Ouch. Welcome to the sort-of-finale of a show I'm actually sad to see end for a while. I must, must, must throw some major props in the direction of co-recapper and in-house etiquette administrator ("Oh, look, pamie, your mom is back"), Megyn. Also big props to the regulars on the forums, Paulie for snagging a satellite dish and moving across the street, and Sars, for deciding to forgo an entire day out of every other weekend to willingly stay at home and wrestle with endless, compound, stream-of-consciousness sentences (with tons --TONS -- of parentheticals) that make up syntactical behemoths much like one you are reading right now. Thanks.
Fade up on Augustus "If Stilted Metaphor be the Food of Life, Prattle On" Hill, sitting (as opposed to his usual narrational demeanor of "dancing mirthfully whilst donning top hat and cane" or "sweating to Alyssa Milano's patented shakes and shimmies in her much-derided though hopelessly underrated Teen Steam exercise video 'cause Hill's just gotta let it out, gotta let it out) in front of a makeshift game show set and explaining in as many words as exist in this universe and any others you may know, "Back in the 1950s there was a game show on TV called You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx." Hill editorializes that Groucho's questions were "inane," and tut-tuts the host's wont to "insult the contestants," like Hill is the self-appointed president of the Citizens for the Ethical Treatment of People Who Can Correctly Guess the Price of a Box of Laundry Detergent to the Closest Penny but Without Going Over, um, Society all of a sudden. Jeez, Hill, if you really need to promote the cause that badly, why not get out there and do the grassroots thing, pounding the pavement and letting downtrodden game show contestants of the world know that they don't have to PAY for vowels, or lose all their hard-fought earnings to those pesky Whammies, or sit in silence while some unctuous host didactically tells them the correct answer to the ten billion dollar question like he's known it all his life, when in reality all he's doing is reading it off the card in front of him. See, now he's gone and gotten me all up in hackles, too. He kvetches on, as if presenting groundbreaking empirical evidence on the matter: "But not once did anyone actually bet their life," which seems to be a matter of particular surprise to Hill, considering the show's other maudlin contingencies, including a wacky duck on a string and a live studio audience and the fact that the very genre loudly advertises that the show must comply with the predetermined laws and mores of applicable law while also remaining staunchly in the rubric of recreation, seeing as it is a "game" and all. So who's the groucho now, Hill? Who's the groucho indeed? And while you're out there, do you think you could do something about Tom Bergeron? I mean, since I can see from this display you know so much about the cause and all. Anything?
It's spirit week inside Oz again, as the nearly all-black Em City shouts its well-rehearsed rallying cry, "Clayton! Clayton! Clayton!" at the televised news of Devlin's shooting, while the increasingly Aryan Cellblock B wants to "Kill Hughes! Kill Hughes! Kill Hughes!" McManus sits dejectedly in his office and tells Murphy to call for a lockdown, but as the C.O. attempts to corral the wayward inmates into their cells, a black prisoner hauls off and takes Murphy down with the heavy-handed wallop of non-ambiguous thematic relevance. Black prisoner? White guard? I don't want to speak too soon here, folks, but I think it is entirely possible that this episode might be tackling the sticky issue of racial politics. Let's go see!
Meanwhile, Leo "If There's Something Strange in Your Neighborhood" Glynn is holding a press conference at the entrance of the prison. He announces, "Clayton Hughes is a close friend of our family. And though I find his actions utterly reprehensible, I feel compelled, out of loyalty to his mother and late father, to stand by Clayton's side in his time of need." Therefore, he is sad to announce, he will be withdrawing his name from the ballot and ending his bid for lieutenant governor. He takes his wife's hand, ignoring reporters' questions as he steps off the podium, and directs a genuinely pathos-laden gaze to the ground as he ponders his character's future of somehow, some way manufacturing the necessary emotional investment of returning to a life of sporadically yelling some close variant of the line, "I'm the warden, dammit! You can't talk to me like that!" over and over and over again now that his character will be returning to one dimension straightaway. Poor Glynn.
