Oz: "The Routine" Review (In Progress)
Nov 15, 2013 21:11:21 GMT -5
Djse (and a Sack of Cats) and Yuri Petrovitch like this
Post by Arthur Dent on Nov 15, 2013 21:11:21 GMT -5
“Oz is where I live. Oz is where I will die, where most of us will die. What we were don’t matter. What we are don’t matter. What we become don’t matter… Does it?”
The residents of Oswald Maximum Security Penitentiary have this nihilistic message about their value to society or lack of it, their status within society as exiles, enforced upon them consistently by their everyday lives within the prison. The relentless, daily drudgery of the prison routine is an overwhelming burden on their souls, wearing them down and only adding further to the widespread resignation among the various prisoners. Every facet of their lives is precisely controlled, and in the experimental rehabilitation unit known as Emerald City, every moment of every hour is monitored in the name of reducing violence within the prison. Even with the well intentions behind Em City, it seems that everything about this life is calculated carefully to be as dehumanizing as possible. Those responsible for operating this facility are its warden, Leo Glynn, and Terry McManus, designer of the aforementioned Em City, are in a constant battle of wills over its management.
Between Glynn and McManus, played with naturalism and confidence by Ernie Hudson and Terry Kinney, respectively, resides the ideological dilemma perpetually hanging over the justice system. The debate of prison as punishment versus prison as rehabilitation rages deeply between these two, but they are not simply stand-ins. Both are human beings first and foremost, as much as their wards are. McManus may be the resident authority-defying figure among their faculty, but Glynn isn’t entirely happy with it either, simply respectful enough to do his job as the higher authority asks him to. McManus, meanwhile, may have my and I would suspect other viewers’ theological sympathies, but he goes about with such abrasiveness and lack of patience that he is certainly no ideal either. At the end of a long few days, the duo can at least share a mutual reluctance at taking radical Muslim leader Kareem Said into their prison, and mounting frustration at the antics of the hotheaded inmate Dino Ortolani, the two most compelling and potentially dynamic characters introduced so far.
Said is a man of incredible charisma, proving to be immensely captivating from the moment he enters Glynn’s office and utters those first of several immortal lines, in response to being informed that his status as a popular preacher won’t save him from being treated just like all the other inmates after his conviction for blowing up a white-owned warehouse. “How ironic, to finally be an equal in a place where I do not have the freedom to enjoy it.” The earnest compassion for the need for social change, and conviction in his faith and morality, is tempered by his knack for misguided, harmful extremism and failure to recognize that his belief that the inmates of Oz are victims of a cruel establishment cannot apply universally. We as the audience see that some of these men indeed belong in a facility like Oz. This is shown firsthand to Said himself later on, when he is confronted by a white supremacist, and then Jefferson Keane, leader of the prison’s black gang, while preaching to the other Muslims within the prison-
(I'm sorry, I have a couple more paragraphs that I'd like to write, but something has come up and I can't seem to save this as a draft. I'll get back to this soon.)
Side Observations:
* The first time that I watched the episode, the implication that I read, or perhaps merely assumption that I made, was that O’Reilly had gotten Billy Keane to agree to attack and kill Dino in the showers. That’s what it looked like to me. Was I wrong in that? Was Dino merely attacking him for making a pass at him?
The residents of Oswald Maximum Security Penitentiary have this nihilistic message about their value to society or lack of it, their status within society as exiles, enforced upon them consistently by their everyday lives within the prison. The relentless, daily drudgery of the prison routine is an overwhelming burden on their souls, wearing them down and only adding further to the widespread resignation among the various prisoners. Every facet of their lives is precisely controlled, and in the experimental rehabilitation unit known as Emerald City, every moment of every hour is monitored in the name of reducing violence within the prison. Even with the well intentions behind Em City, it seems that everything about this life is calculated carefully to be as dehumanizing as possible. Those responsible for operating this facility are its warden, Leo Glynn, and Terry McManus, designer of the aforementioned Em City, are in a constant battle of wills over its management.
Between Glynn and McManus, played with naturalism and confidence by Ernie Hudson and Terry Kinney, respectively, resides the ideological dilemma perpetually hanging over the justice system. The debate of prison as punishment versus prison as rehabilitation rages deeply between these two, but they are not simply stand-ins. Both are human beings first and foremost, as much as their wards are. McManus may be the resident authority-defying figure among their faculty, but Glynn isn’t entirely happy with it either, simply respectful enough to do his job as the higher authority asks him to. McManus, meanwhile, may have my and I would suspect other viewers’ theological sympathies, but he goes about with such abrasiveness and lack of patience that he is certainly no ideal either. At the end of a long few days, the duo can at least share a mutual reluctance at taking radical Muslim leader Kareem Said into their prison, and mounting frustration at the antics of the hotheaded inmate Dino Ortolani, the two most compelling and potentially dynamic characters introduced so far.
Said is a man of incredible charisma, proving to be immensely captivating from the moment he enters Glynn’s office and utters those first of several immortal lines, in response to being informed that his status as a popular preacher won’t save him from being treated just like all the other inmates after his conviction for blowing up a white-owned warehouse. “How ironic, to finally be an equal in a place where I do not have the freedom to enjoy it.” The earnest compassion for the need for social change, and conviction in his faith and morality, is tempered by his knack for misguided, harmful extremism and failure to recognize that his belief that the inmates of Oz are victims of a cruel establishment cannot apply universally. We as the audience see that some of these men indeed belong in a facility like Oz. This is shown firsthand to Said himself later on, when he is confronted by a white supremacist, and then Jefferson Keane, leader of the prison’s black gang, while preaching to the other Muslims within the prison-
(I'm sorry, I have a couple more paragraphs that I'd like to write, but something has come up and I can't seem to save this as a draft. I'll get back to this soon.)
Side Observations:
* The first time that I watched the episode, the implication that I read, or perhaps merely assumption that I made, was that O’Reilly had gotten Billy Keane to agree to attack and kill Dino in the showers. That’s what it looked like to me. Was I wrong in that? Was Dino merely attacking him for making a pass at him?
