1 DVD
8 EPISODE
Overview
Oz is the nickname for the Oswald State Correctional Facility, formerly Oswald State Penitentiary, a maximum-security prison (level 4) at an undisclosed location in the United States of America. Many of the plot arcs are set in "Emerald City" ("Em City"), an experimental unit of the prison in which the unit manager attempts to emphasize rehabilitation and learning responsibility during incarceration. Emerald City is an extremely controlled environment where there are a controlled number of members of each racial and social group. The show was taped in Bayonne, New Jersey.
The large ensemble cast includes Eamonn Walker, Rita Moreno, Ernie Hudson, John Lurie, Terry Kinney, Betty Buckley, Kathryn Erbe, Christopher Meloni, Lee Tergesen, B. D. Wong, J. K. Simmons, Dean Winters, Scott William Winters, Kirk Acevedo, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Harold Perrineau Jr., Erik King, David Zayas, Lauren Vélez, and Edie Falco.
[edit] Style
Oz is primarily narrated by Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau Jr.), former drug dealer, convicted murderer and former crack addict. Now in a wheelchair, he appears in surreal segments and introductions that usually relate to an overall theme of the episode, as well as setting up scenes, introducing characters, or adding epilogues. When necessary — usually when a character is introduced — Hill appears as an omniscient narrator. Used as a literary tool of the writers, he narrates the details of characters' crimes, their prison number, and their sentences. Hill appears as a recurring character within the show's story lines until his death at the end of the fifth season; he and other deceased characters then share narration duties throughout the sixth and final season.
These narrations by Hill break the fourth wall, in that Hill addresses the camera (and thus the audience) directly, out of the fictional context of the scene. Hill also appears in scenes where he interacts with other characters in the story (in which he does not address the camera). Only once in the series did Hill appear to address another character with one of his narrations: in the Season 3 episode "Unnatural Disasters," the character Adebisi turns on a computer and sees Hill—dressed as a pharaoh—speaking to him. (This unusual sight is discounted by Adebisi as a drug-induced hallucination, and he never speaks of it again.)
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