Law & Order (TV Series) Aria (1991) User Reviews

Legally as well as morally

[bkoganbing · 7/10 · 8 August 2017]

Previous to watching this Law And Order story my idea of a monster stage mother was Jo Van Fleet in I'll Cry Tomorrow. Marilyn Rockafellow is Van Fleet as Lillian Roth's exponentially. Because I don't think in her most desperate time would Van Fleet have encouraged Susan Hayward to do pornography even soft core pornography.

Rockafellow's daughter committed suicide, she overdosed on some drugs and Michael Moriarty thinks that Rockafellow might be legally responsible as well as morally. Knowing that and proving that especially with Tony Roberts as Rockafellow's most able mouthpiece.

This episode marked the first appearance of Tovah Feldshuh as Danielle Melnick when she appears at a Surrogate Court hearing on behalf of an older sister of the deceased, contesting Rockafellow's right to be executor of the estate. That's a key ruling in fact for the criminal case.

The most horrifying moment for me is when a video of the deceased baring her soul is played in court. Rockafellow's face tells all, she cannot believe she's responsible in any way. All she sees is her lost talented daughter and what a loss to show business. As for the porn, well Marilyn Monroe did that calendar and look what it did for her.

Rockafellow will give you the creeps.

The final curtain

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 11 February 2020]

As well as loving the show, for a while my personal favourite of the 'Law and Order' franchise, more the earlier seasons than the latter seasons (it wasn't quite the same post-Lennie Briscoe), what always drew me in watching "Aria" was the story's subject. One that is hardly out of date today with people like Elizabeth Blaine still very much existing, and one that is not too hard to relate to regardless of whether anything similar has happened to you or not.

Following on from the great "Confession" and pretty good if slightly uneven "The Wages of Love", when talking about the previous Season 2 episodes, "Aria" continues the promising though slightly unsettled quality present at this point of the season. Again it is not a bad episode at all, the opposite in fact and the good things are many, but it definitely could have been better than it was and could have explored its interesting subject further. Comparing it with the previous two episodes, it leans closer in quality towards "The Wages of Love" (though faring a little better) rather than "Confession".

While "The Wages of Love's" story had the issue of being on the thin and bland side, that for "Aria" occasionally had the opposite problem of trying to include a little too much and being a little more complicated than it needed to be. Do agree also that it peters out at the end, showing great potential in bringing up a big problem and then doing nothing with it, almost neglecting it.

To me, though this is more understandable, Cerreta and Logan's chemistry hasn't completely gelled yet. They work well together by all means but it needed more spark and edge, a sign of the season still adjusting understandably to the big amount of change it underwent.

However, the cast do a fine job with Michael Moriarty standing out of the leads (helped by that to me Stone was the most interesting of the regular characters at this early stage of the show). Marilyn Rockafellow sends chills up the spine as the monstrous mother figure, especially her reaction to the video tape. One that is played in the most haunting part of the episode. It was hard too to not feel sorry for the victim, being somebody that has frequently been pushed in doing things that didn't make me feel comfortable.

"Aria" didn't strike me as a bland episode, not as thought-provoking as the previous two episodes but did find myself connecting emotionally here than in "The Wages of Love". Especially in the aforementioned scene but the whole episode is not easy to watch, with everything revolving around the stage business hitting home and still relevant now. Also appreciated that the pornographic industry wasn't stereotyped too one-dimensionally or extremely. "Aria" is well made and scored, with an intelligent script that raises some interesting moral questions.

In summation, good episode that makes an impact but indicative still of Season 2 having not properly hit its stride yet. 7/10

She didn't want to do it but you'll want to see it

[schappe1 · 8/10 · 29 March 2019]

A haunting episode that anticipates Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. In this one the regular cops and lawyers have to deal with a show-business addicted mother who pushed her favorite daughter into pornography just because it could make her a 'star'. Maura Tierney players her other, neglected daughter, who co-operates with the cops to bring justice to her sister (and herself). The mother, played by Marilyn Rockafellow is both dreamy and steely at the same time, determined to maintain her delusions as a protective shield against reality. But the star of the show is Mary B. Hall, who appears only at the beginning and at the end, in video tape viewed posthumusly, in which tearfully pleads with her mother to "stop the train" and let her off as her mother stares at the screen in admiration for the performance her beloved daughter is giving.

By the way, per "Law & Order The Unofficial Companion" by Kevin Courier and Susan Green, Tovah Feldshuh is playing "probate lawyer". She's never referred to as Danielle Melnick during the episode and seems to have a much more restrained personality and chummier relationship with Ben Stone than we see in the episodes in which she plays Melnick, (the first of which was a season later: "Helpless" 11/4/92). Jerry Orbach played a defense attorney named Frank Lehrman in the episode before this. The character Feldshuh plays in this episodes might not be Melnick, even though she's also an attorney. .

Driven to Despair.

[rmax304823 · 6/10 · 15 July 2012]

A rather complicated story. A young student at the Academy of Dramatic Arts is found dying of a drug overdone, muttering, "I didn't want to do it." But do what?

The detectives find that the girl's mother had been pushing her towards a career in the performing arts since childhood, and pushing hard. An older, less manipulable daughter had already given Mom the finger and dropped out of the grueling regimen. The younger daughter, though, was shy, retiring, still under Mom's thumb and did whatever she was told to do, even if she hated it to the point of self mutilation.

The detectives uncover the fact that Mom had introduced the younger girl into porn movies, but in parts that just involved stripping, not doing naughty things. The overdose took place the night before the daughter was supposed to have her innocence erased.

I kind of like the way the porn people were pictured. Not slimy, evil thugs with tattoos and sadistic impulses, but just ordinary cynical New Yorkers who go about their vile business with a shrug. "Sure, I make sex tapes. Everybody's got to make a living." The teen-aged Maura Tierney is adorable in a non-Hollywood way. U

unfortunately, as frequently happens with this series, the ending is a cop out. A Big Issue is brought up -- the pornographic industry -- and then the bait is switched. The mother, as it develops, is not only a stereotypical stage mother but a psychotic as well. The story would have had more depth -- but would have had to take a position -- if the mother had been perfectly sane and even sympathetic. Another, less important problem. The actress cast as the mother has the face of a hawk. We really didn't need it.

...lies and videotape

[safenoe · 7/10 · 10 July 2023]

Two years after Steven Soderbergh released his famous independent movie about fornication, lies, and videotape, we have Aria which is about lies and videotape and adult movies (although the phrase adult movies isn't used in this episode, but the p word is). Anyway, it's a sad storyline with no redeeming features.

Maura (not Laura) Tierney guest stars in this episode, and it may be one of her first roles, where she plays the sister of the victim who was pressured by her mom to appear in adult movies.

We get a glimpse of a video rental store (not Blockbuster) and we see VHS but not beta. We see New York City at its gritty and grimiest best, with also locations in real-life apartments as opposed to the movie studio sets used for the Friends apartment.