Product Description
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Oz: The Complete Fourth Season (DVD)
(HBO Dramatic Series) The Millennium ended with a bang at Oswald
State Correctional Facility, Level Four--aka, Emerald City--as
racial tensions reached an all-time high. Now, following a
two-week lockdown and the appointment of a new Unit Manager,
things are definitely changing, but not necessarily for the
better. Prison officials are looking for ways to end the
hostilities and return Emerald City to normal...but when was Em
City ever normal? And if anyone thinks the worst is over for Oz,
they're wrong--dead wrong.
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The heightened reality of Oz remains consistently engrossing in
the fourth season of HBO's volatile prison drama. All 16 episodes
were written or cowritten by series creator Tom Fontana, and are
bookended by the wisely sardonic observations of paregic
prisoner Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau), whose terse,
philosophical ruminations about life in "Oz" give the series its
literate edge. The 2000-2001 season finds Oz in the wake of
racial warfare; tensions remain high among the factions that make
the "Em City" cell block a hotbed of seething animosity among the
skinhead Aryans led by Shillinger (J.K. Simmons); Muslim splinter
groups led by Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker), the fearsome Adebisi
(Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) and Supreme Allah (Lord Jamar); and
the resident Mafia, Latinos, and lowlifes who make up Em City's
embroiled population of newcomers, hard-timers, and death-row
inmates. Unit Administrator McManus (Terry Kinney) sets up a
centrally located penalty cage for anyone who causes outbreaks of
violence (which are shockingly frequent and frequently lethal),
but loses his job in a mid-season plot development that spins Oz
into a maelstrom of internal politics and brutal retaliation.
Through it all, Fontana and his collaborators (including guest
director Steve Buscemi) maintain impressive focus on dozens of
finely drawn characters. Laced with sexual tension,
jealousies, religious fervor, and threats of betrayal, the
season's most compelling conflicts involve impulsive killer Ryan
O'Reily (played with cagey menace by Dean Winters) and his
brain-damaged half-brother Cyril (Scott William Winters); and the
manipulative Keller (Christopher Meloni) and his prison lover
Toby Beecher (Lee Tergesen), a lawyer and convicted murderer
whose survival seems perpetually uncertain. Tenuous order is
barely maintained by warden Glynn (Ernie Hudson) and Catholic
counselor "Sister Pete" (Rita Moreno), but the bulk of Oz's
fourth season is devoted to chaos, as shifting loyalties keep all
prisoners (and all viewers) in a state of anxious anticipation.
The criminal histories of many inmates are shown in flashback,
and one death-row scenario (involving guest star Kathryn Erbe)
reaches its inevitable conclusion. By the time episode 16 ends
with a blazing inferno, you'll be wondering about the e of
Rev. Cloutier (Luke Perry) and anxious for the tumultuous events
of season 5. (Commentary accompanies two episodes: Fontana and
Moreno offer informative anecdotes on "You Bet Your Life," but
the Fontana/Winters/Tergesen commentary on "Famous Last Words" is
raucously undisciplined and for hardcore Oz fans only.)--Jeff
Shannon