History Series / Oz

* HeroicSociopath: Chris Keller and Ryan O'Reily.

* DeconstructedTrope: Kareem Said, mostly in Seasons 1 and 2, is arguably a deconstruction of the social leader archetype prevalent in the 1990's,particularly after the L.A. Riots. He is a brilliant and wise man who fights for a noble cause (equality in the justice system). His arguments that the judicial system and society are not fair to minorities are not without cause, but he is completely unwilling to take responsibility for his actions, such as the deaths caused in the riot, and he frequently comes off as petty and vindictive to those outside his group. He polarizes race relations into a two-sided issue and often appears oblivious to the fact that every prisoner in Oz is guilty.

* DeconstructedTrope: Kareem Said,mostly in Seasons 1 and 2,is arguably a deconstruction of the social leader archetype prevalent in the 1990's,particularly after the L.A. Riots. He is a brilliant and wise man who fights for a noble cause (equality in the justice system). His arguments that the judicial system and society are not fair to minorities are not without cause, but he is completely unwilling to take responsibility for his actions, such as the deaths caused in the riot, and he frequently comes off as petty and vindictive to those outside his group. He polarizes race relations into a two-sided issue and often appears oblivious to the fact that every prisoner in Oz is guilty.

* CycleofRevenge: One runs between Schillinger and Beecher for the whole show. {{Lampshaded}} by Said to Beecher: "You killed Schillinger's son, he killed yours, now you're going to kill his other son. When does it end?" Beecher replies it will end when Schillinger is dead. [[spoiler: It does in fact end in the series finale, when Beecher kills Schillinger and Keller kills the rest of the Ayrans]].

* DidNotDoTheResearch:
** Eating ground up glass won't really kill you - either you notice it in your mouth, or it's ground so fine it does nothing. Even if prison food is so bad that you don't notice hard sharp things, the first sign is black stools, which is plenty noticeable and gives you time to see a doctor.
** Augustus Hill's monologues. Goldfish memory, Napoleon's height, Aztecs...
** At one point Atheism is mixed up with Agnosticism.
** Brain-dead from an "overdose" of LSD? An overdose would take thousands of doses. Not exactly a cost effective poison.
** Beecher's knowledge of the law seems to be rather shaky at times, even considering his lack of criminal experience.
** Connelly claiming that if he's sent back to England "he'll hang" despite the death penalty no longer being in effect in the UK.

* DeathRow: Killing another prisoner or a CO generally puts an inmate on death row, which is located in a small wing of Oz, and the characters there are generally used as a "B-plot" in Seasons 2 and later, with different inmates appearing until their execution.

** Although he made it look like [[spoiler:Beecher]] killed him, [[spoiler:Keller's]] dive at the end may have been as well.

** Augustus (the narrator in the wheelchair) is the helicopter pilot in 28 Weeks Later, as well as the replacement operator for the Nebuchadnezzar in ''TheMatrix Reloaded''.
** Ernie Hudson, the warden, you may remember him from {{Ghostbusters}}.
* HeyItsThatVoice: Metzger is played by [[SpongebobSquarepants Patrick Star]].

* PutOnABus: Dianne Wittlesey, after Edie Falco landed a role on "TheSopranos".

The LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters would influence future shows like Lost and TheWire. There is constant character turnover due to the fact that AnyoneCanDie, and that anyone can get released. Newly introduced characters can become central to the story immediately, other main characters can fade away, be killed, or be transferred unexpectedly.

''Galson'': The land-mines in Oz are even less visible. Friends turn on friends, enemies buddy up.

* EnemyMine: Happens all the time as the different factions struggle for power or revenge, forming temporary alliances to gain the advantage over their enemy of the moment.

----

** Don't remind Cyril of his childhood, or threaten Ryan near him. Three men have done one of these. Two ended up dead and the other in a coma.

* AssholeVictim: Everyone by default, though subverted in that you can feel sympathy even for some of them given how horrible their fates are.

** Peter Schibetta.
* AsTheGoodBookSays:

** Jefferson Keane and Adebisi both get ambushed and outnumbered two to one. Both guys walk away fine. Their attackers don't.

** Alvarez proves rather adept at fighting of his would be killers. Omar White has his moments. And Arif has a small one when he knocks Schillinger out with one punch.

