(no subject)

[solitary_summer]

My life, or lack there of. I can't believe (although I have to, because sadly it's a fact) that I wasted most of the weekend (a sunny, warm Sunday, too) watching the rest of Oz. Even my two-day weekends always seem too short - I'm looking forward to them, but when they finally arrive I just want to get a little breathing space first, quiet and solitude and not being expected to do anything for a while, and before I realise, and just when when I feel I've maybe caught my breath and relaxed enough to gather up the energy and do something a little more productive, it's Monday again, and the same shit routine starts all over again.



So, about that, since there's little else to write about. It isn't a bad show and it certainly kept me glued to the tv and computer screens respectively, but in the end it worked for me only partially. (Although that might also be a result of watching everything but the first season on YouTube, with at least half an eye on some other page more often than not, and so much for attention span...)


The realistic part (or what I assume to be the more or less realistic part, because what do I know about life in a maximum security prison) I found problematic - and this is a paradox, because on the one hand I'm usually all for gritty realism and complex, morally ambiguous characters; but on the other hand Oz takes this to a point where for stretches the show just didin't work for me emotionally anymore, because after a while I started to get tired of the endless and meaningless circle of violence, the gang rivalries in their ever-changing constellations, the drugs, the random murders (Not a show where you should get too attached to any newly introduced character. There's a very good chance he won't make it into the next episode even.) ... And admittedly I tend to look away when things gets too gorey, because I'm squeamish like that, but after a while it almost ceases to be shocking, one almost becomes a little desensitised, and at times the whole thing seems a little exaggerated - not that I doubt that prison life is all kinds of brutal and horrible, but I can/do prisoners kill and/or mutilate each other with quite that frequency and inventiveness (::cough:: fingernails)?

And MacManus tries and tries and tries to save someone, anyone, and always fails, again and again and again, because this isn't a system you can succeed in. No one gets out alive. (If this is an exaggeration, it's only a very slight one. Off the top of my head I can think of one character who walked out on his feet and didn't come back.) It certainly makes a strong point about the brutality and insanity of the prison system, how it destroys people even further, and it's realistic, because life is like that, cruel and unfair, and more often than not, human nature isn't too prone to dramatic 180 degree character changes tv shows are so fond of, and the big pivotal moments rarely happen, but it is depressing as fuck to watch after a while, the sheer futility of it. Said killed quite randomly (and I really rather liked him for a while when I found it hard to like anyone on this show), Alvarez trying so hard and in the last episode he's back on drugs, his hopes shattered. And while it's pointless speculation, I suspect Beecher will somehow manage to fuck himself up just fine even without Keller's help and I'm doubtful whether any tentative change in Ryan will be lasting. The best that any of the characters in this show can hope is a little peace of mind, for a while, and even that is always shattered all too soon.

And then there are the more tv-show-y, soap-opera-ish elements (and never was a musical episode more incongruous), which were often too far-fetched and implausible, and, in combination with the brutal realism made me occasionally feel slightly uncomfortable.


So what's on the plus side? Great acting, interesting, realistically flawed characters, strong moments, me crying through the last ten minutes of 'A Day in the Death...', and I rarely cry over anything these days.

And there's of course the Beecher/Keller relationship which takes dysfunctional to whole new levels. And even that took me a while to get into, mostly because Beecher is someone I found very hard to like or sympathise with, even at his worst suffering. (This said with the caveat that for stretches I found it difficult to like any of the characters, even if I could sympathise with them and their fates.) When he isn't a victim, I find this neediness, the weakness, the mixture between self-pity and self-hatred, the addiction to who or whatever will come his way, somehow unappealing. And I don't know why it should disturb me when more or less everyone in the show is a murderer several times over, but the thing with Schillinger's sons was... ugly. Maybe I'm too caught up in the black-and-white, good-and-evil world-view that tv-shows and such tend to embrace, after all, where 'good' characters aren't supposed to do 'bad' things? Granted, he is a man constantly driven beyond the limits of his endurance, and it's not prettified, it's not supposed to be pretty, but I assume one is still meant to feel more sympathy than I managed to? The first time I even remotely started to like him when he got a hair-cut started to pick himself up with the help of Said and tried to re-gain some mental balance in S3, not that it lasts very long.

