Fade up on the artful public speaking acumen of one Augustus "So Long-Winded My TV Blew Away" Hill, who delivers a decidedly William Safire-esque homily on the numerous existing slang words for prison while decked out in standard issue black-and-white-striped jail duds and chains affixed to his wrists. Conventional wisdom has it that there is also a cannonball tethered around his ankle and sacks of money with dollar signs lying at his feet to complete this typical Everyprisoner ensemble, but the camera never pans down far enough to prove this hypothesis either way. He reels off several slang terms for prison, but wants very badly for us to know that his personal "favorite" is "the clink." ["Mine too, actually. I don't know why." -- Sars] I would beg shamelessly for Hill to tell us just exactly why this term gets his jones up so hardcore, but something tells me that my encouragement is not required for him to continue this address indefinitely. Ah, there he goes now: "That's because the word comes from the sound of chains made back in the 1400s. They had these big-ass, motherfuckin' iron chains. The prisoners weren't allowed to talk, so when they moved around the dungeon, all you heard was 'clink.'" Just for the record, my computer's thesaurus also suggests the words "hoosegow" and "pokey" as synonyms for "prison." I wonder why Hill decided not to include these terms. Perhaps he was worried that any more examples of slang terms for prison would cause his speech to run too long. Because if Hill's speeches share one common link from week to week, it's their brevity. But honestly, this lengthy period you and I have spent locked down in "the clink" of preachy introductory narration has provided time for me to muse on the many qualities of the prison uniforms of old, and how I think the authorities should consider bringing them back into vogue for today's inmates. They even come equipped with a little black-and-white striped hat. All Hill needs is a black mask over his eyes and a taste for cow's meat, and he would do well to consider a career as a kind of bad-ass Hamburglar for the new millennium. I mean, really. At least the Hamburglar worked silently.
Meanwhile, over in the Em City section of the Oswald Pokey (see how up on the lingo I am?), a guard announces the Gen Pop transfer of a significant batch of nondescript white men I've never seen before. A shirtless Adebisi (sorry, Dymphna, if you're still listening to this show on the blue radio that your cable has become) stands just a few steps off from the guard as if in a significant position of authority himself. When the transfers are completed, Adebisi offers a come-hither "pssst" to a black youth (he looks about fifteen) bedecked in a way-too-tight short sleeve polo shirt (is that, um, velour) that I think he saw me wearing in my junior-high-school graduation picture and stole out of my closet. Maybe it was that very theft that landed him in the pokey to begin with. See what I mean about those striped uniforms being a good idea?
Adebisi escorts the young man into his pod while Said looks piously on from across the way. Adebisi turns to face the youth and offers his affectionate, candle-lit directive of the day: "Blow me." Awwwww. Young (and much, much younger) love. As the boy bends kneewards to get busy gettin' busy, Adebisi can feel Said's glare and turns back toward the door of the pod to look at him. Then he closes a makeshift curtain he has run across the glass exterior of the pod. Allah wept.
Cut to Said busting in on an increasingly ill-intentioned, sinister-voiced, mock-turtlenecked Querns and demanding, "How can you condone what Adebisi is doing?" Querns responds -- using the word "condone" three dozen times in one sentence -- in essentially telling Said to just. Step. Off. Said threatens to take this issue to the warden, but Querns sees his "I can go to the warden" threat and raises him one "I can send you to the hole" in the great Em City poker game (is it a coincidence that that word sounds so much like "pokey?" Can we get a ten-minute speech on the linguistic antecedents of these two words? I'm almost sure we can), until Said relents and storms on out. Adebisi, meanwhile, walks contrivedly past at this moment, and we see him fraternizing peacefully with other inmates while Querns looks on approvingly as if to intuitively deduce, "Wow. Quick blow job."
Back in his pod, Said attempts to initiate conversation with Arif, who ignores him quietly. Said tears a book out of his podmate's hands and demands, "You see what's going on?" Arif, in fact, does. And so Said proselytizes further, "You said you wanted to lead. Well, in the name of all that's holy [glacial, we-already-know-what-you're-going-to-say-and-you're-taking-up-entire-cycles-of-the-moon-you-could-be-using-on-riveting-Mobay-subplots- and-Hill-speeches-on-second-thought-take-your-time pause]lead." Cut to Arif leading, taking pains to land an audience with Querns. Querns is in his office on the phone, smiling broadly and chatting jubilantly because the truly evil are easy to identify, given their propensity to laugh and smile at markedly inappropriate times. On television. Arif is finally allowed to enter, and after he bitches and moans about Querns's unwillingness to meet with the Muslims, he launches into his prepared speech. Because he's, y'know, leading: "The Muslim population constitutes eighteen percent of Oz. As their leader, I expect some sort of representation." Querns responds that he perceives the Muslim population of Oz to be "rudderless," and Arif unwisely turns the conversation to intimidation tactics in threatening, "You wait, Querns. You'll feel the full force of our power." Querns rises and moves lithely over to Arif in a way that makes me sad I blew my load of light-hearted Lionel Richie song title references way back in the recap of Episode 4. Querns threatens ominously, "You threatening me?" And then again, "You threatening me?" Then, in a stark and unadorned exhibition of prison brutality at its most egregious, Querns pokes Arif. HE POKES HIM! Right in the ribs! And do not adjust your sets, folks. That's TWO FINGERS he's using. Yes, Querns is a bad man. But his strong-arm techniques could use a little roughening up, methinks. I guess back in his much ballyhooed days on the streets, low-life thugs and other unscrupulous types would poke him around and speak the language of the mean streets with dastardly threats such as, "You can be in our gang. But first you must...WIN A THUMB WRESTLE!" What gang was he in, anyway? The Brownies?