Oz - The Complete Sixth Season

Before the sixth season of HBO's Oz began, many knew that this would be the last hurrah from creator Tom Fontana and co., as the volitale men behind bars drama comes to an ever dramatic close in it's final eight episodes. Everything that has been built up since the show's debut reaches critical mass in this final season, as characters who have been here since the beginning meet their demise and the light at the end of the tunnel keeps dwindling. For Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen), freedom is so close he can taste it; but not if his sociopathic lover Chris Keller (Christopher Meloni) has anything to say about it. These two men, whose bizarre, savage, and heartbreaking love affair have been a highlight of the series since the middle of the second season, have always helped make Oz worth watching, and when the end comes, it comes without warning, just as long time viewers would come to expect. Beecher also has to contend again with nazi leader Vern Shillinger (J.K. Simmons) who wants his blood, while other prisoners (and long time characters) Miguel Alvarez (Kirk Acevedo), Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker), Ryan and Cyril O'Reilly (Dean and Scott William Winters), narrator Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau), Reabadow (George Morfogen), Robeson (R.E. Rodgers), and Jaz Hoyt (Evan Seinfeld) all have their dates with destiny as well. Even prisoner reformer Tim McManus (Terry Kinney), warden Leo Glynn (Ernie Hudson), and Father Mukada (B.D. Wong) don't remain untouched by the series of events that brings the series to an end that at first may seem unlikely, but in the long run of things, couldn't have been any more fitting. For it's entire run, Oz was one of the best and underrated shows in HBO's history that never really got it's share of the limelight while mega hits like the Sopranos and Six Feet Under took all the glory. The blood drenched yellow brick road comes to an end here, and yes, there's nothing left but a dead end.

For all you OZ fans that have been waiting, as I have, for what appears to be a life sentence without the final season of OZ, the wait is finally over!!! The 3 DVD set will be released in September and Em-City will rule again! I don't know why it took solong to come out, considering all The Sopranos DVDs came out in basically a month. In my opinion OZ is a better show, although Tony and Paulie Walnuts never dissappoint. It's good to know that Tom Fontana (OZ Creator) hasn't forgotten us down in The Hole and decided to give us what we are all waiting for....THE FINAL SEASON OF OZ!

I swear that by the time I was halfway through watching the sixth and final season of "Oz" that I was thinking to myself that there was going to be nobody left alive in the place by the time they faded out on the HBO series. Usually I am not so surprised when I am proven to be right. At HBO's website for the show they have a Rest in Peace section that shows the body count season by season for who killed who and how, and see the victim's crime scene in Oz. They have FIFTEEN of these for Season 6, although some of them (e.g., Rev. Jerimiah, Augustus Hill) happened in previous seasons but have repercussions in this final season. Besides, more than fifteen people die in the final season of Oz. Hell, more than that many people die in the final EPISODE of the series. No wonder the season opens with "Dead Man Talking," where Augustus points out that being dead is no reason for him to stop serving as the omniscient narrator of the series, and establishes a theme for the dead of seasons past to show up throughout the final season and help him with that narrative duty.

There was a potent irony at towards the end of the season when Augustus kept bringing up real world examples of what is happening in prisons, because such polemical observations ring a bit hollow against a series whose penal model is closer to "Escape from New York" than it is to the real world. Do you know how many prisoners are murdered in prison each year since 2000? Four. On average fifteen prisoners will commit suicide. In the real world if four prisoners died at the same prison in a year the warden would be gone and there would be some significant changes in policy at that prison. But even with the high body count Tim McManus (Terry Kinney), the Emerald City Administrator, keeps not only his job but also his faith in the system. If you think about things logically, then you might start wondering if maybe McManus has set up an environment where it is easier for inmates to kill each other.

The master metaphor for "Oz: The Complete Sixth Season" is the maze that McManus paints on the floor of the gym based on ancient yoga teachings: you walk into the maze with a problem and by the time you reach the center a solution will have been created. Several characters walk the maze during the final season, but clearly most of the characters are the sort who would walk directly to the center, do not pass go, so on and so forth. However, there is that tension throughout the season, which starts with Alvarez and Schillinger being released back into the general population.

At the bi-annual review of solitary prisoners, the board decides to release Miguel Alvarez (Kirk Acevedo) and Vern Schillinger (J.K. Simmons) back into gen pop. Alverez is willing to try and find a better bath, but Schillinger is listening to the deal Winthrop (Andy Powers) wants to make regarding Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen) ("Dead Men Talking"). Irony continues to dodge Schillinger and Beecher when Mayor Wilson Loewen ends up in Oz, and Burr Redding (Anthony Chisholm) commits the Homeboys to telemarketing ("See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Smell No Evil"), while Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker) wants the Muslims to publish Augustus Hill's memoirs at Oz ("Sonata da Oz"). Chris Keller (Chris Meloni) and Beecher work out an arrangement ("Failure to Communicate") that has big repercussions immediately ("4giveness") and for the rest of the season.

The inmates support Ryan O'Reilly (Dean Winters) as the execution date for Cyril O'Reily (Scott Winters) comes ("A Day in the Death"). Ryan and Cyril's mother, Suzanne Fitzgerald (Betty Lynn Buckley) is directing an inmate production of "MacBeth," with Schillinger as MacBeth, Beecher as MacDuff, and Keller making sure the final scene of the play will be memorable ("Junkyard Dawgs"). Then we get to the grand finale, "Exeunt Omnes" (to wit, the stage direction "exit everybody"), which has a couple of key scenes beyond the sudden curtain on the production of "MacBeth." Do not expect everything to be wrapped up, because there are just way too many plot lines going on to come any where close to that, but a few loose threads are tied off. Basically, "Oz" goes out the same way it came in, with horrible things happening to horrible people.

Ultimately, "Oz" is one of those shows that will reinforce the beliefs of people at both ends of the political spectrum. Liberals will deplore the inhuman conditions and shake their heads at every story about the real world that Augustus Hill throws at them, while conservatives will find confirmation that criminals are not like ordinary people and that tossing them in prison and throwing away the key is a great idea. Liberals will hate Governor James Devlin (Zeljko Ivanek), Office Claire Howell (Kristin Rohde), and the corrections officers who take bribes to look the other way, while conservatives will be sick and tired of McManus, Sister Pete (Rita Moreno), and Father Ray (B.D. Wong). Both sides get enough victories and defeats to keep them watching until the bitter end. Despite the high body count, that ending was not as bad as I thought it was going to be, which was pretty bad given everything we sat through for six seasons. However, if there is any constant with "Oz" it was that there were solid performances by an impressive cast that created memorable characters that we will remember for a long time.

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