Oz chronicles life inside an experimental cell block in the Oswald Maximum
Security Correctional Facility: Level Four called Emerald City. Under unit
manager Tim McManus and Warden Leo Glynn, the inmates in Em City all
struggle to fulfill their own needs. Some fight for power; either power
over the drug trade or power over the other inmate factions. Others want
money, either through slinging 'tits' (drugs), gambling or other scams.
Others, Corrections officers and inmates alike, simply want to survive long
enough to make parole or even to see tomorrow. The show gives a
no-holds-barred account of prison life with all the plots, subplots and
conflicts given context and explaination by the show's wheelchair-bound
narrator, Augustus Hill.
OZ chronicles the attempts of McManus (Terry Kinney) to keep control over
the inmates of Em(erald) City as well as the drug trade and the violence.
There have been many groups of inmates during the run of the show and not
everybody makes it out alive. There's the gangstas (Adebisi, Wangler,
Redding, Poet, Keene, Supreme Allah), Muslims (Said, Arif, Hamid Khan),
Italians (Pancamo, Nappa, Schiebetta), bikers (Hoyt), Aryans (Schillinger,
Robson, Mark Mack), Christians (Cloutier, Cudney), Latinos (Alvarez,
Morales, Guerra, Hernandez), gays (Hanlon, Cramer) and a whole pile of
others (the O'Riley brothers, Keller, Stanislovsky, etc.). And there's a
great "everyman" character called Beecher who gives a good look at a normal
man who made one tragic mistake. Besides the regular inmates, there's guest
stars such as Method Man, Luke Perry, Master P, Treach, etc. and a bunch of
prison staff doctors (Dr. Nathan), a nun/psychologist (Sister Peter Marie),
a bunch of guards some honest, some crooked and of course the warden Leo
Glynn. The whole thing is narrated and held together by inmates Augustus
Hill, who provides the show with some context, some sense of theme, etc.
and ties everything together really nicely.
