Law & Order (TV Series) Night & Fog (1993) User Reviews

Death in the foggy dark past

[TheLittleSongbird · 8/10 · 22 July 2020]

Decided a while back to review all the episodes of the original 'Law and Order', 'Special Victims Unit' and 'Criminal Intent', being someone who really likes all three shows in their prime/early years. Really loved a lot of the early seasons episodes of all three shows, while also finding all three less consistent later on (with the original not feeling the same post-Briscoe and 'Special Victims Unit' has been hit and miss for a while now). With "Night and Fog" it was interesting to see very early Lennie Briscoe.

As well as seeing Nehemiah Persoff in a late role and in a role that saw, from what has been personally seen of his (not enough), a different side to him. That's what intrigues me about all three shows, seeing actors in different types of role and stretching their abilities, it's not just the gritty tackling of challenging and even controversial themes and how they dealt with the moral dilemmas posed by the subjects covered. "Night and Fog" struck me as a very good episode on first viewing and it still does, if not a 'Law and Order' classic.

"Night and Fog" contains great acting for one. Jerry Orbach continues to show how so early on he was born to play one of the 'Law and Order' franchise's most justifiably popular characters. Chris Noth is a reliably solid partner and the two gel really well together, like a red wine and cheese. Michael Moriarty as ever brings great authority to the juicy character of Stone. Persoff was seldom more unnerving than here the more that is revealed about his character. The kind where one's opinion of him takes a dramatic 180 in the second half.

The story throughout is compelling, with a completely unpredictable change of events and a lot of chills later on. Namely in the whole dynamite rapport between Persoff and Moriarty and Persoff. The ending felt more rounded off and less rushed than some of the previous Season 3 episodes. The script is taut and thoughtful, especially in the exchanges between Stone and Schiff and Stone's Anne Frank line is telling. The production values continue to remain high, while the direction lets the dramatic intensity of the second half to blister. The music doesn't sound melodramatic.

Occasionally though the story in "Night and Fog" does get a little too complicated and one feels like they want more time to digest properly what's revealed, in an episode where there is a lot to take in.

Do agree that it is not easy to buy what the victim saw in her husband despite having knowledge of his past. One would run a mile realistically but maybe that's just me.

In summary, very well done. 8/10

Polka around the point.

[rmax304823 · 7/10 · 29 December 2010]

This is as good as any of the early episodes. It follows the template faithfully: the detectives pin down the perp, then legal complications arise, and the prosecution usually wins, but not always. But I'm beginning to notice, running these episodes seriatim, that while the stories may be "ripped from the headlines" and may raise questions of current concern, they rather easily slide into the usual Manichean image of just plain good versus an only slightly mitigated evil.

In this case, Brisco and Logan find an old lady dead on the floor of her apartment. She'd been suffering from MS and evidently had overdosed on CNS depressants. In the middle of their nosing around the flat, her elderly husband, Nehemiah Persoff, stumbles in and confesses to aiding in her suicide by helping her take the pills. Then, unable to watch her die, he went out and walked around the neighborhood.

So far, so clear. Loving husband helps dying wife end her misery. Both are holocaust survivors. Ben Stone is sympathetic but decides reluctantly to prosecute because, after all, you can't have people assisting the suicide of others. But the detectives find the body has a recently broken nose and, in the closet, there's a pillow with a corresponding blotch of the old lady's blood. It becomes clear that Persoff "helped" his wife die in a more active fashion than he has revealed.

And here's where it turns formulaic. Persoff may be a holocaust survivor, but he was a Jew who worked more than enthusiastically for the Nazis. He was given to sadism, beating others to death in the camps, whether needed or not. He and his wife had been arguing fiercely lately, the neighbors testify, and she had been threatening to expose his identity as a camp guard.

A couple of implausibilities here. Knowing who and what Persoff was, his wife had still lived with him for more than forty years? But the main point is that there is no longer a moral conundrum about assisted suicide in a case of terminal illness. It's a case of good versus evil, just as in any muscle man action movie, only without the wisecracks. Any ambiguity is eliminated. Persoff deserves what he gets. He's a mass murderer who killed his wife to shut her up. And what began as an adult treatment of a modern social concern has devolved into a familiar pattern.

This happens frequently in "Law and Order." There are simulations of all sorts of controversial cases from history, but in the end they're often simplified into the kind of contest we see here.

Not to denigrate the series. Sometimes the moral equipoise isn't so easily resolved, and sometimes the prosecution loses -- and in any case the story is always believably done.

This ain't Hogan's Heroes

[safenoe · 7/10 · 26 September 2023]

Carolyn McCormick (who I sometimes get mixed up with British actress Catherine McCormack) gets bumped up the order of credits with her name appearing in the opening theme, but for some unusual reason she doesn't appear in this episode. Actor and comedian Eric Bogosian makes another appearance as a defense attorney, and later he would play Captain Danny Ross in Law and Order: Criminal Intent.

War crimes is central to Night & Fog, and also about assimilation of war criminals even marrying their victims amongst Europe in World War 2 and the ramifications of that. Anyway, this is a controversial episode about war crimes.

The past catches up

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 5 June 2018]

The death of an elderly Jewish woman and holocaust survivor turns out to be a homicide and not natural or accidental as originally thought. Briscoe and Logan arrest Nehemiah Persoff the victim's husband

They did not meet and marry until after World War II. Persoff may have had a different kind of holocaust than his wife. There's reason to believe that he was ghetto policeman, a stooge for the Nazis to keep the other Jews in line. Among the perks was a decent ration of food and no trip to Dachau or some similar establishment.

But the New York County DA is only interested in trying Persoff for his crimes in their jurisdiction. Persoff also is quite ably defended by Eric Bogosian.

It's an interesting solution arrived at for a man not interested in reliving the distrant past.