HBO's "Oz": Classic or Dud?

Gritty, realistic drama, or just a glorified soap opera?

I'd go with classic on this, even if things did fall apart in the last two seasons, with ridiculous storylines and bloody character deaths going into overload. One thing that really annoyed me was their attempt to make Ryan O' Reilly into some kind of sympathetic hero, despite the fact that he was a scheming manipulator responsible for nearly every death in the first season.

What made the show great, and still worth watching to the very end, were the characters: Said, Adebisi, Schillinger, Beecher, El Cid, Nappa, Alverez, Keller, the O' Reilly brothers, Rebadow, Poet - all really well-developed and believable, though with no guarantee they'd still be alive by the end of an episode.