Law & Order (TV Series) The Pursuit of Happiness (1993) User Reviews

Deadly pursuit

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 24 September 2020]

The premise of "The Pursuit of Happiness" could have gone either way in execution. It could have been unsettling and probed a lot of thought. Or it could have been too sleazy and too predictable. It still sounds very intriguing, even if it is very familiar and straightforward. If one is a fan of 'Law and Order' and of the franchise, for a long time have liked it very much, it is hard to not expect a lot from "The Pursuit of Happiness", which does have an appetising title.

While there is a good deal to like about "The Pursuit of Happiness", it is still one of my least favourite episodes of 'Law and Order's' Season 4 and is a long way off from being a standout of the early seasons. It does unsettle. It does provoke thought and grab the attention mostly. It is not too sleazy. It is though very predictable with few surprises. It was also in a way hard to care for the case to be solved and tried because of the victim being one of the season's most hateable.

Shall start with what is good and there is a lot. Have no issue with the intimate but not claustrophobic photography and the subtly gritty look. The music is only used when necessary and is hauntingly understated when it is used, not over-emphasising too much the mood when things are revealed. The script is lean and tight enough which stops the talk from being long-winded, while not jumping around, and is intelligently written.

Direction is accomodating while not letting things get too dull. The story does have some intrigue with the procedural work being quite clever and the legal scenes do as ever impose some interesting questions. The performances are all round are very good, Michael Moriarty being the regular standout and sympathetic Jesse Conti and deliciously smarmy Bruce Altman standing out in support.

Other cases of the season and of the show are a lot more intricate and consistently attention grabbing. The plotting is quite slight and it is one of Season 4's most predictable cases with almost everything being obvious too early, which did dilute any tension quite drastically.

As intriguing as it was, that defense tactic was beyond unrealistically unprofessional and some may find it distasteful (one is on the judge's side on this one). Other episodes did a little better at allowing us to care about the case being solved and tried as said, it was hard to do so completely for this episode when the victim was this over the top detestable and so obviously so early on (there are other episodes in the franchise with detestable victims but in those cases it took quite a bit longer for it to be revealed).

To conclude, well done on the whole but not exceptional. 7/10

Deadly mail order bride

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 14 October 2018]

Jerry Orbach and Chris Noth catch a case of a well to do man who was killed in his office. At first glance one might think it was a case of him interrupting a burglar. But that gives way to a motive far more personal.

The victim was a real pig in life who as one of the cast members said "wanted a housekeeper by day and a prostitute at night" For that purpose he purchased Natalya Negoda from the former Soviet Union. Wedded bliss got old very fast and soon she was stepping out on him with Jesse Corti. The two of them are arrested.

Getting a conviction proves problematic. The victim was a piece of work and the lovers get sympathy in varying degrees. Michael Moriarty can't get one to roll on the other. In addition Corti has Bruce Altman as an attorney.

As an actor Altman has made a career of playing really smarmy individuals because he does them so well. He's at his smarmiest here and tries a defense tactic that really is unacceptable regarding one of the witnesses.

The ending is a surprise and at least one of the defendants has a bit more character than we were led to expect.

Anyone else catch it?

[kbryan17 · 8/10 · 16 May 2021]

There's a nice little Easter egg in this episode. The young Russian bride asserts as part of her alibi that she and her late husband had theatre tickets for later that week: "Guys and Dolls". Faith Prince plays a co-worker of the young wife, and also played Miss Adelaide in that revival.

Mail Order Marriage.

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 28 November 2010]

One of the less ambiguous episodes. A wealthy middle-aged man brings in a pretty young Russian bride and treats her as a servant, keeping her in a gilded cage as someone puts it. She falls in love with a younger Puerto Rican man -- who doesn't look particularly handsome to me. His head is the shape of a cube. However, the two conspire to kill the rich guy and make it look like an interrupted burglary. They manage the scene clumsily and there's soon little doubt about what went on. The well-off husband had to be disposed of before the bride's two years' probation was up.

The trail leads to an abortion because the wife was pregnant and Hubby couldn't be sure whether it was his baby or the PR's. But the abortion is a kind of meander and, though it represents a reality intrusion, doesn't make the plot any more mixed in its values. There is good and, mostly, there is bad. The villains may be a little sympathetic but there's no doubt they deserve what they get.

That murdered hubby, by the way, must have been quite well off. I had an internet bond with a Russian woman half my age, Juliet Vladimirovna, and we looked into the kind of marriage that the hubby in this episode had arrange. It developed that in order for me to import her as a bride I would need three times my current income. Undaunted, I plunged into the bureaucratic morass and looked into moving to Mexico, thinking the bar might be lower. Alas, I would have needed FOUR times my income to get even a transient resident visa. I was too poor to be a Mexican, a sobering thought. Juliet found a job in Sweden and hooked up with her boss. I hope they both choke on pickled herring. Maybe that's a little off topic. I guess it IS off topic. Can I take it back?

Great Performances, Great Endgame Twist

[Better_TV · 8/10 · 29 April 2018]

I enjoyed this one because of the performances, despite the straighforward plot - and I'm usually critical of procedurals where the crime boils down to the words "jilted lover." Excellent work from the supporting cast here: Natalya Negoda as defendant Irina Cooper, Jesse Corti as her defiant and protective lover, and Faith Prince as Irina's co-worker who helped enable the affair.

The problem for the DA's office is that the victim was, by all accounts, a total jerk. He treated Irina, his mail-order Russian bride, like a live-in maid, and he wouldn't even help bring over her child from Russia. Tough to make a jury feel sympathy for this guy.

"They can hear that he was mean and domineering, and they can call it grounds for divorce, but I won't let them accept it as a defense for murder," says ever-principled Catholic prosecutor Ben Stone.

A really interesting twist comes late in the game too, as one of the defense attorneys wants to call the main witness's testimony into question... because he's Korean and he doesn't think a Korean person can recognize non-Asians?! The judge is pissed at the theatrics, but it seems like this oily attorney has the case law to back himself up, where it's known as "cross-racial identification." (Sounds more like "racism" to me.)

Watch and find out what happens...

The Pursuit of Happyness

[safenoe · 7/10 · 30 October 2023]

The Pursuit of Happiness is directed by Dann Florek and the race angle at the end was very controversial and quite strange in a way that would make the enforcement of the law unsettling.

Anyway, The Pursuit of Happiness isn't for everyone, but at least Dann Florek maintains his involvement in the Law and Order universe as a director.

I'm enjoying watching the early seasons of Law and Order, which has the Serpico and French Connection feel to it in the streets of New York City with extras in the background, and also members of the general public who are oblivious to the filming on the streets of New York City.

Addressing Racism . . . Sort Of

[bkkaz · 8/10 · 5 June 2022]

Two White guys and a White judge debate racism. That's about as American as it gets. In this episode, a Korean American witness who is dead on target with his identification nonetheless has his ability to do sound maligned by a pompous White defense attorney and his pompous White psychology expert merely because he is not White. Moreover, they use studies on foreigners -- and not Americans -- to back up their claim. Nonetheless, the White judge lets the attack on the witness go on.

That's about as American as it gets.

This episode is talky, but it was done back when Law and Order was willing to take on controversial ideas. The problem, though, is that shown through the White lens, none of the minority characters has any agency. In fact, except for the Pueto Rican defendant, there are no minority characters.

That was back in 1993. Things haven't changed much despite a lot of performative outrage about diversity, equity, and inclusion. But at least this episode brought it up to confront some uncomfortable truths. That's a lot more than what we see on Law and Order shows today.