryan O'Reily has Dr. Nathan's husband
killed, but then she chooses to heal even those who have harmed her.
Corrupt guards permit murders for a few bucks, but then Em City head
Tim McManus plays camp counselor, the Jeff Probst of lockdown. For
every short-tempered Miguel Alvarez, there is a patient teacher such
as Suzanne Fitzgerald or Stella Coffa, fostering self-respect
through literature and theater.
It's as if this prison tug of war between primal behavior and moral
intervention is occurring within a single consciousness, as if all
of Oz represents the constant feuding among the id, ego and superego
in one individual. But "Oz" is a microcosm of American society, too,
as prisoners from every class and ethnicity live on top of one
another in claustrophobic pressure. It's a melting pot that
threatens to boil over, and often does, as Muslims, white
supremacists, Italians, Latinos, elder statesmen and black street
kids compete for limited turf. Despite the Band-Aids of faith and
art, the troubles never go away, and they result in as many deaths
as a Shakespearean tragedy.
Indeed, "Oz" has a strong theatrical quality to it, and not just
because its plotlines, particularly those involving O'Reily, are
often rooted in plays such as "Hamlet." The "Oz" cast members take
risks we don't usually see on TV, where actors tend to be cautious
about how the public will receive them. They engage in
experimental-theater-style moves that are TV-celebrity taboos, such
as full-frontal nudity, gratuitously cruel behavior, and gay sex.
The tortured love affair between Tergesen's Tobias Beecher and
Meloni's Chris Keller has been an unusually daring venture for two
actors trying to make it in the mainstream (Meloni is also the star
of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit"). And the performances stand
out against the gray monotony of the low-tech prison sets and the
simplicity of the props. Indeed, it's usually clear that the action
is taking place on a soundstage, and the designers never try to
convince us otherwise.
Sometimes - OK, frequently - "Oz" is heavy-handed in its desire to
be more than entertainment, particularly when the narrator, Augustus
Hill, rants about social ills directly to the camera. But to be an
"Oz" fan is to love the show's Big Themes despite their obviousness,
and to forgive its eager intensity as you would forgive a brilliant
but unrefined young poet. "Oz," created by "Homicide" producer Tom
Fontana, has been nothing if not ambitious, and it takes on deeper
issues in one episode than an entire season of, say, "Judging Amy."
"Oz" was HBO's first hour-long drama, and its editing style set an
example for HBO's best series, "The Sopranos." That means it doesn't
contain much fat or redundancy; it also means the writers tend to be
sloppy when it comes to managing the story lines and bringing them
to a satisfying denouement. Awkward plotting is abundantly evident
in tonight's 100-minute finale, a disappointing attempt to tie up
six years of loose strings and then add an ironic twist or two. The
resolution of mysteries such as the disappearance of Luke Perry's
Jeremiah Cloutier are embarrassingly illogical, and longtime
characters such as McManus and Beecher the resident Everyman aren't
given their due. It's an insufficient ending to a show too steeped
in the never- ending human struggle. Maybe that's just as it should
be.
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