We finished watching season five of Oz today. It was only eight episodes long (HBO likes to cut their final season in half and make you pay for it twice), but it sets everything up for the final run.

Some of the characters are just so indelible…I’ll never see Harold Perrineau as anyone but Augustus again, despite his roles in Romeo & Juliet or the last two Matrix films. Kirk Acevedo, even when playing Joe Toye in Band Of Brothers, was always Miguel Alvarez. And whatever other roles they play, to me JK Simmons and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje will always be Schillinger and Adebisi, scariest men alive. There are tons of others…Chris Meloni (try watching Law & Order: SVU the same way agin), Dean Winters (ditto), Ernie Hudson (the man was a Ghostbuster, for chrissakes)…Edie Falco may be the only actor who walked into a more memorable part, and that took another seminal HBO series.

I can’t wait for the final DVD set…it’s like the Bataan death march.