Back in Em City, Supreme "But Go Light on The Mayo, I'm Watching My Waistline" Allah approaches Mondo Brown and Ambiguously Angry Incarcerated Extra Number Four Billion and, somewhere midway through his congressional filibuster of the Oxford English Dictionary's entry for "fuck" ("Fuckabilly"? "Fucktomotron"? Who even knew these variations existed? This show knew. Okay, no it didn't. But he says it, like, a lot of times) tells the two in numerous parts of speech (pluperfect infinitive? I didn't even know that tense existed in the English language) that they're not moving enough drugs. Ambiguous wants to know who is outselling them, and Supreme indicates Mobay from afar. So, as the ever-increasingly episodic nature of this show dictates, Brown and Ambiguous wait until Supreme is, well, still right behind them before approaching Mobay and tell him to stop making them look so bad. Mobay claims that he's just following orders, and Ambiguous sics the place up with his "what the fuckatilly is the OED, anyway" response, "Yeah, we's tellin' you something different." Mobay stands up and stands strong, returning more and more to the accent of his native Jamaica, Queens, rather than Jamaica, y'know, Jamaica, as tends to happen when Mobay gets mad, forgetful, or opens his mouth ever. He says, "I'm not afraid of you. Or you." Brown grabs Mobay by the shirt, to the delight of onlookers Keller and O'Reily, but the tiff is broken up before it comes to blows when one of Querns's henchmen steps in and, angry that ambiguous inmates get much, much cooler lines than ambiguous guards, overacts the sentiment, "You have got to learn to control your emotions." Ambiguous Guard won't be tossing Ambiguous Inmate in the hole and divesting him of his clothing, his basic human rights, and his SAG card today, though, because the homicide officer investigating the Gergen case has shown up for a meeting with Brown.
McGory (Homicide) and Brown recount the day and night of Bruno Gergen in painstaking detail, a man whose cumulative time spent in Oz eclipses even my stay there by only about four minutes. McGory inquires about their fight in the gym, and we cut to a green-drenched flashback of The Most Generic Fight in History that for once I actually need to see again to remind myself that it ever happened. Brown makes the valid point that, though they roughed up Mr. Cameo to within an inch of his forgotten existence, "He lived." Well then, McGory wants to know, who killed him? Brown points the finger at Mobay, citing "weirdness" between him and Gergen. McGory cocks her head and shuts off the tape recorder, certain that the crime-solving equation of Criminal with Grudge + Weirdness - Evidence = Absolute Metaphysical Certitude learned with such precision at Stop the Bad Guy School has once again proven itself true in this instance. All hail the impeccable training of Stop the Bad Guy School. With degrees available through the mail, no less. Thank God for Sally Struthers. up: McGory tackles the wide world of gun repair.
In an obvious season faux-finale shout-out to Megyn and myself, Adebisi is in the middle of some rather ambiguous looking calisthenics of some kind which require his head to hang down, and I would very much like for everyone to know that the hat, as imagined, sticks to his head with all great tenacity. Magnets? Suction? Telekinesis? Tiny men holding four wooden posts like it's a float in Thanksgiving Day Parade? That's probably it. Anyway, he is holding a private meeting of the drug-addled minds inside of a classroom, and Mobay enters to hear the disturbing news, compliments of Simon himself, that "there's an undercover narc in Oz." Mobay expresses his concern with the eye-rollingly enunciated swear word "sheet," and I practically expect the good people of Berlitz to enter the classroom pod all in a huff and withdraw their carefully positioned but obviously misappropriated product placement funds when Mobay delivers this word with the stage direction "as if terribly faking a Jamaican accent" fully heeded. Because the narc is allegedly one of Mobay's customers, the Jafakin' is ordered to whack the guy himself.
Speaking of which, we shoot over to Mobay and Hill's pod, where Hill laughingly informs Mobay, "Y'know, for a minute, I thought you was undercover." But, Hill continues, with the amount of nose candy Mobay has been consistently trafficking into his bloodstream, Hill has come to believe that this is an impossibility. "But that night you were so cranked up on tits that your accent suddenly disappeared. I was like, 'What the fuck is that?'" Yeah, Hill. Which time? Hill continues on that he figured out that Mobay's girlfriend was a "dead ringer" for a police officer who approached him when he was thrown off the roof of his building in S1, and I feel the same encroaching fear I experienced during Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves while waiting for the good people of Sherwood Forest to figure out that Kevin Costner was really from Los Angeles, so egregiously SoCal was his non-inflected patois. Honestly, folks, that is what I thought the plot of the movie was the first and only time I sat through it in its eternal non-glory. Mobay's accent falls at about the same "middling to disastrous" spot on the Me Talk Funny Some Day Spectrum of bad dialect decisions propagated throughout the Hollywood universe, a scale that pretty much claims that if you don't have the last name Streep, you should speak in your own damn voice or hire someone else. Now excuse me while I return this broken-down soapbox to its proper location of not-in-my-recap. Anyway, a guard calls for lights out, and Hill chattily offers the parting, "Well, good night, Mobay. Or Officer Whoever the Fuck You Are," and the Jafakin' advances on Hill and keeps him in a stranglehold long enough to tell him, and I can't even tell if he's using the accent or not, to keep his damn dirty mouth closed. Hill says he won't be telling anyone anything, including this pithy speech: "I'm telling nobody you're a cop. A cop who breaks the law all in the name of the law. I just want you to know that I know that you're a fraud." But then he keeps talking, and his words become increasingly filled with the didactic blather that typifies his One to Grow On fourth-wall-sacrificing segments. So Mobay loses patience and takes Hill down with a punch. The wheelchair goes over. Mobay punches some more. The guards run in and carry Hill out to get him the proper medical attention, perhaps fearful that a sudden dearth of preachy, fourth-wall-breaking narration would force them to be more thematically unambiguous when it comes to acting out the Big Issues we see played out on this show with such regularity. As if that were even possible.
