Tonight's episode of
Oz was just wrong. Other than the one surprise at the end, the show didn't at all feel like a normal season finale. Instead of introducing brand new issues or resolving old ones, this episode seemed to just cut off all the current storylines mid-stream. Sure there's the shock of knowing that one of the most beloved characters is no longer around, but I can't see this leading to an intense fall-out next season like Said shanking Adebisi or the whole prison blowing up thing did. When those events happened, it gave the viewer the sense that everything had changed, that Oz had been completely turned upside-down. Those old season finales were standard cliffhanger fare, that I for one, completely bought into. It looks like the writers are going for a new strategy this time around. In not focusing the start of the next season on just one central plot development, they've forced themselves to leave just about every single storyline wide open. I'll tell you this, with six or seven different conflicts currently unresolved, it's now even more unbearable waiting for the next season to arrive than it was before. Argh. In my mind,
Oz is still the best show on television, but eight episodes per season with eight to ten months between seasons is enough to drive any die hard fan mad.
