The Routine (Oz Episode) - Plot

Plot

Narrator Augustus Hill (Harold Perrineau, Jr.) introduces the viewers to Oz and its experimental Cell Block E, commonly referred to as Emerald City, or Em City. The violence of Oz is demonstrated right away as new inmate Miguel Alvarez (Kirk Acevedo) is shanked before even being brought to a cell, while fellow new arrival Tobias Beecher (Lee Tergesen) is horrified by the incident. Both men had been assigned to Em City, and news of the violence startles Em City's idealistic unit manager, Tim McManus (Terry Kinney), even as he asks Warden Leo Glynn (Ernie Hudson) to allow the cannibalistic parent-killer Donald Groves (Sean Whitesell) to be brought to Em City as well. Glynn reluctantly agrees on the condition that drug dealer Paul Markstrom (O. L. Duke) similarly be brought there.

Correctional Officer (CO) Diane Whittlesey (Edie Falco) informs the new arrivals to Emerald City about the cell block's particular rules, and introduces the inmates to their "sponsors", inmates who at least nominally look after the new ones and make sure they integrate appropriately. Donald Groves is assigned the older, kindly Bob Rebadow (George Morfogen); Paul Markstram's sponsor is Jefferson Keane (Leon), a fellow homeboy; Tobias Beecher is given Dino Ortolani (Jon Seda). The last pair is immediately not a good match, as Beecher, a lawyer convicted of manslaughter and DWI, feels genuinely guilty about his crime and anxious about doing time in prison, whereas Ortolani is a seasoned mobster who makes clear that he doesn't want to babysit anyone.

Arnold "Poet" Jackson (muMs da Schemer), Oz's resident inmate street poet, gives an impassioned delivery during mealtime. As he finishes, Beecher tries to sit with Ortolani, but is refused. Instead, Bob Rebadow allows him to sit with him, but then offers the disturbing news that Beecher's wife Genevieve is thinking of divorcing him. Beecher asks why Rebadow knows who Genevieve is, and Rebadow very seriously replies that God told him, indicating he may have a history of such statements. Their conversation is interrupted when Warden Glynn announces that due to new state laws, cigarettes are now contraband in prisons, and all inmates' cigarettes will be confiscated. This provokes a riotous food fight.

At 5 pm count, Rebadow explains to Beecher that from 5 to 10 pm, they basically have nothing to do, and Beecher is further alarmed to find his cellmate Simon Adebisi (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje) rifling through Beecher's possessions. Adebisi sexually threatens Beecher when he tries to stop it, and threatens Beecher later at bedtime.

The next mealtime, an unassuming-looking Vernon Schillinger (J. K. Simmons) approaches Beecher and says that if Adebisi is bothering him, all he has to do is ask Tim McManus to switch him to another pod, implying that Schillinger will gladly take Beecher into his own. Unfortunately, Beecher has been seriously duped, as Schillinger himself informs his new cellmate that, "Your ass belongs to me." Schillinger, though a white supremacist/neo-Nazi with, to say the least, conservative social values, has no qualms about taking advantage of Beecher. That night, he brands a swastika onto Beecher's backside.

On the following morning, there is much disagreement between McManus, Warden Glynn, and the COs about drug and cigarette policies, while McManus also complains about the corrupt and ruthless Governor Devlin. The new arrival of the day is Kareem Said (Eamonn Walker), a radical black Muslim leader convicted of arson. Although Glynn and McManus talk to Said personally, in order to make sure he doesn't cause problems in Em City (or gen pop, where he will go if he does cause problems). Said, however, proudly warns that 78% of the inmate population in Oz are "men of color" and there are 9 inmates to every CO, so they could take Oz at any time.