* ButtMonkey:

* DidNotDoTheResearch:

** Connelly claiming that if he's sent back to England "he'll hang" despite the death penalty no longer being in effect in the UK.
* DirectedByCastMember: Averted. Somewhat bizarrely, the show had a long list of actors show up in the director's chair, SteveBuscemi, Kathy Bates, Matt Dillon and Rob Morrow among others, none of whom ever actually acted on the show.

* DrivenToSuicide:

* ElectrifiedBathtub: Prison guard Claire Howell murders inmate Nikolai Stanislofsky this way, after first giving him some hand relief.

* {{Fanservice}}: Many of the cast members are quite muscular and spend periods of time in undress.

* FreudianExcuse:

** James Robson

* HeyItsThatVoice: Metzger is played by [[{{SpongebobSquarepants}} Patrick Star]].

* ManipulativeBastard:

* MurderTheHypotenuse:

* NobodyPoops: Averted, the use of toilets is a semi-regular occurrence.

* NotSoFakePropWeapon: The prop knife in the prison production of ''{{Macbeth}}'' was switched for a real one.

** Funnily enough, SNL did a parody in which JerrySeinfeld, after having been sent to prison in the last episode of Seinfeld, gets sent to Oz. What follows is a helluva lot of Seinfeldian dialogue.

* TheScottishTrope: In the final season the prisoners put on a performance of ''{{Macbeth}}''. Every prisoner who volunteers for the title role gets murdered, [[spoiler:with the last death taking place on stage during performance night.]]

<<|AmericanSeries|>>
<<|ShortTitles|>>

* DoubleStandardRapeMaleOnMale: Averted. Not a single rape scene is ever played off or received as "funny".
* RapeIsOkWhenItsFemaleOnMale: Averted. Claire Howell going after the reluctant inmates is disturbing. Not quite as disturbing as the male on male rapes, though.

** Wen [[spoiler:feared Nigerian gangster Simon Adebisi is killed, the initial reaction is a shocked gasp of disbelief from both inmates and guards, as Adebisi seemed so Bad Ass he couldn't be killed by ''anyone'']].

* MagnificentBastard: O'Reily, Adebisi, Chris Keller, Jia Kenmin to varying degrees.

* RapeIsOkWhenItIsFemaleOnMale: Averted. Claire Howell going after the reluctant inmates is disturbing. Not quite as disturbing as the male on male rapes, though.

* ButtMonkey: Tobias Beecher and Peter Schibetta
** The Mafia group also counts, as far as being constantly portrayed as being at the bottom of the ladder gangwise.
*** ^Actually, the Christian gang would be at the bottom of the ladder gangwise. The Mafia gangsters are more of a mid-tier gang, with their status and power fluctuating at different points. The Christians on the other hand, are always portrayed as weak, as they are the only gang who accepts sex offenders, the bottom rung of prison hierarchy.

* AndThereWasMuchRejoicing: Any act of violence witnessed by the inmates is greeted by cheers and jeers, depending on their sympathy (or lack of) for the one being attacked. A notable exception is when [[spoiler:feared Nigerian gangster Simon Adebisi is killed, the initial reaction is a shocked gasp of disbelief from both inmates and guards, as Adebisi seemed so BadAss he couldn't be killed by ''anyone''.]]
** Also notably averted with the death of [[spoiler: Augustus Hill. Burr Redding is overcome with grief, and most of the prisoners are shocked. [=McManus=] actually breaks down crying. Mainly this is because more so than anyone else in Em city, Hill had become the most philosophical and accepting of the bad things that he had done.]]

* AssholeVictim: Everyone by default, though subverted in that you can feel sympathy even for neo-Nazi thugs like Robson, given the horrible things that happen to him.
** Robson in more ways [[AssShove than one.]]
** Peter Schibetta. Oh boy. He starts out like this, but gets victimised so much that he ends up almost a {{Woobie}}.
* AsTheGoodBookSays: Vern Schillinger to Reverend Cloutier, when warning him not to interfere in the affairs of the Aryan Brotherhood.

* KickTheDog: The writers to what seems like the entire cast, constantly - Guard shows enough talent to be recruited by a pro basketball team? Inmate slashes his tendons. Alvarez has a son, and reconnects with his grandfather? The kid dies of a birth defect, and Grandpa gets Alzheimer's. Beecher, after living through sheer hell, makes his parole and finally begins to repair his life? Guess what, it was AllJustADream and he's still in Oz! [[spoiler:Then of course it happens for real until Keller tricks him into breaking his parole]]. And of course the beginning of Season 5, when an entire bus full of inmates' family members is hit by a truck. You could set a watch by how regularly people are shat on in this show.