Put your shirt on, Mobay. Over in Glynn's office, Mobay confesses to the Gergen murder because he doesn't want to be "like one of them," which is just exactly what he will be like when he goes to prison for premeditated first degree murder. Well thought-out ruse, "mon." McGory cuffs him. Bummer. ["to 'abrupt' in the dictionary, you will find a synopsis of the end of this plotline. The hell?" -- Sars] Cut to a somber staff meeting, where Glynn reports that Mobay's arrest represents the end of the undercover drug investigation for the moment. Querns, again operating under the pretense that he can distract any potential adversary into agreeing with his ways of thinking by waiting until just the most strategic moment before flashing even a corner of his giant, reflective, previously-run-into-the-ground-with-references-to-Lionel-Richie sports jacket lapels, tells Glynn that he thinks the war on drugs is "unwinnable." Is that even a word? On cue, McManus launches into his proto-liberal goofy-therapist-in-Heathers diatribe about diligence and education and rehabilitation, and Querns laces into him with the pragmatic, "If you think you're gonna eradicate heroin from Oz, well, that's just plain stupid." Then there's this riveting round of Emmy-winning fun times:
McManus: Who're you calling stupid?
Querns: Well, if the shoe fits...
McManus: Fuck you.
Glynn: All right, enough.
Querns: [to McManus] Pussy.
Heh. He is, you know. But he doesn't want us to know it, as McManus jumps to his feet and takes Querns to task. But before either has a chance to display his ability for hand-to-hand combat (which, presumably, would entail McManus repeatedly begging, "Don't you think we should share our feelings in a non-violent forum?" while Querns took him down with shouts of, "I sang 'Brick House' for President Carter! And this is a looooong way down!" and bitch-slapping that sissy boy's patchouli-scented hippie ass right into the cold cement floor. Oops. Don't mean to alarm you, folks, but that little fabricated tour through my imagination might have read like fan fic. Damn, I hate fan fic. That might have been fan fic. Sorry), Sister Pete stands up and freaks. Really freaks. She even says "fuck." Because no one is immune to the "look how shocking we can be on HBO. Ooooooh, shocking" quota on this show, even the clergy. Then she says, "I am sick to death of sitting in on these meeting and listening to you people with your petty little egos. The walls are crumbling down around us and all you care about is yourselves!" Then she leaves. She's sad. She's confused. Ray follows. She's crying. She leaves again. Nun on the run.
Cut to an as-yet-undetermined time later, in which Keller shows up at Sister Pete's group therapy session and tells her that he's an addict who wants back in. She deadpans, "I don't want him in this room," and the attending guard escorts him out before I can formulate a damn snarky thing to say about it.
Hey, it's Dr. Nathan. Standing at the entry of the prison, she is waiting for someone to meet her. The gates open and -- well, BONJOUR MA SOEUR PETE! Ca va? Pete is wearing the latest style (read: the 1970s) in bright red berets, and I still can't fully decide if she looks more like a gun-toting WWII European warmonger marching to battle or if she's on her way from her visit with Gloria to the auditions for elfin waifs in the Emerald City Theater production of Oliver. Either way, bonjour, bonjour, bonjour! For Gloria, this scene plays strictly as contractual obligation to plug all of the majors into the faux-finale, because Pete tells Gloria that she has received the papers that will release her from the convent, a speech she offers identically to Ray just a few scenes down the line. She worries that when she signs the documents, she will transition from "bride of Christ" to, as she asks, "Christ and I are divorced?" Blossom! That's who she looks like. She looks just like Blossom.
Ow! My eyes! Should I not have gouged them out with a spoon in that painful way? Well, then perhaps I should have been spared these here nudie porno shots of the budding liaison between rapidly-fading-in-attractiveness-and-overall-cachet Ryan and his feathered-hair friend with the freakish torpedo knobs. I'm just sayin'. But did I have to be just saying the word "knobs"? Ew. So the stark lighting and general awkwardness of their (from behind? Kill me!) copulatory exercises (a bulkier expression than "fucking," sure, which frankly I'm growing a bit weary of) is juxtaposed (Ding! Ring me up some fifty-cent word) against a vision that O'Reily is having of himself and Gloria under soft lighting, under satin sheets, in a comfy-ass bed, and blah blah blah missionarycakes. Cut to his and Cyril's pod, where the not-so-innocent passes some judgment for once of the non-gotta-watch-Wapner variety in telling Ryan that he knows about the "bad" thing he's doing with Officer Claire. Then Cyril says "fuck," too. Heh. Cable: 1 billion. FCC: 0.
