Oz (TV series)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article includes a list of references, related reading or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. Please improve this article by introducing more precise citations where appropriate. (July 2008)

This article may require copy-editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone or spelling. You can assist by editing it now.  (September 2008)

This article needs references that appear in reliable third-party publications. Primary sources or sources affiliated with the subject are generally not sufficient for a Wikipedia article. Please add more appropriate citations from reliable sources. (January 2009)

Oz
The title screen of Oz.
Format	Drama
Created by	Tom Fontana
Starring	Kirk Acevedo Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje Ernie Hudson Terry Kinney Rita Moreno Harold Perrineau J.K. Simmons Lee Tergesen Eamonn Walker Dean Winters
Country of origin	United States
No. of seasons	6
No. of episodes	56 (List of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Tom Fontana, Barry Levinson, Jim Finnerty
Editor(s)	Deborah Moran
Running time	approx. 55 min.
Broadcast
Original channel	HBO
Original run	July 12, 1997 – February 23, 2003
External links
Official website

Oz is an American television drama series created by Tom Fontana, who also wrote or co-wrote all of the series' 56 episodes. It was the first one-hour dramatic television series to be produced by premium cable network HBO. Oz aired for six seasons. Its first episode was broadcast on July 12, 1997, its final episode on February 23, 2003.

[edit] Overview

Oz is the nickname for the Oswald State Correctional Facility, formerly Oswald State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison (level 4) at an undisclosed location. Many of the plot arcs are set in Emerald City ("Em City"), an experimental unit of the prison in which the unit manager attempts to emphasize rehabilitation and learning responsibility during incarceration. Emerald City is an extremely controlled environment where there are a controlled number of members of each racial and social group.

The large ensemble cast includes Eamonn Walker, Rita Moreno, Ernie Hudson, John Lurie, Terry Kinney, Betty Buckley, Kathryn Erbe, Christopher Meloni, Lee Tergesen, B. D. Wong, J. K. Simmons, Dean Winters, Scott William Winters, Kirk Acevedo, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Harold Perrineau Jr., Erik King, David Zayas, Lauren Vélez, and Edie Falco.

[edit] Style

Oz is primarily narrated by Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau), former drug dealer, convicted murderer and former crack addict. Now confined to a wheelchair, he appears in surreal segments and introductions that usually relate to an overall theme of the episode, setting up scenes, introducing characters, or adding epilogues. When necessary — usually when a character is introduced — Hill appears as an omniscient narrator. Used as a literary tool of the writers, he narrates the details of characters' lives, their prison number, their crimes, and their sentences. Hill appears as a recurring character within the show's story lines until the sixth season, in which narration by various deceased characters was added to the narration by Hill.

These narrations by Hill break the fourth wall, in that Hill addresses the camera (and thus the audience) directly, out of the fictional context of the scene. Hill also appears in scenes where he interacts with other characters in the story (in which he does not address the camera). Only once in the series did Hill appear to address another character with one of his narrations: in the Season 3 episode "Unnatural Disasters", the character Adebisi turns on a computer and sees Hill—dressed as a pharaoh—speaking to him. (This unusual sight is discounted by Adebisi as a drug-induced hallucination, and he never speaks of it again.)

Augustus Hill's narration over the course of the series is similar in purpose and execution to those of the Greek chorus in ancient theater. Hill's narration provides plot exposition, as well as commenting upon the events of the stories. The narration thus provides the audience a clearer understanding of the narrative's moral and thematic standpoints. Oz was nominated for several Emmys but never won.

[edit] Cast and characters

From left to right: Ryan O'Reily, Vernon Schillinger, Miguel Alvarez, Tobias Beecher, Kareem Saïd. In the front, Augustus Hill.

