Something a little different for today's pentultimate advent post: a bit of meta discussing my absolute favorite moment in all of Oz.

Perhaps surprisingly, it has nothing to do with Beecher/Keller. It's the moment in the season 2 episode "Animal Farm" when all the different groups of inmates join together to donate money to Rebadow so that his dying grandson can go to Disney World. Tumblr's ryan-oreily made a wonderful gifset of the sequence of scenes that make up the moment, which can be seen HERE. This is a screencap of it:



I'm generally a feel-good kind of person (which is kind of ironic, given the nature of this show), and I found it incredibly touching that these hardened criminals could show so much compassion, that they still possessed the basic decency to do something so kind.

However, the first time I watched it, it was also with growing apprehension, because this was Oz. I kept waiting for something horrible to happen, for someone to rob Rebadow, or kill him, or for him to lose the money somehow. And then, sure enough, Wangler proposes to Adebisi that they steal the money, and I thought, "Here we go..."

BUT THEN

Adebisi (ADEBISI!! of all people) rejects Wangler's plan, explaining:



And THAT is when I lost it, and it made me realize how incredible this show was and how amazing its characters were. I loved how Fontana showed that someone as despicable as Adebisi could still have a conscience and a sense of humanity. That all the people in Oz, as horrible as they might be, were still people at heart.

This moment has always reminded me, in a roundabout way, of my favorite passage in "A Christmas Carol," when Scrooge's nephew says,

I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round... as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!

I think, given recent political events, it is apparent that a lot of people still need to learn the lesson of this passage. I live in hope that the seasonal atmosphere of Christmas at least gives them pause to consider its message.