HBO's Oz would still be shocking if it premiered today

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https://melmagazine.com/en-us/story/...25-years-later

The HBO prison drama, which celebrates its 25th anniversary in July, "is heralded as groundbreaking. But if it had debuted this year, almost two decades after it went off the air, it would have been just as shocking," says Miles Klee. "Whatever critics hated — the pervading nihilism, the gratuitous nudity and violence, the exploitation of our deepest fears and revulsions — is precisely what establishes an effective critique of American justice, and convinces a viewer they can smell the sweat of men caged like animals. In a culture that wants to forget criminals the moment they’re locked up, Oz wouldn’t let us look away. And the quiet, even tender moments amid the mayhem argued that even the worst of us deserve better."

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10 TV Shows That Went Way Too Far

4. Robson's Dental Procedure - Oz



If there was any show that could rival Game of Thrones for title of most unsettling, it would be Oz, HBO's early masterwork that features more horrible human behavior and graphic violence than almost anything seen on TV before or since. And this was one of its very worst moments, in an endless sea of them.

After making a name for himself as a steadfast member of the Aryan Brotherhood, convicted murderer Robson (R.E. Rodgers) develops gum disease and has a surgical graft to fix it, learning after the fact that the graft was taken from a Black man. Distraught and removed from the Brotherhood, he takes a razor and decides to cut the gums out of his mouth.

It's a sadistic, visceral scene, the prelude to which sees Robson using heroin as a painkiller before we're shown - in vivid, zoomed-in detail - his razor cut out chunks of his gums. Even for Oz (and Robson, who earlier in the show had part of his penis bitten off. Seriously), this scene was seriously twisted.