Oz's initial starring cast included fourteen actors. Four of these were credited as "starring": Ernie Hudson as Warden Leo Glynn, Terry Kinney as Emerald City Unit Manager Tim McManus, Harold Perrineau as inmate and narrator Augustus Hill, and Eamonn Walker as new inmate and devout Muslim Kareem Saïd. Credited as "also starring" were: Edie Falco as correctional officer Diane Wittlesey, Rita Moreno as prison counselor Sister Peter Marie Reimondo, Kirk Acevedo as Latino inmate Miguel Alvarez, Leon Robinson as inmate Jefferson Keane, J.K. Simmons as inmate and Aryan Brotherhood leader Vernon Schillinger, Tony Musante as inmate and Mafia boss Nino Schibetta, Lee Tergesen as new inmate Tobias Beecher, Sean Whitesell as cannibalistic inmate Donald Groves, Dean Winters as manipulative Irish-American inmate Ryan O'Reily and B.D. Wong as the prison chaplain Father Ray Mukada. During the first season Robinson and Whitesell departed with the execution of their characters, and Musante's character was murdered.

Season two saw recurring guest stars Lauren Vélez, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and George Morfogen become credited as "also starring". Vélez played prison doctor Gloria Nathan, Akinnuoye-Agbaje played inmate and Homeboys gang leader Simon Adebisi, and Morfogen played long-term inmate Bob Rebadow. Acevedo, Moreno, Simmons, Tergesen and Winters also joined Hudson, Kinney, Perrineau and Walker as the top-billed cast members.

In season three the following recurring guests were credited as "also starring": Kathryn Erbe as death-row inmate Shirley Bellinger, Luis Guzman as inmate and Latino gang leader Raoul "El Cid" Hernandez, Mark Margolis as inmate and Mafia boss Antonio Nappa, and Christopher Meloni as Beecher's love interest Chris Keller. Akinnuoye-Agbaje was added to the show's top-billing. Falco left at the end of the season, and Margolis departed with the murder of his character.

Season four featured 10 "starring" and 14 "also starring" cast members throughout the season. New additions to the cast were: Betty Buckley as Ryan O'Reily's mother and Emerald City music teacher Suzanne Fitzgerald, Anthony Chisholm as Hill's mentor and stepfather Burr Redding, Rick Fox as basketball champion Jackson Vahue, David Johansen as Jewish inmate Eli Zabitz, Brian F. O'Byrne as IRA terrorist Padraig Connolly, Luke Perry as new inmate and minister Jeremiah Cloutier, and Scott William Winters as Ryan O'Reily's brain-damaged brother Cyril O'Reily.

Many of the actors from Oz worked together on other hit shows after the end of the series.

• Christopher Meloni and B.D. Wong are both regulars on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, while Dean Winters was a main character in earlier episodes. Lance Reddick played a medical examiner in 6 early episodes, and SVU guest-starred Rita Moreno and J.K. Simmons.
• Harold Perrineau, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Željko Ivanek and Lance Reddick all appeared in ABC's Lost. Perrineau and Agbaje as regulars, Reddick as recurring and Ivanek as guest. Ken Leung, who appeared as Bian Yixue in the 4th season episode "Conversions", went on to become a regular in Lost, starting in the 4th season.
• Lauren Vélez, David Zayas and Erik King worked together as regulars in Dexter, on which Scott William Winters had a recurring guest role.
• Edie Falco and Dean Winters were both guest stars on CBS's 30 Rock. Edie Falco also played a lead role on The Sopranos, on which muMs da Schemer had a cameo in season 5 episode "The Fleshy Part of the Thigh".
• Oz and The Wire have an immense number of crossover cast members. Oz actors Lance Reddick, John Doman, J.D. Williams, Seth Gilliam, Wood Harris, Reg E. Cathey, Frankie Faison, Clarke Peters and Domenick Lombardozzi were all regulars on The Wire, while Method Man, Tom Mardirosian and Cyrus Farmer all guest-starred.^[1]
• Kirk Acevedo and Lance Reddick both have supporting roles on TV series Fringe.
• Lauren Velez, Jon Seda (who was a regular on Season 1), and Rita Moreno all appeared in the 1994 movie I Like It Like That.
• Željko Ivanek and Seth Gilliam both appeared in the 1996 movie Courage Under Fire.
• Željko Ivanek, Frankie Faison and Mark Margolis all appeared in the movie Hannibal.
• Kirk Acevedo and Mark Margolis appeared in the series The Black Donnellys.
• Kathryn Erbe is a regular on Law & Order: Criminal Intent. Guest-stars from Oz have included Arija Bareikis, Kevin Conway, Robert Clohessy, Sean Dugan, Susan Floyd, Seth Gilliam, Ray Iannicelli, Jon Korkes, Oleg Krupa, Jordan Lage, David Lansbury, Carlos Leon, Rita Moreno, Lance Reddick, Dana Reeve, Eric Roberts, Kristin Rohde, J.K. Simmons, Lee Tergesen, Lauren Vélez, Thomas G. Waites, Dean Winters, and David Zayas.
• Kirk Acevedo and Blake Robbins both appeared in the same episode of 24, Day 5: 2:00am to 3:00am.
• Harold Perrineau and Terry Kinney both appear in the ABC show The Unusuals.

