Chris Keller
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Chris Keller is a fictional character on the HBO series Oz, portrayed by Chris Meloni from 1998 to 2003. Keller is a sexually obsessed manipulator, serving an 88 year sentence in Oswald.
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[edit] Season 2
Keller arrives at OZ on a secret mission to win Beecher's trust. It is not clear as to why the arrival of Keller is so convenient to Schillinger, but one theory is Schillinger phoned Keller in on a favor from Lardner (another prison where Keller and Schillinger first met), and Keller intentionally got caught and convicted. Beecher is hesitant at first but soon gets close to Keller. He shares intimate stories and fears with Keller who responds by comforting and defending him against other Aryans. Beecher soon realizes that he may have fallen in love with Keller. After a brief session with Sister Pete to confirm his feelings, Beecher finds a drunk Keller in the laundry room with a bottle of moonshine (which Keller had smuggled in for Beecher in a previous attempt to remove his swastika tattoo from his buttocks) and he tells Keller the truth about what he feels. Keller tells Beecher he feels the same way and they share a kiss that is broken up by the guards. Keller is thrown into the Hole while Beecher in torn up. Beecher begins to drink again while Keller is in the Hole. When Keller returns to EmCity he tells Beecher he was wrong about the way he said he felt and that he wants nothing to do with him, humiliating Beecher in front of the entire EmCity population. Beecher drinks recklessly in his depression over losing Keller, but takes a break when Officer Metzger suggests he go to the gym to work out his frustrations. When Beecher arrives at the gym, he GETS one from Keller -- and Schillinger, who tells Beecher it was a plan all along and he never loved him, kissing Schillinger's bald head to top off the scene. Beecher lunges and Metzger holds him back, which only entertains Keller. Metzger then lets go of Beecher and allows him to grapple with his former friend, though it's clear that Keller has the upperhand. Keller breaks both arms and Schillinger breaks both legs. The two deliver a brutal beating resulting in Beecher's 2 month recovery period and Keller's instantanious guilt as he runs his hands along Beecher's bunk and finds that he really did love him.
[edit] Season 3
Keller later tried to seek Beecher's forgiveness, but Beecher rebuffed him, refusing to have anything further to do with him unless he confessed his role in the attack to prison authorities. He did so, but Beecher still rejected him, igniting in Keller a confusing, unfamiliar emotion: regret. Keller began attending counseling sessions with the prison psychiatrist, Sister Peter Marie "Sister Pete" Reimondo, as a ploy to win back Beecher's favor. However, when Sister Pete discovered that his expressions of remorse were insincere, she too turned her back on him. Keller briefly allied himself with Ryan O'Reilly for protection against the Aryans, who now hated him for becoming Beecher's lover and for turning himself in (as Beecher requested), implicating Schillinger. He and O'Reilly, an inmate equally devoid of conscience, were a force to be reckoned with, plaguing Schillinger and, along with Beecher, playing a role in the death of his son, Andrew. Keller eventually did get a chance at a kind of moral redemption when he saved Beecher's life after Schillinger stabbed him and Beecher requests that Keller be moved back into their old familiar pod and they share a happy reunion on New Years' Eve.
[edit] Season 4
After a brief preiod of solitude and happiness during a 2 week lockdown, it is obvious that Keller and Beecher were a deeply dysfunctional couple out in the open, often having sex with different prisoners to make the other jealous. In the relationship, Keller is thought of as the 'Man' or 'Boyfriend', as he was a more hardened and accomplished criminal and not as sensitive as Beecher, something that did not sit well with Beecher after his time as Schillinger's prag. Keller even killed Beecher's lovers, including inmate Mondo Browne. Keller and O'Reilly then murdered Browne and fellow inmate Nate Shemin, also Beecher's lover, to discredit the new manager of Em City, Martin Querns when few white inmates remained. In 2001, Keller took up with his former cellmate/lover named Ronald Barlog to hurt Beecher, who expressed an interest in Barlog after finding out how close Keller was to him on the outside. Barlog then secretly made a deal with FBI Agent Pierce Taylor to give evidence against Keller and have him convicted of three murders in exchange for his own freedom. Beecher was immediately suspicious of Barlog and warned Keller, who dismissed the warning as mere jealousy. But Keller soon started to have his own suspicions and eventually murdered Barlog, snapping his neck while receiving oral sex from him. Just before killing Barlog, Keller confessed that he had indeed committed the murders the FBI suspected him of, and that his victims, all young, gay men, represented something within himself that he hated. When the police discovered that Schillinger's other son, Hank, had been murdered and that the hit was ordered by an inmate from within Oz, Keller took responsibility for the crime to protect Beecher and his family. He was then sent to Massachusetts to stand trial for this murder.
