OZ: The Complete Sixth Season

Review By: Stephen Snart
StephenSnart@TheCinemaSource.com

For six long years, HBO’s award-winning series OZ violated various taboos in regard to televised content by displaying a brutal, uncompromising look inside prison society. OZ is short for Oswald State Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in an undisclosed location. Much of the action takes place inside an experimental unit of the prison nicknamed “Emerald City” where the self-righteous Unit Manager Tim McMannus (Terry Kinney) strives to emphasize rehabilitation and productivity over purely restrictive incarceration.

The lengthy opening credit sequence before every episode incorporates every element of the show that’s likely to put off viewers: sodomy, shiv-inflicted murder, execution, self-mutilation and nudity. You can’t fault OZ for showing its cards up front: if you can sit through this, it’s a pretty good indicator that you’ll be able to stomach an entire episode.

The sixth and final season begins Sunset Boulevard-style, with the recently deceased Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau) narrating from beyond the grave. In the cliffhanger season five finale, Augustus sacrificed himself to save a fellow inmate during a heated prison brawl. In the previous seasons, Augustus narrated every episode through on-screen direct address in a series of segments scattered throughout, usually expounding upon a central theme within the specific episode. In this last season, Augustus still narrates about half the episodes but sits out for a couple in order to allow for guest narrators. The squatters are similarly made up of former inhabitants of OZ who met their demise one way or another within the prison. Past characters like Dino Ortolani (John Seda) and Shirley Bellinger (Kathryn Erbe) return to wax philosophic on subjects ranging from forgiveness to the art of communication, making suitable surrogates for Augustus.

Each episode houses a myriad of characters and a wealth of plotlines run concurrently. Occasionally it can be difficult to keep track of the different characters and their different plights but the acting is so universally strong that most of the actors manage to make their characters regularly distinguishable. Also of help is the show’s built-in episode recap structure that incorporates flashbacks to previous episodes and seasons to help chronicle the various plots.

On average, each episode has two moments of utter shield-your-eyes-and-cock-you-head repulsion: usually one violent and one sexual. The conclusion of episode 2, entitled “See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Smell No Evil,” incorporates both simultaneously and is one of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen. However, the writing by show creator Tom Fontana is so consistently good that it’s hard to let a little unwanted sodomy stop you from tuning in to the next episode.

The grand question that is raised throughout the series is whether the show subscribes to Aristotelian existentialism (essence precedes existence) or Sartrean existentialism (existence precedes essence). Every day in OZ is a struggle to survive and the prisoners employ several different theories on how to get by. In the series finale, “Exeunt Omines,” the actions of Chris Keller (Christopher Meloni) that not only directly affect two ...