Hey, let's talk about this guy

KIRK ACEVEDO.

I could probably talk about this man all day. But I'll settle for some highlights, starting with his most famous role as Miguel Alvarez on Oz, back when he was young, frequently shirtless, and smoking.

There were lots of characters with tragic stories on Oz, but ultimately, Miguel was probably the most tragic of all of them. He got stabbed in the very first episode, and during the first season his infant son died shortly after birth due to all the drugs he and his girlfriend had taken during her pregnancy. Needless to say, Miguel was not very emotionally stable. He resorted to cutting multiple times, and on one occasion he smeared his own shit all over the walls of his cell while in solitary confinemint. His grandfather and father were also prisoners in Oz, and Miguel was clearly trapped in this cycle. Everybody, and I do mean everybody, tried to kill him at one point or another. Yet Miguel made it through all six seasons of Oz, an impressive feat. The show's narrator didn't even survive six seasons! And when he was finally defeated, it was by his own demons; by his impulsiveness, his inability to control his temper, his despair. Miguel wasn't a sociopath, but he was clearly incapable of functioning in normal society. A sad ending for a character who generally meant well but was too deeply invested in the system that destroyed him.

That said, Miguel was great. Check out that swagger, that sneer. He had this lean, muscular look that I find absolutely irresistable, and those big, brown eyes. His fashion sense was pretty awesome as well:

After Oz, Kirk Acevedo then showed up as Italian mobster Nicky Cottero on the ill-fated yet fabulous The Black Donnellys. Nicky was very different from Miguel in a lot of ways (and not just because he was Italian). For one thing, Nicky wore a lot more leather than Miguel. He never lost control; everything he did was carefully calculated, whether that meant extorting money from Tommy Donnelly or poisoning his pesky mob boss. Not only that, he genuinely seemed to enjoy his job, and he was a real trooper. In one episode he got whacked in the head with a shovel for killing a few Irish he wasn't supposed to kill. Nicky didn't even get knocked unconscious! He just found a way to get even.

But Nicky did have a few things in common with Miguel, like excellent survival instincts. He also had a great sense of style; he completely renovated Sal Minetta's restaurant to include a snazzy bar and a strip club in back. He also had a special relationship with the strippers; on one occasion he sent his subordinate Vinny out to do surveillance work so he could screw one of the girls for the rest of the episode. Finally, Nicky had more swagger than any of the other characters on The Black Donnellys. I mean, just check out the body language in this picture! Nicky ruled.

So what is Kirk Acevedo up to nowadays? He has a role in Fringe as Agent Charlie Francis (no, really), ethnicity undetermined. As we can see, he's also adopted a more corporate look, though I do think he needs to wear snappier ties.

Fringe really, really wants to be a cross between CSI and X-Files, which would be a cool concept if the show itself wasn't kind of dumb. I made it about halfway through one episode; the premise was that some dude created an Internet pop-up in which a glowy hand comes out of the computer and somehow liquifies the brain of the person downloading it (the episode title was "The No-Brainer," har har). Seriously. Agent Francis is mostly involved in the police work on Fringe, not the CSI component. There was this one scene where Agent Dunham comes home to find her niece Ella downloading the file and pulls her away from the screen just as the glowy hand thing emerges. She later describes the incident to Agent Francis: "There were flashes on the computer screen...like bursts of images...and they affected Ella in some way, like she was hypnotized." He gives her this long suffering look...

...and then after a pause, says, "I'm going to call Computer Forensics..." and then leaves.

God, Kirk Acevedo is amazing. And not just because he has the best ass I've ever seen on TV or in real life.