Episode Report Card Megyn: B | 1 USERS: A+ YOU GRADE IT Do you like gladiator movies?
By Megyn | Season 4 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.27.2001
Fade up on Augustus "Metaphorically speaking…and speaking…and speaking" Hill. "In Oz, you got to be ready to defend yourself." Let me just interrupt to let you all know, this particular episode needed Hill. The explanations of shanks and where they come from sort of appeased my irritation at the seemingly endless supply of weaponry in a maximum-security prison. I said sort of. And I said this episode. Don't everyone go opening threads titled "Megyn: sell-out by mid-season?" just yet.
We open to find Glynn in mid-chastise, his victim poor, depressed Alvarez, who shifts uncomfortably from one foot to the other while trying to squelch the voices that tell him to shoot the president and that Jodie Foster is his key to hot, un-bridled monkey-lovin' passion. Glynn bitches that Alvarez is supposed to be his snitch, but hasn't told Glynn one thing he didn't already know. Al tells him about Morales requesting he grease Redding tout suite so he can get back into the cool gang. Glynn, void of anything living in the same neighborhood as sympathetic, just tells him he's screwed and that he may as well send Alvarez's bipolar ass back to solitary. Alvarez weakly suggests that Glynn pick Morales up on a conspiracy charge. Like, "pick him up"? He's already in jail, nimrod. Glynn basically says the same thing, and Alvarez asks him for a few days to figure something out, or until his Fiber-Con kicks in.
Alvarez walks through the common room and meets up with Morales, who asks him where he's been. Al tells him he's been "kissing the warden's ass," and proceeds to outline his new plan to be a "double agent"; since the warden wants info on Morales, he'll only supply him with info Morales wants him to have. Morales: "That's a brilliant idea except, there isn't any information I want the warden to have." Poor Alvarez looks crushed while Morales advises him to start "looking forward to the next fifty years all by [his] lonesome."
In the laundry room, oddly enough no longer bathed in the soothing, warm glow of neon lime, Poets hoists himself off the counter to allow Alvarez in. Redding and Hill are in attendance. Al wants to talk, but Burr says they have no business together. "Morales wants you dead." Poet snickers at poor Al, "That ain't no headline." Alvarez shares further that it is he who was asked to do the deed. Burr considers this: "You're playing a dangerous game here, son. Betraying your own skin?" Alvarez whines that they betrayed him first. "No doubt." I love when Burr says that. He's just a cool cat. Till he sees them Cheetos. Burr tells him that the trouble with getting into bed with a traitor is, you never know when they will turn on you. Tell me about it! If I had a friggin' nickel for every traitor I got into bed with, I'd be a rich ho. Burr says he'll have to "decline the offer," and as Alvarez leaves, Poet helpfully repeats, "Dee-cline!" in case Al misunderstood the burning rejection. As he leaves and walks back towards the common area, one of the members of the Latino gang asks Al why he was talking to Redding and company. Al gives him a half-assed answer about borrowing detergent. "We haven't forgotten you shanked Carlos Ricardo." Alvarez hears this, turns around, and releases the challenge since he has "nothing to lose and nothing to gain." He lunges at the guy who was busily twitching his upper lip, and slices his throat. Twitchy falls to the ground and spurts blood while the crowd goes wild. Everybody loves a fight in Oz. A hack tries to grab Al but gets his hand cut for his effort. We see Keller watching the whole thing and looking thoroughly entertained; then we switch back to more hacks, one of them clubbing Alvarez so they all can pin him down to the ground.
Hill: "This particular shank is called the Gillette Bayonet. It's designed not to cut -- but to slice. The blade from a disposable razor is extracted and then attached to a pen or pencil." He demonstrates, and then loses me by bitching about cutting himself. The weapon is interesting, though. MacGyver for prison.