Oz - The Complete Sixth Season (DVD, 2006, 3-Disc Set)

Before the sixth season of HBO's Oz began, many knew that this would be the last hurrah from creator Tom Fontana and co., as the volitale men behind bars drama comes to an ever dramatic close in it's final eight episodes. Everything that has been built up since the show's debut reaches critical mass in this final season, as characters who have been here since the beginning meet their demise and the light at the end of the tunnel keeps dwindling. For Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen), freedom is so close he can taste it; but not if his sociopathic lover Chris Keller (Christopher Meloni) has anything to say about it. These two men, whose bizarre, savage, and heartbreaking love affair have been a highlight of the series since the middle of the second season, have always helped make Oz worth watching, and when the end comes, it comes without warning, just as long time viewers would come to expect. Beecher also has to contend again with nazi leader Vern Shillinger (J.K. Simmons) who wants his blood, while other prisoners (and long time characters) Miguel Alvarez (Kirk Acevedo), Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker), Ryan and Cyril O'Reilly (Dean and Scott William Winters), narrator Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau), Reabadow (George Morfogen), Robeson (R.E. Rodgers), and Jaz Hoyt (Evan Seinfeld) all have their dates with destiny as well. Even prisoner reformer Tim McManus (Terry Kinney), warden Leo Glynn (Ernie Hudson), and Father Mukada (B.D. Wong) don't remain untouched by the series of events that brings the series to an end that at first may seem unlikely, but in the long run of things, couldn't have been any more fitting. For it's entire run, Oz was one of the best and underrated shows in HBO's history that never really got it's share of the limelight while mega hits like the Sopranos and Six Feet Under took all the glory. The blood drenched yellow brick road comes to an end here, and yes, there's nothing left but a dead end.