And Keller? Fascinating, conflicted character, Christopher Meloni acts the part brilliantly, and is certainly easy on the eyes, but he's a sociopath, a serial killer in the making when (in his own words) 'some demented slice of my brain was sayin' hey, take some time off the street', and he got caught (let himself get caught?) robbing a store. And this is the frightening thing about him, he has a lot of insight, not only into others, which he tends to use against them mercilessly, but also into himself, yet it doesn't have an impact on his actions; it doesn't change him. He kills without conscience when someone stands in his way, and with a very loose definition of 'standing in the way' at that.

So, love? The first time I actually thought the word love was applicable was when Keller confesses to ordering the murder of Schillinger's son to protect Beecher. Before, I never got that, regardless of how often the word was thrown about between these two, entirely too frequently IMO to have any meaning, a short hand for all kinds of messy emotional needs. Beecher needs someone, just like he later suddenly believes himself to be 'in love' with his lawyer (I'm assuming here that we're not actually supposed to see this as love, rather than another target for his neediness, in this case a more comfortable, less complicated heterosexual one, because otherwise it'd be plain bad story-telling, considering that the lack of build-up and the lawyer's non-existent personality) and Keller needs to be needed. It's messy, it's often ugly, even when they're not trying to kill each other, and Beecher has a huge - one can't call it a blind spot; he doesn't particularly want to know, but also doesn't try to convince himself that Keller didn't commit these murders; which would be difficult with someone who kills two men out of part jealousy and possessiveness, and part pure mind-fuck. And after this, when they're not even on speaking terms, unless you count messages via dead bodies, Beecher still tells him about Barlog's intention to make the deal with the FBI, when he cannot not know that this is Barlog's death sentence. Proof of love? It's one of the moments when you can't decide whether you should be pleased, because after all you do get taken up in their dysfunctional love-story, or horrified, because Beecher in his focus on saving Keller doesn't even seem to be aware or care much at all that he's consigning a man to death here.

But in the end what I liked was how the show never lets you lose sight of the fundamentally messed-up nature of both their characters and their relationship, and still convinces you that in all this there is, while twisted, still an element of genuine love, insofar as these two are capable of loving anyone. And Keller gets what he wanted in the end, he gets to die for love, in another grand self-sacrificial spur-of-the-moment decision, permanently removing himself from the life of the man he loves the only way he knows how, knowing he would be unable to let go otherwise, that he would go on destroying Beecher's life, whether he actively tried or not, because he already knew that what Beecher finally recognised was true, had warned Beecher, who of course wouldn't listen then, before, begged him to stay away from him. It's a truly fucked up moment of truth, but I think Keller's suicide is neither desperation nor spite, it's a genuine gift, and from Beecher's conversation with Sister Pete I think in the end he recognises it as such...



[ETA (14.3.): ::sigh:: Upon re-watching, I take it all back, Keller really made it look like Beecher pushed him. But damn, I liked my version better. And it'd have fit, because it was the same situation that made Keller take the blame for the murder of Schillinger's son in a split-second unpremeditated gut-decision, that would probably never have happened like this if he'd had time to think about it. (Neither would the suicide, I still maintain. If Keller had thought about it rationally, his ego would have won out, and with it the conviction that he'd be able to seduce Beecher back, somehow, because even in the desperation and rejection there was enough emotion left for him to work on.)

It'd have fit because the theme was there, but Oz is too realistic a show to have taken the more conventional route. Keller had his moment, once, and when he was begging Beecher to stay away from him. There are no second chances.

Still. If Keller had had any chance to really plan this, I might be convinced that it really was the ultimate mind-fuck-cum-guilt-trip, but there wasn't time. So, why this, why not take him down, too, literally; why not kill Beecher? (Especially considering his potential collaboration with the FBI, or was that a possibility Keller refused to entertain?) Because this is what I'd have thought would have been more in character with Keller than suicide. Or was he only a hair's breadth away from that there, hands around his neck, and found he couldn't do it after all, not like that, not with his own hands, and there was only one other direction to go, but he still had to try and take Beecher with him somehow? And even then he must have been known that he was giving him at least a fighting chance to get out and re-gain his life, because there was no way he could assure a court wouldn't decide in Beecher's favour, especially given Keller's past, the FBI's knowledge, Beecher's knowledge. It could go either way. The 'dying for love' theme is in there, somehow. ]