Episode Report Card Djb: D | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT West Said Story
By Djb | Season 4 | Episode 2 | Aired on 07.18.2000
Hill is in his pod at night talking to Mobay about how he feels like he's losing his wife. Mobay says that will never happen to him and his own girlfriend. Hill, who had been in the visitors' room, tells Mobay that his "girlfriend" looks familiar for some reason. Cut to Mobay on the phone in Glynn's office, fakey accent dropped and telling his "girlfriend" that she was spotted and not to come visit "for a while." More Mobay fun times as we cut to behind a flight of slotted, metal steps to find Mobay exchanging drugs (probably for more interesting character development, which I think is contraband in this particular subplot) for something with Poet. Mobay says he "used to work the line in Jamaica." Cut to Mobay and Adebisi going toe to toe on Mobay's potential smuggling acumen, and Mobay provides the name "Nestor Parks" as a reference. He's serving fifteen years. Adebisi sends him packing and tells Poet to contact Nestor Parks. Feh.
Kareem is having a little meeting with Tricia Ross, the Poor Man's Mira Sorvino, who landed him in so much trouble with the other Muslims to begin with. The trial damning the prison for its culpability in the riot begins today, and Tricia believes that Devlin and the state and the prison system are all responsible. Said giggles girlishly in assent, telling her that he can remember "the frightened little girl" she was when they first met. He continues, "I am very pleased with all the changes within you." She says she really wants to kiss him, and then consequently responds to his holier-than-thou-and-thou-and-thou-and-thou-as-well bravado with the too-hasty comeback, "You know what? Everything that I respect about you also really pisses me off." So Mira Sorvino storms out, body language identical in her sad, furious anger as it was in her liberated and carefree happiness. I can't believe they actually handed her an Oscar™ once. Oh, wait.
Continuing his entirely unconvincing attempt to show the other inmates just how much he's lost his taste for power even as he preaches to anything with a pulse, we catch up again with Said telling a group of co-plaintiffs in the state's lawsuit the what's what. Ryan (thank GOD! Where you been, man?) pipes up that they have seen updates on the news, that they basically don't need Said to tell them what they already know, and, out of the mouth of babe, "Yeah, yeah, yeah...When do we get our flumping MONEY?" Only he doesn't say "flumping." 'Cause it's not even a real world. Hill (quotable because he's not narrating) asks whether they will all be testifying. Said spontaneously regains his ostensibly lost taste for power and informs them he will be the one testifying. What an unbelievable surprise. The Muslims leave en masse to plot some further revolutionary dealings. Said tells them he believes the jury will return a verdict in a week, even though it has taken months for the trial to begin. Ryan says, "See you in my bed, Djb," and the scene ends. Or maybe he says some such other thing about the trial. I don't really remember which.
Said is getting ready to leave Oz, but he discovers to his horror that a new prison ordinance requires each prisoner leaving the penitentiary to wear an orange jumpsuit that doesn't match his radical political beliefs or his current choice of knit cap. He tells his lawyer that he refuses to wear the jumpsuit, on the grounds that it will prejudice the jury against him. Said tells his lawyer to go to the Board of Prisons and file a motion to let him wear whatever he wants. Back and forth and back and forth. So perhaps the trial will be delayed again. Said walks back toward the prison, and Beecher apprehends him walking past the laundry room and asks, "Back so soon?" Said claims that there was "a complication," and Beecher tells him that it seems "there always is" with him. Well, now, just what exactly do you mean by that, Beecher? Here's what, and it's a doozy: "I think you want this case to fail. If the jury rejects our lawsuit, then you'll be able to point with righteous indignation at a system that doesn't work. But if we succeed, then what do you have? What can you rage against? So you'll do anything to find a complication." Beecher says that despite all the horrors to which Oz has introduced him, he still maintains his love of the law, and promises that if Said won't go and testify, he'll do so in Said's place. Go, Beecher. Cut to a shame-me-twice Said watching television with the other inmates, as Beecher exits the courthouse, bedecked in his orange jumpsuit. He left the collar up on said orange jumpsuit, incidentally, in an arrestable offense for which the Fashion Police would put him in a cell wallpapered entirely in green-based paisley with vertical red bars. Maybe that's why Said rolls his eyes when he sees Beecher on television. The reporter's voice-over: "Beecher's testimony about physical abuse by guards at Oswald before and after the riot stunned the jury. Beecher claims that even after the S.O.R.T. team had gained control, prisoners were tortured." Everyone is happy. Said is not happy.