Episode Report Card Couch Baron: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Pass The Pepto, Please
By Couch Baron | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 08.10.1997
Hill tells us you don't have to be 55 to be old. Dude, tell me about it. I'm already sneering at the young whippersnappers that they don't make pop culture icons the way they did in my day, and my day was the eighties. Frightening. At night, McManus heads up to the guard's station and tells the one guy on duty to take a break. The camera pans back to show him looking around. Scene. This McManus I could almost get used to.
Groves brings food to Rebadow, who says he can't stay in Oz anymore because he's afraid. Sorry, dude, but if they let people leave on those grounds, the only people left would be Adebisi and Schillinger. I'd still watch that show, though. Rebadow goes on that he's specifically afraid of the young, and that when he first came to Oz, people treated their elders with respect. He says that he's going to escape, and Groves enthusiastically asks how. Rebadow: "God will show me the way." He smiles the smile of someone who's had that extra shot of morphine, a smile that I recently had the happy occasion to wear. We next see him enter a stairwell wearing a robe over his hospital gown. He goes down a floor, but sees a couple of guys smoking. He tries upstairs instead, but only finds a locked door, and ends up tumbling back down the stairs, where he lies unconscious. Well, that was instructive. The hell?
Hill says that a lot of things can go wrong with the human body, something else I've been all too familiar with recently. In solitary, the guards come around with food, but at Miguel's grandfather's cell, it appears that the sandwich on the tray is not going to be enough to produce a picnic for the occupant. The guards unlock the cell to find him naked and wailing uncontrollably. The guards call for medical assistance, which leads into a flashback. "Prisoner Number 43A515. Ricardo Alvarez." The flashback is not of his original crime, which was armed robbery, but of the crime described by Mukada in "Visits, Conjugal And Otherwise," that being the murder of the Haitian who had cut his son's tongue out. Life in solitary. In the hospital wing, Gloria tries to tell him what they're going to do, but it becomes clear that he has no idea where he is. Upon questioning in Spanish, he reveals that he thinks he's in Havana. That would be fun.
Mukada, Pete, McManus, and Gloria meet for a routine discussion of the prisoners' mental health. Pete says she has a psychiatric re-evaluation scheduled with Miguel, but Mukada says he doesn't think that will go well, with his baby having died and all, and Gloria adds to the concern by divulging that Ricardo has Alzheimer's. I can only imagine that the next item on the agenda is why this bunch never gets invited to parties. I mean, stop with the downers, people! McManus says he'll talk to Alvarez, but Mukada asks if he can do it instead. McManus: "I'm always willing to give up an opportunity to deliver bad news." You lie like the rug you so desperately need, Timbo.