Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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35 of 39 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brian Bloom and Christopher Meloni Together! YES!, October 11, 2004
This, above all other seasons of Oz, has been on my want list for some time. Finally it will be here. I am a HUGE fan of actor Brian Bloom and Christopher Meloni. And to see them together in the series makes me happier than you can believe. The Keller/Beecher storyline is admittedly my favorite, and it is in season four that so much happens in that development. And who else is there to bring about more drama into their lives? Why none other than blue eyed Brian Bloom, that's who. Though the other storylines running are very interesting also, I'd recommend this DVD set to anyone just on the Keller/Beecher/Barlog storyline alone. It has a lot of meat and heart attatched to it. Please don't miss out on this fantastic DVD!
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Oz goes off the rails, but in a good way, May 28, 2007
Coming off the nearly unmitigated brilliance of its third season, season four of Oz sees the show facing the tall order of maintaining the high standards of writing and acting that had characterized much of its history, and more often than not it's a success. This season is certainly not without its problems, some of them more damaging than others, but the show's visceral and emotional intensity is still very much in evidence, and even a flawed season of Oz is better than just about anything else. Season four picks up almost immediately after the conclusion of season three, with racial animosity in Oswald State Penitentiary at an all-time high, the psychotic Adebisi in possession of a gun and waiting for an opportunity to maximize its destructive potential, Beecher and Keller continuing their tumultuous gay love affair while Nazi leader Schillinger nurses a grudge against both, and Officer Whittlesy suddenly nowhere to be found (a circumstance certainly owing nothing whatsoever to Edie Falco's newfound success on The Sopranos). Naturally, it's not long before a dramatic catastrophe shakes up the already precarious situation in Emerald City and brings about a new level of disorder accompanied by a wild surfeit of plotlines and a level of bloodletting that's excessive even by Oz's lofty standards.
All the killing actually becomes a problem for the show as this season progresses--the constant murders begin to feel increasingly gratuitous after a while, to say nothing of the rather odd fact that nobody seems to have much interest in solving them. Obviously a prison show is going to rely heavily on the violence factor, but I think the creators of Oz could've distributed the killings far more judiciously and plausibly--The Sopranos, The Shield, and The Wire all take place in violent environments, but they've still managed to maintain an element of shock and impact when a character gets killed off. On Oz, especially in this season, the deaths (with a few exceptions) and the resulting revolving-door effect on the cast contributed to a somewhat numbing quality that pervades much of the season. Granted, there is the compensating plus of a train-wreck effect, as I often found myself literally unable to look away from all the carnage, but a little more realism would've gone a long way.
In an equally frustrating development, Oz seemed to develop a severe case of ADD in its fourth season, seeing its already somewhat fragmentary plot development crushed under the weight of a huge and fluctuating cast and an emphasis on momentum over coherence. With double the series's usual complement of episodes, we see a small army of new characters come through Oswald-among them an IRA fugitive on the run since Bloody Sunday, a pack of Chinese refugees, a legion of black street thugs, and a whole bunch of other guys I can barely remember-and few of these new arrivals are around long enough to make much of an impression. The result is a nonstop barrage of plotlines centered on sex, violence, backstabbing, and double-dealing among the inmates and staff, with character development often feeling perfunctory. Drug-addled, unpredictable new arrival Omar White, played by Michael Wright, is perhaps the best example of the problems in focus that largely characterize Oz's fourth season. He comes in at the halfway point with the obvious intention of becoming a major character, but only gets about five minutes an episode in which to get integrated into the show's ever-expanding universe, which isn't easy when he's shanking someone or relapsing on drugs on a weekly basis. Sure, Omar is blatantly overplayed by Wright, but it's not his fault--with Omar's limited and extremely busy screen time, nuance isn't exactly an option.
That this season works as well as it does is a testament to the core of characters who've been at its center from the beginning, along with a few newcomers who do manage to contribute something to show's harrowing, explosive approach. Even as Oz heads toward its home stretch, Tom Fontana still manages to find new dimensions to explore for his main characters and unfamiliar situations in which to put them. Sure, the show continues to drag out the Keller-Beecher affair and Ryan O'Reilly's (possibly) unrequited love for Doctor Nathan to diminishing returns, but in other cases we see familiar faces among both the inmates and staff undergoing profound changes in response to a variety of catalytic events. The staff undergoes some major shakeups as Warden Glynn starts to question his priorities in response to a new career opportunity and Emerald City chief Tim McManus slides deeper into depression and instability, but as always it's events among the inmates that take center stage, and to its credit the show is far from out of ideas when it comes to some of the major players behind bars. Kareem Said, especially, continues to emerge as one of the most complex and well-developed TV characters in history, played in memorably intense fashion by Eamonn Walker and imbued by the writing with a level of nuance that would be extremely difficult to bring to a Muslim character in the wake of 9/11. Said finds himself facing down a host of challenges to his ecumenical, non-violent worldview, none more prominent than a mid-season shocker that puts him on a sharp emotional spiral. For his part, it can be a little disorienting seeing a sadistic bigot and rapist like Schillinger studying scripture and eagerly awaiting the birth of his grandchild, but it does actually square with the pro-family, God-country-and-race message he's always propagated. Perhaps the best turn of the season other that Walker's, though, is submitted by Harold Perrineau as Augustus Hill, the wheelchair-bound lifer who serves as the show's narrator and often as its voice of reason. Hill has always been something of a moral center for the show, at least on the inmate side, and season four sees his character fleshed out a lot more fully than ever before as details about his past emerge and collide with some major developments in his present to produce an increasingly complete character in his own right.
