There are many groups of inmates throughout the show, and not everyone within each group survives the show's events. Oz chronicles McManus' attempts to keep control over the inmates of Em City. The show's narrator, inmate Augustus Hill, explains the show, and provides context, thematic analysis, and a sense of humor.

Others, corrections officers and inmates alike, simply want to survive, some long enough to make parole and others just to see the next day. Some fight for powerВ вЂ“ either over the drug trade or over other inmate factions and individuals. Under McManus and Warden Leo Glynn, all inmates in 'Em City' struggle to fulfill their own needs. However, almost all of these factions are constantly at war with one another which often results in many prisoners being beaten, raped, or killed. Emerald City is an extremely controlled environment, with a carefully managed balance of members from each racial and social group, intended to ease tensions among these various factions. In this experimental unit of the prison, unit manager Tim McManus emphasizes rehabilitation and learning responsibility during incarceration, rather than carrying out purely punitive measures. The majority of Oz 's story arcs are set in ' Emerald City', named for a setting from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Frank Baum's Oz books, first described in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900). Moreover, most of the series' story arcs are set in ' Emerald City', a wing named after a setting from the fictional Land of Oz in L. The nickname 'Oz' is also a reference to the classic film The Wizard of Oz (1939), which popularized the phrase, 'There's no place like home.' In contrast, a poster for the series uses the tagline: 'It's no place like home'. 'Oz' is the nickname for the Oswald State Correctional Facility, formerly Oswald State Penitentiary, a fictional level 4 maximum-security state prison. CBS Studios International (international).

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