[edit] Episodes and broadcast history

Oz took advantage of the freedoms of premium cable to show material that would have been too extreme for traditional American broadcast television, e.g., coarse language, drug use, violence, male frontal nudity, homosexuality, male rape, as well as ethnic and religious conflicts.

In Australia Oz was screened, uncensored on the free-to-air channel, SBS. This was also the case in Israel, where Oz was displayed on the free-to-air commercial Channel 2, in Italy where it was aired on the free-to-air Italia 1, in the United Kingdom where Channel 4 aired the show late at night, in the Republic of Ireland the series aired on free-to-air channel TG4 where it was shown at 11pm, and in Brazil, where it was aired by the SBT Network Corporation, also late at night.

In The Netherlands, Oz aired on the commercial channel RTL 5 and in Sweden and Norway, Oz aired on the commercial channels TV3 and ZTV late at night, and in Finland, on the free-to-air channel Nelonen (TV4). In Canada, Oz aired on the Showcase Channel at 10pm EST. In Denmark, Oz appeared late night on the non-commercial public service channel DR1. In Spain the show aired on Canal+, a premium channel. In Estonia, as well as Croatia, the show was aired late at night on public non-commercial state-owned channels, ETV and HRT, respectively. In Bosnia and Herzegovina it was aired on the federal TV station called FTV. In Portugal Oz aired late at night on SIC Radical, one of the SIC channels in the cable network. In France the show aired on a commercial cable channel 'Serie Club', also late at night. In Turkey, Oz was aired on Cine5, DiziMax also aired the re-runs. In Serbia, Oz was aired on RTV BK Telecom. In Panama, Oz was aired on RPC Channel 4 in a latetime hour. In India, reruns of Oz are aired on Zee Cafe in the late night slot (11 pm IST), albeit with some scenes deleted and adult language "muted" out. In Malaysia, Oz aired late at night on ntv7, while the censored version aired during the day.

The program's seasonal length (eight episodes in Seasons 1, 2, 3, 5, 6; sixteen episodes in Season 4) is an example of a trend for cable network programming to feature shorter seasons than American free-to-air channels, which typically feature sixteen to twenty-two episodes per season.

On April 21, 2009 Variety announced that starting May 31 2009 DirecTV will broadcast all 56 episodes in their original form without commercials and in high definition on the 101 network available to all subscribers. The episodes will also be available through DirecTV's On Demand service.^[2]

