Episode Report Card Aaron: B | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Super Hole
By Aaron | Season 6 | Episode 4 | Aired on 01.25.2003
Cut to Lenora Briscoe, interviewing Said's killer in an office somewhere within the lightless depths of Oz. The elderly gentleman confirms that his name is, in fact, "Lemuel Idzik," before adding, "Who could make up a name like that?" Personally, I'm guessing Tom Fontana, but that's just me. Idzik readily admits to having done the deed, but the only explanation he can offer is the cryptic revelation that he had to kill Said "before nightfall." What is this, 24? Besides, on a show where the entire Death Row appeals process can be resolved in a single thirty-second narration break between scenes, not even The Flash could reasonably expect to get anything done before nightfall. Hell, six weeks just went by in the time it took me to type that sentence, and that's with the damn TiVo on pause, no less. And while we're at it, you know what else is fun? Mentally substituting the phrase "cast in a Bruce Willis movie" every time someone uses the word "kill" in relation to Said. And then pondering which might be the scarier fate.
Outside the office, Ellie comes up to Leo and informs him that the reporters are already on their way to Oz. He tells her to hold them outside the gate (gee, that won't look suspicious), and she promptly snits off to implement his orders. Lenora emerges at this point, saying that she's going to take Idzik downtown for more questioning (because Oz has no light bulbs she can shine in his face), and Leo trots off to find out how someone managed to smuggle a gun into his prison.
Well, you'll all be relieved to know that crack agents from the Transportation Security Administration have now been assigned to guard the metal detectors at our nation's prisons, as well. Or at least that what it looks like, as Leo spends most of the next scene laying the smackdown on the alcoholic guard who let Idzik through. For some reason, the director has elected to block this scene so that an incredibly annoying thin black line of shadow falls across Leo's eyes, making him look for all the world like a rape victim whose identity is being concealed for a televised trial. Hmm. Bad lighting, or merely a metaphoric allusion to the way in which Oz has been violated by the blatant phallic symbolism of an unauthorized handgun? I'm guessing bad lighting, but that's just me.
Back in Leo's office, Governor Little Caesar's Pizza Pizza throws a teeny-tiny bone to our forum readers by complaining about the recent rampant death rate in Oz. "Mayor Loewen, Harrison Beecher, Schibetta, Kirk, and now Kareem Said," he lists, "all murdered in a matter of weeks." Well, yeah. I seriously can't believe it's taken anyone six years to notice that Oz is just about the deadliest place on Earth. For God's sake, you'd be safer painting a bull's-eye on the roof of one of Saddam's presidential palaces and waving to the passing cruise missiles than you would be as an inmate in this place. Leo claims that there doesn't seem to be any connection between the murders (other than the fact that they happened on his watch, of course), and Lenora further exposits that they still don't have any clue as to who killed good ol' Gone Thurmond. Governor Big Trouble In Little Oz just wants her to pick a random inmate to blame (because he's sooooo the one who ordered the hit), and he puffs himself up to his full height of four feet three inches as he threatens her job on the way out the door. Once they're alone, Lenora and Leo re-exposit the circumstances around Mayor McHimmler's death, just so we don't forget about them when it becomes a critical plot point before the inevitable finale.