Hey guys, if you watched Oz you'd know that my username is a reference to one of the main characters of that show, Kareem Said leader of the Black Muslims. Oz is named after the Oswald State Penitentiary and the show follows the lives of the inmates and staff of the prison.
I don't know why but for a while now I've had an interest in prison life so when I heard there was a long-running TV show about prison I was interested and I soon fell in love with this show.
I'm not saying that it doesn't have flaws, a few contrivances here and there, a plot hole or two, a bit less realistic than it set out to be, a rare (very rare) instance of bad or hammy acting here and there, but the good aspects more than make up for it.
Among the good aspects is the near perfect acting, the cast is huge but nearly everyone even minor characters give good performances and the lead actors are exceptional. The cast is very large but anyone who lives long enough is properly fleshed out I could name so many characters on the show that I love or love to hate. The show has very gray morality, you will end up liking, sympathizing with or at least understanding horrible murderers and rapists like Ryan O'Reily, Vern Schillinger and Simon Adebisi. Many of the supposedly "good" inmates we are supposed to sympathize with such as Tobias Beecher, Cyril O'Reily and Miguel Alvarez make morally questionable decisons. Very morally questionable in some cases (Miguel).
The show was on HBO so as you could expect it is full of violence, swearing and sexual content which might turn some people off. But if you can look past that you can see that this is really good TV.
I know that it's a little pointless to discuss a series that ended about eight years ago but I just wanted to know if anyone else liked this show besides me, I found a few other people who liked it in the Tiers of Manga thread. I think it would be nice to discuss what inmates were the most evil on the show and which were the most noble.
I think Kareem Said was the most good inmate on the show. His crime is the blowing up of a warehouse which, compared to the other inmates, is fairly harmless. He was also doing it to prove a point that blacks were not equal in America. He's not perfect by any means, but he's trying to make himself better, and he never kills anyone. He does injure Schillinger and Robson but those neo-nazi bastards had it coming, let's not kid ourselves. Said even regrets doing that because he wants to be a pacifist.
As for the most horrible inmate on Oz, I have no idea there's way too many to pick from, besides I've gone on for much too long I just wanted to say as much about Oz as possible, since there's a chance no one will post in this thread. Oz isn't particularly popular, which I actually don't mind because, just like with Berserk, the high level of violence and sexual content is a turn off for some people, which I can respect.
Anyway, discuss. Once again sorry for writing an essay and not a post.