Keller supported Beecher through the news of his wife’s death, all while offering companionship, wrestling lessons and the apparent promise of a friendship with no agenda. “It wasn’t that I was thinking, ‘Oh boy, here’s an opportunity to show a lot of guys f***ing’, it was really an opportunity, for me, to talk about the loneliness, and how the loneliness, in anybody’s life, becomes compensated That’s why in the first season I had the thing where got rid of conjugal visits, because I wanted the stakes to be intensified as opposed to there being this release.”Įnter Chris Keller, a strapping, charismatic, blue-eyed, sexually ambiguous prisoner who became Beecher’s podmate in Episode 2:4.
Once free of Schillinger, though, Beecher also struggled with the loneliness that Fontana says was another central theme of the series:
sexual slave) status, eventually establishing a level of independence from Schillinger, although the power struggle between the two men would continue till the end of the series. Schillinger’s homophobia did not prevent him from trying to rape any unprotected white man who came through the gates of the prison.īeecher fought back from his initial “prag” (i.e. Simmons), the white supremacist leader of the Aryan Brotherhood in Oz. Totally unequipped for prison life in the first season, Beecher fell prey to Vern Schillinger (J.K. Beecher was a wealthy, middle-class lawyer, husband and father, who found himself in Oz (the nickname for the Oswald State Correctional Facility) after accidentally killing a girl while driving drunk. One of the primary ways these themes were explored was through the character of Tobias Beecher. Hanlon: I suck the dicks I want to suck, so f*** you.īeing set in prison, however, the show also dealt frankly with the sexuality of prisoners who did not consider themselves gay, yet were driven into same-sex relations either through loneliness or through rape. Richie Hanlon (Jordan Lage), a gay prisoner who entered Oz in Season 2, quickly encountered sexual harassment from fellow prisoner Mark Mack (Leif Riddell), but was unwilling to take the abuse: Such was the case with first season character Billie Keane (Derrick Simmons), the effeminate brother of inmate Jefferson Keane (Leon), who needed protecting from the other inmates.īut later seasons also showed gay men who were unabashedly willing to assert themselves. Some may have been on the traditional ‘gay man’ rung of the power ladder - namely, the bottom of the pecking order. Indeed, from the beginning, the show featured gay characters prominently. Whereas the dynamic of Oz always was - because this show’s about power - and so the element of sexuality as it relates to power… whether it’s straight, gay, bi, or whatever… always was in play, from the very beginning.” “The thing is with Homicide, you know, we did so little about the detectives’ personal lives, because what we really wanted was their characters to be revealed through their work. Fontana explained why the nature of Oz allowed him to go further in exploring the characters’ sexuality than on Homicide: However, Bayliss’ bisexuality never went beyond a few dates and discussions with co-workers. When Oz premiered, Fontana was simultaneously juggling another critically-acclaimed series, Homicide: Life on the Street which would have its own groundbreaking gay moment when Detective Tim Bayliss (Kyle Secor), was outed as a bisexual in January 1998. It would also give viewers one of television’s most memorable male/male relationships in the long-running, powerful and complex romance between prisoners Chris Keller (played by Christopher Meloni) and Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen). The drama convincingly portrayed the myriad ways sexuality could be expressed between men whether gay, bi or straight.
Premiering before Will & Grace or Queer As Folk, and running until 2003, Oz would arguably go on to do better than either of them in showing the full spectrum of male sexuality.
Tom Fontana, writer and executive producer for Oz, recently spoke with about the show and its place in television history.įrom the beginning, “this show’s about power” Set within a maximum security prison somewhere in the United States, the prison drama broke boundaries with its violence, profanity and nudity, as well as with its diverse and multi-racial cast of strongly imagined characters. But it was on this day ten years ago that the network premiered Oz, its first one-hour dramatic television series. With shows such as Six Feet Underand The Sopranos, premium cable network HBO has a deserved reputation for edgy, quality drama.