Back in Sister Pete's office, she has decided to forgo the becoming graces of le chapeau for the de rigueur allure of eternal damnation. Ray joins her, and she again claims that she will be signing the papers. Ray doesn't want to be any part of it, so he passes O'Reily on his way out the door. But Ryan wants to lie to them both today: "It's my brother." He tells them that sleep deprivation has made Cyril delusional and aggressive. He's making things up. Really. Pete promises to meet with him, and Ryan practically blows his cover with the one-step-too-far sentiment, "You've GOT to remember this. The stuff he's saying? Man, it's crazy." All he needs now is to cross his eyes and make those spinning circles with his pointer fingers to his ears. Then I shall even better come to understand the not-at-all-contrived nature of the expert, ass-covering psychological analysis. Ryan? You have shamed me. You have shamed us all. And since I can't be having anything you put on Claire anywhere NEAR me without proper sterilization, I am afraid I must terminate our relationship immediately and see if four months apart can't change my feelings on the matter at all. Ugh.
Cut to Cyril, sounding decisively non-crazy during a meeting in which Sister Pete asks him if he can remember anything from before his accident. He remembers a cross in his mother's house. He indicates the cross on the wall of Sister Pete's office, and she asks him -- so timely! -- if he believes in Jesus. He responds that that's a silly question, and phrases a way-too-fine-a-point-on-it one-liner so greeting-card-quotable that it's probably embroidered on a decorative pillow on a sofa somewhere in the loft shared by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in, like, the really nice section of Heaven: "We don't choose God. God chooses us." I cannot believe how long this recap is getting.
Back in Em City, Sister Pete tells Ryan that she doesn't see any of the symptoms he described to her, but she is going to put Cyril on new medication because he is unable to sleep. The convo ends quickly, though, as she spots Keller sauntering into the computer room and follows him in. She tells him that she has been preparing to leave the convent, and recalls the S3 arc in which he turned on the smarm: "You made me doubt myself as a psychologist, as a nun, as a woman." He apologizes for causing her grief, and she tells him that she now believes more strongly than ever in those three elements of her make-up, and bereft even of the appropriate "tm" of any kind, speaks the words, "We do not choose God. God chooses us." Like her grammatical decision to ditch the apostrophe qualifies it as a complete re-imagining of the already so-clichéd-it's-worth-two-in-the-bush comment? As though conscious of her blatant rip-off, Keller volleys, "What happens to those of us who He don't choose?" That's right. Let's get that contraction right back in there the way the creator originally intended, sic-filled as it may be in Keller's example. Keller invokes his memory of being picked last for "kickball" (that's his fundamental beef with the planet? For those of you who know me, you'll be aware of my gangly-ass uncoordinated self and imagine that I wasn't exactly the captain of the squad either. Which is really weird, 'cause you know what it DIDN'T make me do? It didn't make me rape and murder, like, a billion people. It turns out that I had exactly not the same experience as he did), and raises his hand high for God to pick him. Sister Pete offers hope: "Maybe he will. There's still time." Keller doesn't think there is.
Faith restored by the platitude-filled fortune cookie that must have come with her Moo Goo God Pan combination plate, Sister Pete returns to her office and tears up the papers. Can I get a Hallelujah? I thought so.
It's oral, but it certainly isn't pleasure. Claire has O'Reily's back arched again in a bathroom stall, and when he's finished with his business, he quickly turns the conversation to their relationship and the fact that it needs to end. Too late. I find him completely disgusting by association now. Nyah. ["Word. It's over." -- Sars] The cracks begin to show. Is his hairline receding? And what's that scar I probably used to find strangely seductive? Anyway, he tells her he wants out and she vetoes immediately: "What is this, O'Reily? I'm sucking your dick so much you're losin' your balls?" Thanks for that. She tells him that all this is not over until she says so, sets the agenda for "same time tomorrow, cunnilingus," shoots two squirts of some Binaca-like product into her mouth, and is gone. Ah, the tantalizing taboo of prison love. And while I'm at it, a few sit-ups wouldn't exactly kill him either.
