If Oz was the first serial prison drama on HBO, there are a few scenes in the early
episodes which seem too convenient, or gratuitous. The elimination of the
Schibetta’s without much pushback from the families who once ran New York,
while clever, smacks more of an Agatha Christie murder mystery than any real
life crime syndicate. The godfathers weren’t that stupid, nor so blind as to
not be able to put two and two together, even if their power was on the wane at
the time Fontana created the show. Walker’s Said rejection of Governor Devlin’s
clemency is too strident, regardless of
what sociology teaches about recidivism. If Kareem had been a real life figure
the Catholic Church itself might have been hard pressed not to nominate the man
for sainthood. His entire character arc is passive aggressive martyrdom, riot
and fundamental flaws in justice aside; and though one might ask why a lawyer
guilty of vehicular homicide would be placed in Oz, while acknowledging that
rape and physical torture desensitize, Beecher’s slasher killing of the
relatively civil Nazi Metizer strains credulity, just as Alvarez blinding Officer
Rivera is medieval barbarity, even for a hard time facility. That type of
mutilation, goaded into or not, falls into the category of sensational gore on
display for shock value. Fontana doesn’t know what to do with the character
after the graphic reverberation of the assault, and it can be considered a failed
story line upon which Krauthammer’s “blame the culture” mantra may be duly
aimed, spilling right into the Dick Wolf universe like a stream out of time continuum,
a prelude to hard boiled Baked Apple.
Although
I was aware of Meloni being in the cast when I put the first season on my watch
list, I had no idea I would be playing musical chairs with eighteen years of
Law & Order spin offs. Barring the majority of Wolf’s big guns, every Law
& Order recur is there, like a revolving door from cable’s seepage into
network, Erbe the delusional child killer marinating into Kathryn Erbe street
wise sidekick, Simmons the Aryan potbelly to Simmons the urbane criminal
analyst. Eamonn Walker, even Edie Falco, let alone that Meloni is barely
credible as Keller. Yet I did a partial run through to season three to remind
myself how miserable progressive outrage marred my life, stark inner city,
sterile public housing, so much calamity, now fighting and failing and wasting
every medically subsidized dollar into an acute ulcer, or a bad case of
heartburn. I was never vain about much, but my long hair is ugly silver, matted
beyond decency, an owl’s nest, with ill trained Africans driving me insane, all
due to poorly rationed technology. Even my attempt to hang tough for the sake
of my published work seems a dismal exercise, amidst a streaming glut which
hasn’t proven itself a healthy anchorage. Austin Petersen had a couple of
interesting tweets about big corporate which made me think it is no longer such
a sharp divide, Marxist to free market models, but my big event this morning is
rolling my torso on the hospital bed by myself. I’d like to torch it.
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