[edit] References in other media

• An episode of NBC's Saturday Night Live hosted by Jerry Seinfeld featured skit parodying both Oz and the final episode of Seinfeld, in which Seinfeld's character is sent to prison. It was filmed on the actual Oz sets and featured many of the main actors from the series.
• MADtv did two Oz parodies: one with Bill Cosby (Aries Spears) in jail in a skit called Coz, and another in which Martha Stewart (Mo Collins) is sent to the Oswald Correctional Facility, and uses her recipes and home decorating ideas to kill the other prisoners.
• The episode "Fast Times at Buddy Cianci Jr. High" of Fox's Family Guy featured Lois believing her son Chris to have killed a man, whereas it was actually the man's wife who did the deed. Lois briefly contemplates calling the police but forgets it, stating "I can't call the police. I have to get rid of this body or Chris will go to prison, and we all know what happens in prison showers! I've seen Oz!"' The scene then cuts to a group of naked inmates scrubbing each others backs in the shower singing a song to the tune to Merry Old Land of Oz from The Wizard of Oz.
• The Arrested Development episode "Visiting Ours" featured a young, traumatized George Michael Bluth watching an episode of Oz, mistaking the show for the film The Wizard of Oz; as a result, George Michael spends the entire series petrified of prisons.
• In an episode of the Adult Swim series Robot Chicken a segment parodies Oz starring the Scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz" who gets shanked with a shiv in the cafeteria.
• The South Park episode "Cartman's Silly Hate Crime 2000", in which character Eric Cartman gets sent to prison, features music from Oz in establishing shots of the prison, which Trey Parker and Matt Stone state on that episode's DVD commentary they received from the staff of Oz, who were fans of South Park.
• The Simpsons episode "The Seven-Beer Snitch" features Homer Simpson becoming a snitch and receiving a series of gifts and privileges, one of which being an "adorable little hat" identical to the one worn by Simon Adebisi in Oz.
• On another episode of The Simpsons, "Pokey Mom", Chief Wiggum asks a criminal if prison is like what they show in Oz.
• The Venture Bros. episode "Powerless in the Face of Death" features music similar to the Oz opening theme during a prison scene.
• In HBO series Six Feet Under, characters David Fisher and Keith Charles are seen watching Oz and talking about the show on occasion.
• In a Season 3 episode of another HBO series The Wire, Omar Little and Dante are seen watching an intimate scene from a Season 6 episode of Oz between Tobias Beecher and Chris Keller.
• On one episode of Queer as Folk, Brian's nephew says he hopes Brian is sent to jail and anally raped by a black man. Justin comments that his parents must have HBO.
• In an episode of The O.C., when Seth is picking out a comic to give to Ryan's brother in jail, Ryan suggests a different one and Seth says "The guy's in prison man, have you seen Oz? I'm sure that'll be fine..."
• In Tyler Perry's play I Can Do Bad All By Myself, Madea is talking to Vianne about potential names for her child if she and Bobby, an ex-con, have children, and Madea suggested, "This is my new born, Oz."
• Rapper Noreaga references the show on the lyrics to his song "Nothin" with lines such as "Only time they seen jail, when they watchin Oz" and "Adebesi, want a brick you pay double easy"
• Rapper El-P references the show on the lyrics to his song with Ill Bill "Simian Drugs" with the line "You can suck tits like Schillinger's kids in isolation"
• Manga author and artist Sadahiro Mika was inspired to write Under Grand Hotel after seeing promotions for Oz in Japan.^[3]
• On the third season premiere of Will & Grace, Karen tells Rosario that she should be thankful to her for "springing her out of Oz", after Rosario was imprisoned for smuggling Karen't drugs, which was setup by Karen herself.

[edit] Rights

The series was co-produced by HBO and Rysher Entertainment, and the underlying US rights lie with HBO, which has released the entire series on DVD in North America. The international rights were owned originally by Rysher, then Paramount Pictures/Television after that company acquired Rysher. CBS Paramount International Television currently owns the international TV rights, and Paramount Home Entertainment/CBS DVD owns the international DVD rights (the first five seasons have been released outside the US. The sixth and final season was released 22 September 2008 outside of the US).

[edit] DVD releases

HBO Home Video has released all six seasons of Oz on DVD in Region 1 and Region 2. The releases contain numerous special features including commentaries, deleted scenes and featurettes.

[edit] References

• Season 1, Episode 2, DVD Commentary on "Oz: The Complete First Season."

1. ^ "The Wire + Oz". Cosmodrome Magazine. 2008-01-26. http://cosmodromemag.com/content/the-wire-oz-clusterfuck. Retrieved on 2009-02-11. 
2. ^ http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118002639.html?categoryId=14&cs=1
3. ^ *Sadahiro, Mika. 2003, "Under Grand Hotel." Volume 1, chapter 7 postscript

[edit] Further reading

• Stemple, Lara (2007). "HBO's OZ and the Fight against Prisoner Rape: Chronicles from the Front Line". in Merri Lisa Johnson. Third Wave Feminism and Television: Jane Puts it in a Box. London: I.B. Tauris. pp. 166–188. ISBN 1-84511-245-8. OCLC 72151012. 
• HarperEntertainment (2003). Oz: behind these walls: the journal of Augustus Hill. New York: HarperEntertainment. ISBN 0-06-052133-3. OCLC 51241977. ^{[page needed]}

[edit] External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Oz (TV series)

• Oz at the Internet Movie Database
• Oz at TV.com
• Oz's transcripts