* LoadsAndLoadsOfCharacters: During any given season, there's at least twenty recurring characters that are playing a pivotal role in at least one arc.
** If you got a line somewhere in the first two seasons, chances are you got a name, multiple character arcs, and a tragic death scene by the end of the show.

* MadnessMantra: Beecher's [[IronicNurseryTune nursery rhymes]] in Season 2.
* ManipulativeBastard / MagnificentBastard: Ryan O'Reily. "I'm the Lord of the ****ing Dance. I got moves" Adebisi and Chris Keller as well.
** Jia Kenmin can also count. He even outsmarted O'Reilly and got Curil sent to Death Row, bribing Glen Schupe to lie about the event. In a beautiful moment of ''LaserGuidedKarma'', O'Reilly gets Schupe's arm cut off and gets Kenmin beaten to death by the guards.

*** Also, possibly going out on a limb here, Ray probably equals Raymond, and the other important clergy in the show is sister Peter Marie Reimondo = Rey mundo (King and world in Spanish). God truly is the ruler of the world?
** Schillinger wants to make Adam ''Guenzel'' his prag. As mentioned in the page on TheMalteseFalcon, in old-timey prison slang the word "gunsel" was the equivalent of "bitch", "punk", etc.

* MurderTheHypotenuse: Ryan O'Reily does this to Dr. Nathan's husband.
** And Chris Keller does this to every single one of Beecher's former lovers.

* NobodyPoops: Averted, the use of toilets is a semi-regular occurrence. In Season 4, there is a complete shot of Chris Keller urinating into a bucket.
** Not to mention [[spoiler:how Beecher finishes his epic beat-down of Vern Schillinger at the end of season 1.]]

* BetterOnDVD: The show is definitely better marathon-style. That is to say: every episode is amazing, but the multiple and complicated interweaving plot-threads and arcs means that the show is easier to follow if you're watching a whole season at once.
** That's right. Eight hours of ''OZ'' in one sitting. With a good supply of snacks, this makes for the best lazy-Saturday ''ever''.

* HeReallyCanAct: Most of the cast, most notably Chris Meloni and J.K. Simmons.

* HoYay: Lots and lots of it.

** The CO's: Apart from corruption the CO's are doing a pretty lousy job. For instance, there is ONE spot in all of emerald city where almost all of the drugs is used and sold (under the stairs). In several instances, you see the CO's just mulling about, while there is an entire user-convention under the stairs. Also, you'd think that when an entire gang moves up purposefully to someone in the gym or the library, they'd find that suspicious, yet they're always surprised when the shanks start flying.
*** Then again this could be FridgeBrilliance. A lot of the CO's are corrupt to some degree (open to bribery etc) meaning that they likely ignore the drug trade because they know they have contributed to it one some level. Those that aren't corrupt know that the guards can very easily become targets of horrific violence at almost no provocation (like having their tendons slashed because they might beat the cons at basketball) and have no wish to make themselves targets. Alternatively, they may subscribe more to Querns' philosophy that free access to drugs leads to the cons being laid back and easier to handle and so standing in the way of that makes their lives harder than they need to be. And there is of course the realpolitik interpretation that drug dealing will happen no matter what and letting it happen in plain sight at least means that they can keep an eye on who's selling and who's using.

* ChronicBackstabbingDisorder: This is one of Ryan O'Reily's specialties.
** Specialty? Hell, he's got the PATENT out on it.
** Played with in series 4 with his rivalry with Stanislofsky. One episodes plot sees the two approach various different groups and attempt to get them to kill the other, all while maintaining a very visible friendship.

* DidNotDoTheResearch: Eating ground up glass won't really kill you - either you notice it in your mouth, or it's ground so fine it does nothing. Even if prison food is so bad that you don't notice hard sharp things, the first sign is black stools, which is plenty noticeable and gives you time to see a doctor.

*** Although those thousands of doses still only equates to a few drops of pure liquid. And it's arguable that just 'a lot of LSD' could either lead to an allergic reaction (and so end up brain dead from oxygen deprivation) or be unstable enough that it made you freak out hard enough to put you into a permanent catatonic state and so be functionally brain dead.
**** No such cases were ever reported. On;y know deaths due to LSD poisoning occurred due to hyperthermic shock or cardiac arrest.

*** But a lot of IRA type guys just vanished or were maimed and tortured after being picked up by the security services, so his fear of terrible things happening to him certainly has a basis in reality.

