Welcome to a feature called "Writing Blind." In this series, I will be writing about seasons of television that I watched in the past year or so, but failed to write about at the time. I call it writing blind, because I will be sharing my thoughts months after I have already finished the season. This is both because I want to write about these seasons, but don't have the time to re-watch them and because it is a challenge to hopefully improve my writing.
Oz was created by Tom Fontana. Fontana more than earned his chance in his nearly two decade career writing for other television shows previous to Oz. He earned his bonafides writing for St. Elsewhere and later Homicide: Life on the Street. Though I've seen neither, both are considered among the very best among their time. He didn't only write for them though. He was prolific. For St. Elswhere he was the credited writer in 27 episodes, credited for the story in 61 episodes, and wrote the teleplay in 9 episodes in six seasons. For Homicide, he was credited with the story for 57 episodes and wrote 10 episodes. I don't know how generous either show was with crediting their writers, but he helped write the series finales for both shows so he was obviously important.
Oz is his baby. Barely anybody else writes for that show. In fact, he's the only writer in the first season. I can't think of an example of a show that sustained quality over multiple seasons with only one person writing it (Downton Abbey quickly became awful, True Detective's second season wasn't good, and Vikings is a pretty mediocre show though consistent).
The pilot episode is bold. The majority of the running time is contributed to Dino Ortolani, played by the very capable Jon Seda (The Pacific, Homicide:, and Chicago Fire/P.D.) Well, majority of the time by Oz standards. Anyway, he's one of only two characters who gets any character development and they kill him off by the end of the episode. This is the show announcing it's different than any other show that came before. He and Ryan O'Reilly (played by the wonderful Dean Winters) are so at odds it's clear one of them will have to die before the episode is over. Well, most TV shows - probably ALL TV shows in 1997 - would find a way for both to live and if one of them had to die, it certainly wouldn't be the one whose perspective we've been watching for the whole episode. While Winters makes his impact, he still appears to be nothing better than your average great guest star. So having him kill off what is at this point basically the main character is incredibly bold.
The other character who gets development is Vernon Schillinger, played by the currently in-demand J.K. Simmons. He's a Neo Nazi who doesn't immediately reveal he is a Neo Nazi to the audience or the audience surrogate, Tobias Beecher. Beecher is so much of an audience surrogate, he isn't a character at this point. (That's not a complaint; most shows will introduce you to a setting through fresh eyes and the fresh eyes are basically there to observe.) Anyway, Simmons being cast is actually a benefit in 2015 since it's really hard to imagine him playing an awful character. So when Beecher falls under his command, it's not hard to imagine how. Simmons though is such a good actor that he portrays just enough menace to make you know he'll reveal his dark side.
Beecher gets abused in the most horrific ways imaginable. He's ostracized from his family, he feels enormous guilt over killing a little girl, and Schillinger gets off on humiliating him on every turn. This isn't just for shock value. It's revealing the atrocities of how hard living in life is in Oz. Most people are in gangs so when they get to Oz, they have a group of people protecting them, but Beecher has nobody and it was just a matter of time before someone took advantage.
Fontana is an impatient writer though. He wasn't content to just let Beecher get dominated. So with the blank space allotted to his character - since he was less a character than simply an everyman - his turn to crazy is unexpected. Watching him get tortured constantly would have been boring and awful. Beecher going crazy was much more entertaining. Before he goes crazy, he goes to drugs. Basically with Beecher, Fontana presented every possible avenue with how you adjust to life on Oz: get controlled, go to drugs, or go crazy.
Oh yeah and die, which Beecher doesn't do, but enough characters do in this season that we understand that's one of the possibilities. Ortaloni's death sparks a gang war in the prison, which leads to deaths from both gangs almost every episode in this season. By episode four, one of the other major characters, Jefferson Keane dies. Keane was played by Leon, and he's honestly not a good actor so his death both added the sense that anybody could die and removed a weak character.
One of the big weaknesses of Oz is that it churns up story so fast, we barely have any time to register why the characters are doing it. Most of the cast is strong so when they randomly change heart, they sell it. Leon does not and he's not the only weak actor on the show. A lot of the time, the show seems to skip past the part of where the character decides to do something. It never explains why, though usually that's not a problem as it's either self-evident (Beecher going to drugs) or it's easy to imagine happening (most of Said's plotlines)
Like I said before, this is one hell of a cast. Lee Tergesen is an effective audience surrogate, but he really shines when he's batshit insane. I already praised Dean Winters above and he kind of does the Dean Winters shtick (see: his Mayhem commercials) but it's hard not to love the Dean Winters shtick. He hasn't quite mastered it in this season and he looks surprisingly young, but he finds his character sometime in the middle of this season. Harold Perrineau (Lost) was apparently hired for his oratory skills, but he seems to love narrating the episodes and he's good enough to make me wish he was better used on Lost (WAAAAAAAALT!)
The biggest revelation from Oz though - because most of the good actors I've seen in other things ala Simmons or Winters - is Eamonn Walker as Kareem Said. He's pretty fantastic. He's good in a way where I imagine that this specific role is so perfectly cast to his talents that I imagine I won't find him that good of an actor in anything else he's in, but he's truly an amazing actor if I'm wrong. B.D Wong gets his audition for his long-running role in Law and Order: SVU and he's pretty much the same character, except that he's a priest. Rita Moreno is another actor who is really good in this role as Sister Peter Marie. It doesn't seem like she gets that much to do honestly - not like there's much to give her since she counsels the inmates - but she certainly makes the most of it.
There's also Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje as Adebisi and he's appropriately sick and twisted and enthralling. Edie Falco gets her audition for Sopranos (though she's nothing like Carmela, but it's hard to think this role didn't get her an audition at least), and J.D. Williams as Kenny Wrangler is literally his audition tape for his role on The Wire (essentially the same character, though oddly enough he's older in 1997 here than he is in the beginning of The Wire in 2002. The man didn't age). Lastly, Lauren Velez is effective here and is just straight up depressing if you've ever seen Dexter and what they gave her to do.
Oz's first season is not exactly an experiment, but a test. A test to see what viewers would watch and a test on the sensibilities of your average viewer. It turns out that viewers could stomach the painful, the hard-to-watch, and most importantly, could watch awful people doing awful things. This is certainly not the first show to have as horrific of people as Oz does, but it might be the first to feature as many of them on the same show. I can't possibly put myself back in 1997 when this first aired, but this aired two years before The Sopranos. Oz most likely let Sopranos happened, which arguably influenced nearly every great television show that came after it.
With that said, this is not an A show. I don't think I'll be giving any of the seasons an A. There's either too many weak actors, too many weak storylines, or too frenetic of pacing. This doesn't make it a bad show by any means, it just means it never can quite become a truly great show. It's mostly great for what it did for television more than as an actual show. That's ok. I'd still recommend people watch this show, but after first making sure they don't have any problems with violence of course.
Grade - B+
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