#oz 1997

dude 100%. dexter and fight club are obvious contenders for the Style of elliots narration but in terms of content there are actually points in oz where ive been fairly certain mr robot copied the vibe 1:1. whats extra ironic about this is that hills narrations in oz deliver a more punchy critique of society than mr robot does. the first 30 seconds of s1e8 lays out the materialist view of history, the power of the anonymous individual, revolutionary pessimism, and anti-great-man-theory better than mr robot ever does:

part of this is that 1) hills narrations are objective and removed from his character, he extra-diegetically serves the function of the greek chorus within the show, and 2) tom fontana, for all that he has some wack ideas, is also The Woker. but to me the most important thing about oz is that it really doesnt take itself as seriously as mr robot. it is relentlessly pessimistic and the ending of the show, in contrast to mr robot, suggests that things are only going to get worse for these characters. like even hill does not make it to the end of the series lol. an episode like mr robot 407 would just never happen in oz because abuse is everywhere and nobody gives a shit what happens to prisoners, who are non-people in society, and this fact is treated cavalierly by oz's writing. if the claustrophobia of mr robot is the feeling of being constantly subjected and surveiled—by technocracy, or by elliots grip on the narration and point-of-view—then the claustrophobia of oz is the condition of being rendered non-human by the state—a sort of necropolitics that turns your suffering into a warning tale against breaking the law. the state of Outsider-ness experienced by the prisoner is just eons beyond elliots mind-prison.

if you wanted to get extra analytical about it, you could say the 2 decades between oz and mr robot goes to show how singular and obsessed with personal experience "prestige tv" and SocietyTM became during the burgeoning social-media-and-therapy-era.