Ooh, gambling! Hill wants to tell me all about it. Why not check out Sars's latest Tomato Nation piece on that and other matters of close association? Hell, go MBTV-sister-sites crazy. You're darn well bound to find yourself tons more. Oh, what's that? You say that Hill doesn't have an MBTV sister site to his name? Ah, well. No words for Hill, then. Moving on.
Busmalis is on hospital cleaning duty when he spots Rebadow in bed. A giant scar takes up half of Rebadow's head from the surgery to remove the benign tumor, but he expresses dissatisfaction with the scar. Busmalis calls him "vain," and Rebadow doesn't bet to think this song is about him when he responds, "Don't get insulting." No, Busmalis clarifies, "vain is good. When you got out of the hole you were kind of dragging. But vain means you still feel alive." Then he went crazy and tried to kill his best friend and he had a dream there were clouds in his coffee, clouds in his coffee. Then Busmalis does the really cool thing and places his lucky hat on Rebadow's head (right over a scar for major head surgery, like ten minutes after it started to heal, but whatever), and I have to admit I get a tiny bit choked up by the site of men over sixty-five bonding over something besides chronic incontinence or a woman under thirty. But my brief ebullience quickly recedes in the reality that when the hat comes off, I have absolutely no idea which one is Statler and which one is Waldorf. Busmalis tells Rebadow, "I'm glad you're breathing." At least I think it's Busmalis. I'll bet you think this scene is about you. Don't you?
Geriatric pod. Rebadow is wearing a red-and-blue-checkered sports jacket and bow tie ensemble that I think you're probably lawfully forbidden to wear unless showing intent to break into a rousing four-part rendition of "Hello, My Baby" at a moment's notice. Hill "On Wheels" (geddit? I just thought of the nickname and, well, I didn't feel like waiting until January to use it, so...) expresses a baffled level of incredulity equaled in this world only by me when he subplots, "Miss Sally [buxom children's show host] is really coming to Oz?" Um, eh? This sounds like a great idea. The best, in fact. Rebadow tells Hill that she was so impressed that he went to her house when he broke out of prison that she came to visit him. Wacky "you look mahvelous" banter ensues and Rebadow is off.
Visiting room. A blonde woman with confoundingly sizable (I have no use for this or any variation on this word like, ever, so I'm gonna dig real deep and go once more time with ) knobs waits across the table. Rebadow gives her flowers he has brought, and she returns the favor with a gift of a Miss Sally hat. He deadpans, "There are guys in here who would kill for this. Literally." She laughs. And so he takes this opportunity to point out that the real-life Sally does not look, act, or laugh the way she does on TV. Curious. And so the Sally doppelganger has her cover blown, and this "Norma Clark" admits that she is a just a secretary at the television station that airs the show. Turns out Norma infuriated the real Miss Sally when she suggested that the star might want to visit this stalking prison lunatic (just as the empathetic David Letterman was so often to be found weeping on the cell floor of his stalker, face to the bars and quietly sobbing, "If only these walls were not here to keep us apart. And then there was the whole trying-to-run-me-down-in-your-car thing"), so Norma decided to try out a wig and pasties and see if she couldn't make a go at the ruse herself. She couldn't. Rebadow promises that he will keep writing letters, only this time, "I'll write to you." She thinks that would be swell. And even if their relationship should suddenly find itself in the pantheon of great television entertainment, I will still maintain that this was a pretty stupid way for it to get itself off the ground. I have nothing to add to that.
Hill knows everybody gambles. He really, really does.
The Two Least Interesting Death Row Inmates Ever continue, despite my loudest protests to the contrary, to have a life on camera and at all. Miles continues to Bob Vila the place up real pretty, while Moses continues to pick away at the adjoining wall with his pointy instrument of wall destruction. Simply as a method of inducing conversation as a short cut to the identical conversation they shared last week, Miles asks just what on Earth that noise is, and Moses inexplicably explains that he is "digging an escape hatch." Into the neighboring cell? You can practically hear the rain-drenched, cover-of-darkness jubilant wails of, "I'm free! I'm free! I'm -- oh, wait a sec." Glynn and his merry band of law-enforcing Glynnettes (LoPresti and, I don't know, some other guy) try to infuse all this anti-excitement with a jolt of something that looks just like drama when they enter to tell Miles and us that he has to choose a method of execution for his big day, two weeks from Thursday; Moses quickly covers up the hole with a poster. Miles lies on his bed in the fetal position and commences repeatedly screaming, "No!" Glynn sends in a guard to pull Miles out of his cell and "take him down to Psych." But Miles chooses this moment to kick it into gear, and he punches the guard away and makes for one of several locked doors that, even if opened, would continue to lead to a Russian doll's worth of hallway after hallway of impermeable metal bars. And what better way to imbue your average action sequence with a palpable sense of thrills? So said pushed-aside guard secures Miles on the bars right in front of Moses' cell. Moses spits in his face. Drama!
