wawamouse | Oz Rewatch 3: S4E04: Works of Mercy

Plotlines

Continuation of Beecher’s children’s kidnapping plot; Beecher approaches Les Hibitz to see if he can find out anything about it (???); Keller comes back from the hospital ward; a severed hand is mailed to Beecher
Mobay gets out of the Hole and is subjected to another test, getting beat up by Pancamo; he becomes addicted to heroin
The Cardinal comes to Oz after Keller writes to him about Sister Pete, leading her to make
The prisoners win the lawsuit and plaintiffs are rewarded the whole $45 million
Rebadow warns Said that Cramer will go free; a retired detective confesses to Cramer that he tampered with the evidence of the case; Said recuses himself from the case; Cramer is released from prison
Querns arrives as the new unit manager of Emerald City; McManus tries to ask for his job back and gets Unit B instead
Ryan tries to find Stanislofsky’s cellphone using Cyril
Gloria comes back to Oz wanting to go back to work; she confronts O’Reily and blames him for her rape;
Busmalis returns to Oz; Rebadow is mad at him
Shirley Bellinger is executed

Today’s episode was a bit of a quiet watch. Despite that, I feel like I overall enjoyed it quite a bit. There weren’t any moments in the story of this episode where something really jumped out and annoyed me. I like Querns, so his arrival was a fun moment, and I also think that there were a lot of smaller moments and interactions with characters through this episode that were interesting. Of course, there were some pretty heavy moments, too—Beecher’s grief over his children, Gloria confronting O’Reily, Bellinger’s execution.

Speaking of, the trajectory of Gloria’s storyline in the show has always felt pretty depressing to me, and I’m reminded of that with this episode. Gloria could walk away, but for some reason she just fucking doesn’t. She even tells Glynn in this episode that if she didn’t force herself to come back to Oz then, she’d never come back. That statement floors me because, like… that’s a good thing?? Don’t come back. What sort of sunk-cost fallacy nonsense is she snorting with that one? Working at Oz has brought her nothing but shit. Even though it’s revealed (and then emphasised by many scenes, lol) that Ryan had nothing to do with her rape like she thought, working at Oz is still a source of her mental anguish in the time that she believes it to be true. It’s also the source of past issues as well. Her reasons for wanting to continue working there are ostensibly because she wants to help people, even though she knows she could set up a cushy private practice instead… What, those are the only two options her mind can conceive of? Working in a prison or setting up a private practice?

With Gloria, I’m reminded of a quote from earlier in the show… In one of his monologues of S1, the Narrator says something to the tune of “You can also get addicted to grief, to guilt, to hate…” I feel like that describes Gloria in some ways—maybe she’s addicted to some aspect of working in Oz. The rush? The danger? I don’t know. But there seems to be no upside to her coming back to Oz or continuing to work there after her husband’s death as the hands of one of the inmates. This isn’t like Beecher, who also has all this shit happen to him, but can’t remove himself from the environment. Gloria has the option to leave Oz—more so than even the COs who probably couldn’t as easily find work elsewhere—but she has seemingly no ability to do so, despite how bad it is for her to stay. That’s basically why her story is so depressing to me. Oh, and she ends up reciprocating Ryan’s feelings. For some reason. If there’s one thing I appreciate about the ZO short, it’s that it’s suggested in the dialogue that Gloria moved on and hasn’t had any contact with Ryan for years… Like, good.

Stray Thoughts

I noticed in the new s4 opening titles, they actually show the face of the tattoo artist who does the “Oz”
Tobias’s father calls Cathy Rockwell “that Brockwell” girl… At least that’s what is sounds like and what is says in my episode subtitles
Sister thinks it’s funny that Pancamo always votes yes, and Morales is always like Whatever, so it all depends on what Adebisi wants
Sister’s Glynn x Mukada shipping prevails…

Final Thoughts

Sister thinks that the gang leaders just don’t like Mobay and are suspicious of his eagerness, which is why they’ve basically just decided to bully him for a bit, and I agree.