Dino Ortolani, meanwhile, is having frequent flashbacks to the events that led to his life-sentence for assault with a deadly weapon, and he has put in a request for a conjugal visit with his wife; all in all, he appears troubled about something. The viewers meet prison psychologist Sister Peter Marie Reimondo (Rita Moreno) as she gets the request authorized by McManus. As Kareem Said speaks to the other Muslim inmates in Em City, urging them to free themselves of drugs and other obstacles to following Allah, Ortolani looks on in bemusement; but when Vern Schillinger approaches him to say that the whites need to stick together against the Muslims, Ortolani resents Schillinger's implications.

Said's speech to the Muslims is interrupted by the homeboys' threatening approach; Simon Adebisi and Jefferson Keane both try to intimidate Said out of his anti-drug preaching, but to no avail.

Later that day, Ortolani finds out that the victim of his deadly weapons assault, Irish hoodlum Ryan O'Reily (Dean Winters) is coming to Oz, which only adds to Ortolani's discontent, but he tries to keep up his normally bold and swaggering persona— even as O'Reily appears in the cafeteria the next day.

O'Reily goes to meet Jefferson Keane in the kitchen and asks that a hit be made on Ortolani, but Keane says that his people "don't kill wiseguys." So O'Reily tries a different method, getting friendly with CO Mike Healy (Steve Ryan), a fellow Irish-American. Healy assures O'Reily that Ortolani is on self-destruct, which seems supplemented by how Ortolani gets into a bloody fight with a gay inmate in the shower, on dubious grounds at best. While in the infirmary, Ortolani tries to flirt with Dr. Gloria Nathan (Lauren Vélez); afterward, McManus reprimands Ortolani in his office, pointing out that if Ortolani continues to act up, he'll probably be killed by another inmate. Ortolani claims it doesn't matter because he's in prison for life anyway, but McManus tries to make Ortolani see that his life can have purpose anyway. His punishment for Ortolani is to assign Ortolani to work in the AIDS ward and deal with gay inmates, rather than get put in the hole. When Ortolani appeals to his boss Nino Schibetta (Tony Musante), he gets little sympathy. The one person similarly dissatisfied with McManus' choice is Dr. Nathan, who hates working with Ortolani because of how flirty he is, and who thinks McManus can't change people like Ortolani. Nonetheless, McManus successfully asks Dr. Nathan to dinner with him.

After another conversation in the kitchen, O'Reily finally manages to get Keane to agree to take out Ortolani, as Ortolani's victim in the shower was Keane's brother. Meanwhile, Schillinger congratulates Ortolani on attacking a gay inmate, but Ortolani is not interested in a neo-Nazi's opinions. He continues to brood, and continues to be of little help to the AIDS ward, mostly harassing his charge Sanchez about why he has AIDS. Sanchez reveals that he did heroin, and Ortolani says he never did heroin but dealt it, and Sanchez ironically suggests that maybe he got AIDS because of Ortolani. That doesn't go over well, and later, Ortolani angrily tells McManus that his job in the AIDS ward is not going to change him. McManus speaks to Sister Peter Marie and vindictively cancels Ortolani's conjugal visit, replacing it with a behind-the-glass visit between Ortolani and his immediate family. When Ortolani and his wife speak through the glass, he asks her to make sure she can take care of the kids, but she needs to go on with her life as though he were dead, which upsets her greatly.

During Ortolani's next round in the AIDS ward, Sanchez informs him that he wants to die, even pleading for Ortolani's assistance. Frustrated, Ortolani goes to the restroom, only to be accosted by Ryan O'Reily, who says he's coming to join "lasagna boy" in Em City, provoking Ortolani into a fight. That night, Ortolani removes Sanchez's oxygen mask and suffocates him. Dr. Nathan finds out too late, and Ortolani is thrown in the hole, strapped down to a cot and tranquilized. CO Mike Healy seems to have done the trick for O'Reily, because as Ortolani is sleeping, COs let one of Jefferson Keane's henchmen, Johnny Post (Tim McAdams), into Ortolani's cell. Post pours lighter fluid on Ortolani and lights him on fire with a match, burning him to death.