Cut to psychiatric evaluation, where a shackled Miles admits to Sister Pete that he is "scared shitless" about his approaching execution date. He invokes the names of Fun Death Row Inmates Past (whose memories he serves admirably by calling them "Shirley Bellinger" and "that fag kid"), and whispers something inaudible and doubtlessly deranged about not wanting to die. Sister Pete begins her comfort speech, and I wonder why she doesn't just go straight for her ace-in-the-hole "choose God blah blee us" material when she admits that, though opposed to capital punishment, there is precious little she'll be able to accomplish from a lobbyist perspective in the two weeks. Stupid bureaucrats.
Back in his cell, Moses keeps digging and Miles keeps, um, self-rendering, and Moses gives the ol' chit-chat one more try: "Sometimes the reality of what's gonna happen fucks me up too." Cue two more racial epithets of strangely unimaginative variety. Moses begins to sing "Amazing Grace," and when Miles leans far enough into the wall to tell him to shut up once more, Moses smashes his fist through the hole and takes Miles down into a stranglehold. Okay, that was kind of cool. It wasn't Shirley-or-that-fag-kid-doing-anything-dammit-anything-at-all cool, but it had its merits as far as these two are concerned. LoPresti breaks it up. Miles is carted off, very very dead. Cut back to LoPresti carrying a cardboard box of the dead man's stuff, and Moses asks LoPresti for the hand-held mirror that has been passed from Shirley to that fag kid and then to Miles, driving home some nebulous thematic connection between them I'm still at a loss to comprehend. LoPresti fishes it out of the box and tosses it toward the cell. It breaks into many, many pieces as he chides, "Aw, gee. Seven years of bad luck." Um, yawn? You mean it hasn't been seven years already?
Schillinger! Yay! A blow for fans of boring, over-exhausted subplots everywhere! Murphy slums it on Cellblock B and tells the aforementioned devil man that his "daughter-in-law" has come to visit. He walks into the visiting room to lay eyes on the hairstyle from literally every female photo out of my Long Island middle-school yearbook, bedecked in a dual-tone denim jacket that in itself fairly screams, "To me, TJ Maxx is more than just an expensive designer label. He's also a friend." Gee, I wonder what type of characterization they're trying to set up for this chick. Shhhh. Let's listen in! And so this "Carrie" introduces herself as "Hank's wife," and breaks into racking sobs when Vern informs her that he didn't know his son was married. His level of sympathy for her emotional outburst is, I don't think I need to report, boundless. She backstories the day away for our convenience: she and Hank met and got real cuddly real fast, and when he suddenly came into some money a few weeks back, they got married. Then he disappeared. Schillinger, who clearly missed last week's episode (and Megyn's delightful recap of said episode) due to countless other diabolical schemes he needed to enact or complete at a moment's notice (I'm sure he has a "Bless This Satanic Mess" sampler or embroidered pillow of his own down at Inferno, Inc.'s executive offices), missed the boat on the whole "Hank as dead son number two" routine and tells weepy Carrie that Hank left for Miami with no real conjecture as to when he was coming back. Problem: Carrie's pregnant. Oy. Does the evil nature of each subsequent generation lessen when the child is still indirectly the spawn of the devil? Does the dominant "EE" of Schillinger's EEvil punnet square ever fade into a recessive 'Ee,' by which a grandchild would just be the carrier of said evil without it actually manifesting evil of its own? Schillinger sits poised on the brink of a (shudder) smile. No sir, that evil right there is all in the family, and it ain't gonna be fished out of the gene pool any time soon.
Recap. Never. Ends. Where the hell are we now? Oh, yes. Supreme Allah is ambiguously mad at Brown, and Adebisi steps in to break up the impending brawl. Adebisi walks Supreme up the steps with the promise that the two have some issues to discuss. Cut upstairs to Keller (um, are you a French porno director? No? Then SHAVE THE GOATEE!!!) and O'Reily (oh, I am not even TALKING to you) watching the proceedings and worrying about being in the minority. Keller proposes, I think, that they "detonate a few well-placed depth charges," and I have no idea what that means but it sounds awesome enough that I hope they give it a try. Is it a maritime reference? Am I suddenly feeling like a heel that I didn't fork over the four bucks for a second-run showing of U-571 when it came to that theater with all the roaches on 50th Street? Can we, um, talk about this later, maybe?
Random, Kid Rock-esque Cyril doppelganger guy in laundry room. Doppelganger spies random bloody hand from opening credits coming over the top of the washing machine. Doppelganger sees entire bloody man reaching out arms for help before falling back. Doppelganger screams for help. He needs a haircut.