* DrivenToSuicide: Beecher's wife [[spoiler:Or was it?]]

* DubNameChange: In the Italian dub, the Italians gang was renamed Sicilians. Probably done to avoid one [[UnfortunateImplications unfortunate implication]], yet allowing another one.
** Kind of justified, as they are often, though not exclusively, called 'the Sicilians' in the English version.

** Given an interesting twist in the season two finale: Vern and the nazi's are appalled at the actions of a paedophile priest and even the guards detest him. But the priest is shown as both genuinely remorseful and completely downtrodden about his actions,finding himself unable to survive after his release. And since the show has portrayed both Vern and the guards doing terrible things and the scene of his torture is very much played for terror,it comes across more on the priest's side.

** Don't forget how Schibetta's "evil eye" was finally stopped...

* FakeAmerican: Said is played by Brit Actor Eamonn Walker.Although Said's upper class Dialect makes His Accent easier to do.
* FakeNationality: Adebisi is played British Actor Adewale-Akinnouwe Agbaje who is of Nigerian Descent
* {{Fanservice}}: Mainly enjoyed by female viewers [[ShirtlessScene for]] [[MaleFrontalNudity obvious]] [[ShowerScene reasons]] (which is somewhat refreshing) and homosexual viewers for the profusion of HoYay.

* FreudianExcuse: The O'Reilys
** James Robson [[AbusiveParents And]] [[RapeAsBackstory how.]]

** And any point during the show really. The Hole in paticular is full of this.
** Pretty sure I saw almost every main prisoner's penis at least once. Keller and Hoyt in particular spent a lot of time in the buff and proud.

* HeReallyCanAct: Most of the cast,most notably Chris Meloni and J.K. Simmons.

* ArtificialGravity: Adebisi's hat. It's the only way to explain how it stays on his head.
** In fact, Antonio Nappa [[LampshadeHanging hangs a lampshade on it]] by asking "How the hell does that thing stay on your head?"
** As does Martin Querns, in the process displaying that Adebisi is quite sensitive about anyone knowing.

* SortingAlgorithmOfEvil: The prisoners range from entirely benevolent characters (Ralph Galino, Hamid Khan, Father Meehan) and harmless characters with a few exceptions (Busmalis, Augustus Hill, Said) to {{Complete Monster}}s like Schillinger, Adebisi and Hernandez. YourMileageMayVary on where the rest of the cast lies.

*** Then again this could be FridgeBrilliance. A lot of the COs are corrupt to some degree (open to bribery etc) meaning that they likely ignore the drug trade because they know they have contributed to it one some level. Those that aren't corrupt know that the guards can very easily become targets of horrific violence at almost no provocation (like having their tendons slashed because they might beat the cons at basketball) and have no wish to make themselves targets. Alternatively, they may subscribe more to Querns' philosophy that free access to drugs leads to the cons being laid back and easier to handle and so standing in the way of that makes their lives harder than they need to be. And there is of course the realpolitik interpretation that drug dealing will happen no matter what and letting it happen in plain sight at least means that they can keep an eye on who's selling and who's using.

* NotQuiteForever: One measure of the show's gradual decline from a gritty prison drama to a prison-based soap opera is the number of times Alavarez is sent to Solitary ''permanently,'' only to be let out a couple of weeks later.

** The homophobic rapist Guenzel becoming the Aryans' newest prag.

* PosthumousNarration: Augustus [[spoiler:does his usual narrations in Season 6 despite being killed in the Season 5 finale.]]

*** Although those thousands of doses still only equates to a few drops of pure liquid. And it's arguable that just 'a lot of LSD' could either lead to an allergic reaction (and so end up brain dead from oxygen deprivation) or be unstable enough that it made you freak out hard enough to put you into a permanent catatonic state and so be functionally brain dead.

The main focus of the show is the study of personalities within the prison population, whose out-of-control violence, general anomie, and domination by a series of gangs creates an environment that forces difficult decisions just to survive, much less avoid sexual slavery, drug addiction, or solitary confinement. Characters (who are summarized in the character page) range from former lawyer Tobias Beecher, Aryan leader Verne Schillinger, Iago-figure Ryan O'Reilly, senior citizen Bob Rebadow, veteran criminal Simon Adibisi, and many, many more. wheelchair bound prisoner-for-life Augustus Hill serves as narrator, intermixing the events of each episode with a more general theme (Family, nature, politics,even Napoleon).