User Reviews

Does a great job of setting the scene for the series and introducing what I assume will be the major players and conflicts to come.

The acting is fantastic. I found all of the characters, inmates or otherwise, to be compelling and interesting with clear motivations. Jon Seda especially does a phenomenal job at capturing Dino, who is the main focus of this first episode. His character is engaging and frustrating and heartbreaking.

Sets up the factions that exist within Oz well. Lays good groundwork for an interesting show to come.

The only thing I'm not crazy about is the narration & the spinning wheelchair motif - it's a bit goofy tbh and I don't Think it's necessary to be so overt with the discussion of the themes. It's like spoon feeding the audience.

The music is also great.

Before The Wire, before Six Feet Under, before the Sopranos, we had Oz. This first episode got me hooked. I didn't watch it when it first aired back in 1997; I started watching it recently in the year 2011, 14 years after it originally aired, and I've already decided that Oz is now one of my favourite TV shows of all time. I kind of wish I could have started watching it a little earlier. Now I know where the Wire and The Sopranos gets its HBO high quality style programming from. Though Oz is one of those shows that is actually easy to follow the plot.

So this TV show is about the daily routine of prisoners and staff in the penitentiary of Oz. Each episode looks at a particular theme of stories that affects prisoners in Oz. We have at least one person die in each episode. "The Routine" starts it all, which introduces our huge ensemble cast, where there is no protagonist, and where characters that you get to know a lot might eventually get killed off. This episode is no exception, having this crazy prisoner, who steals the episode by getting into trouble a lot, but gets killed. The show is really dark but feels realistic. The acting is fantastic, the writing is superb, and the pacing is nice and slow. It's a TV show that you'd never see anything like it before 1997.

Oz wouldn't work in any other TV channel but HBO, and probably Showtime. The show has the freedom to do anything, like have bloody violence, strong language, discrimination, and sexual references. It's unfortunate that only 8 episodes are made each season, but I guess the season with 16 episodes makes up for it.