Querns looks at the dead body and makes the hard-boiled quip, "Like my day wasn't already in the toilet." Um, Querns? Jerry Orbach called. He wants his hard-boiled quips back. Querns blazes into Adebisi's (who, have I mentioned, is playing a trumpet) cell, which looks a hell of a lot less like a pod at Em City and a hell of a lot more like a dilettante jazz musician's freshman dorm room at The New School. Someone take those curtains down and let the ghastly antiseptic fluorescent sun shine in, people. The man can no longer be trusted to decorate without vast amounts of assistance. Querns tells Adebisi that he was in charge "as long as [he] kept the horseshit to zero." Continuing, "This is NOT zero." Um, Querns? Jerry Orbach called. He wanted...oh, never mind.
Adebisi takes off on the search for the killer, as per Querns's extremely strongly worded request. Henchmen Poet and Supreme tell Adebisi that the dead guy was a total loser with neither friends nor enemies to report. All they know is that he had, at one time, shared intimate relations with Beecher. Cut again to the aforementioned three men knocking Beecher around for information. Beecher knows nothing. Querns looks on from his office. Beecher runs into Keller and blames him for the loser's murder. He should be more careful about when he's accusing Keller. Just in case he turns out to be wrong. Again. Keller shares an extremely non-sequitur story about tattoos, which I'm going to pretend was passed along by Hill. Is that wrong of me? Beecher threatens to tattle to Adebisi, and in turn Keller returns the favor in telling Beecher that he knows about Pancamo and the hit on Hank Schillinger. Mondo walks by, and Keller asks Beecher about his acumen as a bedtime partner. Keller smiles. Oy, that goatee. Has he learned nothing from watching Querns?
Hill, meanwhile would very badly like us to know that he thinks losing is for winners! Huzzah!
I'm digging this Keller and O'Reily "Hardy Boys" thing. A lot. It almost makes me forget all about O'Reily's other bad, bad indiscretions over the course of the last two episodes. Oops. Too bad for short-term memory. There it is again. Stupid, stupid man. Anyway, O'Reily meets Supreme Allah over by the showers, and he steals the unsuspecting Muslim's necklace. He passes it along to Keller downstairs at Em City, and we learn that there is a Mighty Big Ruse in effect between them that includes the necklace and a truck with a flat tire. Let's watch it at work: Over at cafeteria duty, the guards are keeping everyone in a line with the exception of Mondo Brown, who claims that he can't go anywhere because he has to take care of an issue concerning a truck (oh...) and a flat tire (...I see). Everyone else leaves except Mondo, who is suddenly very, very serious about his work in the kitchen. He takes pencil to clipboard in a back room, just in time for Keller to enter the room and bring up some "personal business" the two are about to share. Keller lights Brown's cigarette, puts the match out on his tongue, and offers to give Mondo a blow job. Cut to Querns telling Adebisi that Mondo was killed in the cafeteria. They found "this" at the scene, and Querns produces Supreme's necklace. And then over to the alleged killer's pod, where guards drag an unsuspecting Supreme out as Said looks staunchly out of his pod and O'Reily smiles conspiratorially from his. Business as usual. Big search of Supreme's room. That was me recapping an action sequence. My plaque is already being bronzed for MBTV Hall of Fame induction. Is there nothing I can't do?
Oh, good, more unbelievably quick scenes of danger and violence. The faux-season draws to a close. In the same ambiguous classroom pod where the inmates are always up to no good, the two men act as equals while interrogating Supreme, who has been unceremoniously handcuffed to a chair. Querns produces the necklace and accuses Supreme of killing Brown and the other guy, and when Supreme claims that the necklace probably fell off when he was working in the kitchen, Adebisi boils over and slams him one in the chair. The guards separate them and, after a brief spurt of violence and piercingly original dialogue exchange ("Fuck me? No, fuck you!"), the two are dragged out and Em City is back on lockdown. And then, with an unsympathetic "Let 'em out," Querns ends the lockdown in exactly zero time-elapsed seconds. The inmates walk out of their pods, Said commenting, "This is the end of the guard." Said reiterates his need to get close enough to Adebisi to find one flaw that will cripple him.