[edit] Season 5
Keller was transferred back to Oz the following year, as Agent Taylor proved he lied about his involvement in Hank Schillinger's murder. He was then put in protective custody while the District Attorney's office tried to convict him of an unsolved murder (which he had indeed committed). While in protective custody, he began an affair with one of the guards, Officer Claire Howell, but soon tired of her and began rejecting her advances. Enraged, Officer Howell brutally beat him, putting him in the infirmary, and told her superiors that he attacked her. After he recuperated from his injuries, he was found guilty of the murder charge, and sentenced to death.
[edit] Season 6
Beecher got paroled and then began working back in his father's law firm with inheritance money from his father's death. When Beecher was paroled, he showed his gratitude to Keller by helping him appeal his death sentence, which was subsequently overturned, with the help of his father Harrison Beecher (who worked plenty on the case before his death). It was during his time in the prison helping his son's lover when Harrison Beecher was stabbed to death in a suspiciously empty hall. While Keller's relationship with Beecher was by now somewhat estranged, he tried to show his former lover that he still cared by killing Franklin Winthrop, the inmate who had murdered Beecher's father to advance in the Aryan Brotherhood. Keller, who knew he would never be free, concocted a plan to ensure that he and Beecher could be together again; he asked Beecher to deliver a package of illegal medicine for his dying ex-wife. Beecher hesitated, but eventually agreed and took the package. Shortly after leaving the room, Keller informed on him to the guards, getting Beecher caught and sent back to Oz. Furious, Beecher rejected Keller once and for all. Seeing this, Vern Schillinger decided to re-ally himself with Keller as he felt that everything bad that happened between them was due to Beecher and the two could merely get along as two people watching each other's backs. At this time, Beecher is offered a deal from the FBI to set up Keller and he seriously considers it. When Beecher was cast in the prison theater production of Macbeth which featured Schillinger in the lead role and Beecher as MacDuff, Keller, who told Beecher of a plan to get rid of Schillinger once and for all (a plan Beecher wanted nothing to do with), switched Beecher's prop knife with a real one. Beecher stabbed Schillinger unintentionally during the fight scene, thinking the knife in his hand was a prop climax. Keller claimed to have no idea how a real knife got onto the MacBeth set. Schillinger's death was considered an accident and nobody was going to be blamed or punished, enraging the Aryan community. Afterward, Beecher returns to his EmCity pod only to discover that Keller had gotten himself back into EmCity and even managed to convince McManus to make Beecher his podmate. Beecher gets angry and tells Keller he wants nothing to do with him, but Keller continues to tell him he loves him and there was nothing standing in their way. Beecher finally calms down and asks Keller, if he truly wants to be with him, to answer one question; did he mess up Beecher's one chance at parole intentionally? Keller admits that he could not stand the idea of not living with Beecher, which only pushed Beecher further away. In a final confrontation, Keller backs away from him to look over a railing down into the commonroom while Beecher tells him he never wants to be with him again and if he really cared, he'd let go. Keller grabs Beecher by the collar,tells him he can't let him go, kisses him one last time, and throws himself backward over the railing, screaming "NO Beecher NO" as he is falling and lands awkwardly on his neck. Beecher is screaming as he watches his lover die, with Ryan O'Reily kneeling by the body looking up as Beecher. Keller had made it appear as though Beecher had pushed him, and though he is innocent, Beecher takes the blame knowing that his rejections were essential to the suicide. While walking through MacManus' labyrinth, Beecher tells Sister Pete that he had decided that morning to cooperate with the FBI. McManus appears and tells Beecher he will be placed in protective custody until he goes to trial in fear of an Aryan attack, but Beecher tells him he isn't worried because Keller told him he'd "taken care of the Aryans", but isn't clear as to how.
At the same time a package arrived from a friend of Keller's, containing an unknown contaminant (Dr Nathan suspects it is Anthrax). When opened by the Aryans in the mail room, the contents were released into the air, killing the inmates and two guards in the room and resulting in a total evacuation of inmates from the prison to another place. In the final scenes, the entire prison is empty and several buses leave the premises loaded with prisoners and staff, and the camera focuses on Beecher, who can't help but smile knowing who was responsible.