Amidst the sea of new faces (many of whom quickly meet their ends), a few characters do also manage to survive long enough and get sufficient attention to become standouts as well. Anthony Chisholm is great as Burr Redding, a crafty, perpetually snarling drug lord hardened by a combination of Vietnam and the city streets he grew up on. Redding may be a vicious stone killer, but he's still got a logical moral code, and he's philosophical and introspective enough that I couldn't help but like him. His shrewd leadership ends up galvanizing Emerald City's black gangster elements for an ongoing war against the Latino faction led by the stylish and calculating Enrique Morales and the mafiosi under Chucky Pancamo, with predictably dramatic consequences for Em City's residents. Presaging the great work he would later do on HBO's incredibly brilliant The Wire, Lance Reddick does a powerful and intense turn as John Basil (aka Desmond Mobay), an undercover cop who goes into Emerald City with the best of intentions but quickly finds himself in over his head. Similarly, future Wire cast member Reg E. Cathey, easily one of the coolest actors hardly anybody has heard of, has a huge impact on the show in a relatively long arc as the charismatic Martin Querns, who replaces Tim as Em City's unit administrator and brings with him a hidden agenda that only serves to heighten Oz's already incendiary racial tensions. Shockingly enough, Luke Perry manages to make a similar impact on the show's dynamics as Jeremiah Cloutier, a larcenous ex-televangelist who comes in and makes some dramatic changes to Oz's spiritual order, at least to the extent that one exists.
In another welcome development, the show does make use of this season's larger allotment of episdoes to expand its focus beyond Emerald City, better living up to its title as it examines much more of its central institution. Continuing and expanding on a saga starting in season two, season four spends a great deal of time following the fortunes of creepy child-killer Shirley Bellinger and her new neighbors on death row. Despite the natural feeling of impending doom, there's still a somewhat lighthearted, darkly humorous feeling to the proceedings on death row, although that starts to subside as its residents meet their inevitable fates, albeit not always in a predictable fashion. The isolated cop wing, too, gets a couple of additions from the regular cast as the tragic story of the perpetually angry ex-correctional officer Clayton Hughes takes a series of turns for the worse.
Overall, while season four doesn't mark the best Oz has to offer, that certainly doesn't mean it's in any way without value. It takes a lot of risks, not all of which pan out, but it does at least demonstrate an admirable commitment to avoiding creative stasis as it approaches the beginning of its end, which is more than can be said for a lot of shows. And as usual, whatever else can be said about Oz, there's no denying its singular ferocity and almost total uniqueness. Despite some reservations, this season (and show) still gets a thumbs-up.
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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Down the road again, February 2, 2005
As the fourth season of HBO's prison drama Oz, created by Tom Fontana and Barry Levinson, opens, it is clear that the yellow brick road to this prison isn't paved with bricks, but with blood. This is the season where things explode rather quickly, including the love saga between Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen) and Chris Keller (Christopher Meloni) when a new inmate (Brian Bloom) enters the scene and causes some havoc. Ryan O'Reilly (Dean Winters) wants revenge on a TV newsman whom he met years before, even if it means using his brother Cyril (Scott William Winters) to do it. Miguel Alvarez (Kirk Acevedo) remains in solitary, wanting freedom more than ever before, while come mid-season, the explosive confrontation between Kareem Said (Eamon Walker) and Simon Adebisi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) will leave your mouth hanging open, and Said has even more problems with white supremicist leader Schillinger (J.K. Simmons) wanting him dead, no matter the cost. The second half of the season, we are introduced to a televangelist (Luke Perry) with an agenda of his own, and an impact will be left that will shape the series until it's end. Warden Leo Glynn (Ernie Hudson) and Tim McManus (Terry Kinney) have their hands full throughout the season, but the superb cast (which also includes B.D. Wong, Rita Moreno, and Biohazard singer Evan Seinfeld among others) does terrific work, and the love triangle between Tergesen, Meloni, and Bloom's characters is surprisingly heart wrenching. Thankfully, HBO released all 16 episodes of the fourth season of Oz on one set, unlike what they've done with the Sex in the City seasons; splitting them up to get more money. All in all, Oz was one of the most underrated shows on HBO (most of the praise went to Sex in the City, the Sopranos, Curb Your Enthusiasm, etc.), and, just as this season proves, it was one of the best.
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