Aria (Season 2, Episode 3)
Premise: A young acting student who never touched drugs dies of an overdose, repeating that she didn’t want to do it.
- Air date
- Season/Episode
- Season 2, Episode 3
- Detectives
- Sgt. Phil Cerreta (Paul Sorvino), Det. Mike Logan (Chris Noth)
- ADAs/DA
- Exec. ADA Ben Stone (Michael Moriarty), ADA Paul Robinette (Richard Brooks), DA Adam Schiff (Steven Hill)
- Guest stars
- Marilyn Rockafellow as Elizabeth Blaine, Mary B. Ward as Priscilla Blaine, Tovah Feldshuh as attorney Danielle Melnick, Maura Tierney as Patti Blaine
- Director
- Don Scardino
- Writers
- Story: Michael S. Chernuchin; Teleplay: Christine Roum
Summary
The Investigation
In “Aria,” 19-year-old drama student Priscilla Blaine is found on the floor of her dressing room after a closing-night performance, dying of an overdose of an antidepressant. Her friends insist she never used drugs, and her last words are a repeated protest that she didn’t want to do it. Her mother, Elizabeth, a former amateur actress who has managed Priscilla’s training since early childhood, denies there was any problem. Priscilla’s older sister, Patti, who walked away from the same pressure years earlier, is more candid about their mother.
Cerreta and Logan learn that Priscilla had been dancing at a strip club and then appearing in adult films. A videotape and a film producer lead them to the shocking detail: Elizabeth arranged the work, drove her daughter to the shoots and was pushing her toward a starring role in a film that would require sex on camera. An actress from the films admits she gave Priscilla the pills to calm her nerves, warning her to take only one. Priscilla took eight.
The Trial
Stone charges Elizabeth with murder, but New York law treats suicide as an act that breaks the chain of cause. To reach Priscilla’s psychiatrist, the prosecutors back Patti in a probate fight over her sister’s estate, winning the right to waive the privilege. The doctor describes a young woman who couldn’t stand up to her mother, who cut off the hair her mother prized, and who gave her mother a taped stage monologue about leaving for good a week before she died.
With the defense unlikely to put Elizabeth on the stand, Stone changes his theory midstream. Elizabeth’s own probate testimony shows she sent her nervous daughter to the friend who supplied the pills, and the judge lets it be read into evidence.
Spoiler, the ending: Facing a jury that will hear her own words, Elizabeth pleads guilty. Stone refuses to let her plead to criminally negligent homicide and settles on second-degree manslaughter with the maximum sentence. Elizabeth still insists she loved her daughter.
Why it stands out
- The case asks whether a parent can be held criminally responsible for a grown child’s death.
- Stone switches from a suicide theory to an accidental-overdose theory partway through the case.
- The probate hearing over Priscilla’s estate is used as a back door to a doctor’s confidential testimony.