And, to the contrived surprise of not so much you or me, we cut to Adebisi sharing a moment with another opening credits moment, the dancing green dress, which turns out to be Adebisi's fifteen-year-old child bitch whom Adebisi forced to give him The Ol' Claire/O'Reily Treatment back at the beginning of Episode 4. Poet watches all this in horror, then turns away from the pod to see Said and tells him, "Given what you believe in, it's tough to take this conversion seriously." Said confirms that he swore to Allah on all this, and Poet insightfully conjectures that Said's pledge to Allah "has something to do with you trying to stop him." Nice. So Poet steps into the fray, telling Said that incriminating evidence does in fact exist that could bring Adebisi down. "Those fucking videotapes." Eh? I took it in stride when I saw the damn camcorder in the first place, and now we learn that the center of all dramatic action rests in their contents. Just like the cell phone. Was Em City built on an abandoned Radio Shack, or has its product placement department finally gone full-tilt loony? Poet? "He likes to record his antics for posterity. Live from Party Central." Heh. Poet funny. Said tells him to get him those videotapes, and to "do it now." Said creates the diversion downstairs, asking Adebisi if he can talk to him in a not-his-pod oriented place. Meanwhile, Poet goes on the hunt inside Adebisi's pod, finding the tapes -- no kidding -- in a panel in the ceiling. Green Dress Child Bitch is in the pod, and Poet threatens him with bloody bad everything if he so much as breathes a word. But at this moment, Adebisi makes his way back upstairs, unwilling to indulge Said in further convo. Poet makes it out in time, but snags no tapes in the process. All he leaves with is the information of where those tapes are, and he passes the savings along to Said.
This seems a bit late in the going to just be starting up now, but we cut to the laundry room, where Arif listens to Said talk crazy about wanting to move in with Adebisi to get a hold of that videotape. Why not just walk into the pod and take a tape or two while he's out being evil over in one of those classrooms? I'm just sayin'. Meanwhile, a stoned-as-all-get-out Poet is under the steps. He is approached by one of Adebisi's henchmen, but Poet lets his guard down and offers the information that soon they "won't have to worry about Adebisi anymore. Me and Said, we're working on that angle." Henchman has his information and leaves, reporting back to Adebisi, "It's what we thought." And still, that evening, Adebisi welcomes Said into his pod. Adebisi is all smiles.
Glynn's office. McManus yells quite loudly that Glynn hasn't been at Em City since Querns started working there, and "don't you think it's time for another fucking visit," a comment necessitating a retort of the "I'm the warden, dammit! You can't talk to me like that!" variety. And, in fact, Glynn delivers one. McManus pays no mind, continuing on with a warning that "the behavior there is illegal, immoral, and Querns turns a blind eye. You gave the man a free hand because he kept the violence down. But two inmates are dead. You've got to step in." McManus leaves. Glynn frowns extravagantly.
Back in Em City, lights out signals that it's girlish-bonding time for new roommates Said and Adebisi to get to know each other better, play Truth Or Dare, braid each other's hair, and write really catty things in each other's slam books like "Trying to steal contraband tapes" or "Actively, and with every fiber of his mortal coil, trying to kill me." So Adebisi cuts to the chase: "I know you have come to destroy me." Said says he merely wants to help Adebisi change, but Adebisi claims, "That is what would destroy me," before undertaking his best Popeye demeanor and claiming, "I am what I am." Then he hands over the tape, claiming, "I have everything. Everything I need. Every lust satisfied. And it's not enough. It'll never be enough." But. But why? "Because we are still in Oz." Adebisi strips down to the tighty-whities that are more than a little incongruous with the rest of his dangerously large body and climbs into bed. Said is just relieved that the ol' "I get to be on top" bunk-bed joke has played out so benignly in these new surroundings.
McManus screens "Adebisi's Follies," the newly released short film from Oz Productions, for Glynn and Querns over in Glynn's office. Querns is, needless to say, very very fired. Glynn restores Em City to McManus's care and apologizes for being too caught up in the campaign to do his job. It's weird to cut to that whiny, simpering voice give the "all right, listen up everybody" announcement under the Em City lights, but nevertheless there's McManus, grabbing the mic and announcing the transfers out of Em City. Transfer number one: Adebisi. The spurned Em City resident stands up and slams open the door to his pod, grabbing Said by the neck and informing him, "So the end is here." Isn't this exactly what he knew was going to happen? Anyway, Adebisi takes a knife to the Muslim's throat and a real live fight breaks out, which we only hear from outside the pod. The rest of Em City stands up to watch it, and suddenly the white curtains hanging from Adebisi's pod walls fill with a large red circle of blood. Adebisi walks out of the pod, stands still, coughs up the USDA daily recommended allowance for blood in the entire human body, and falls dead (?) to the ground. Said walks out of the cell, bloodied, hat off. Mayhem. McManus is only bummed that this development has not-so-coincidentally occurred in his first, oh, one second back in Em City, and even more pissed as all hell that he's going to be standing there thinking about what he's done until some time in the cold, cold reality of an 11 pm time slot somewhere in 2001. See you then.