Fri 5 Apr 2024
A TV Episode Review: LOU GRANT “Cophouse” (1977).
Posted by Steve under Reviews , TV Drama[4] Comments
LOU GRANT “Cophouse.” CBS / MTM. 20 September 1977 (Season 1, Episode 1). Edward Asner (Lou Grant), Robert Walden, Rebecca Balding, Mason Adams, Jack Bannon, Daryl Anderson, Nancy Marchand. Created by James L. Brooks, Allan Burns, and Gene Reynolds. Director: Gene Reynolds. Currently available on YouTube here.
I remember watching this on the same night the series premiered, and I know for sure I wasn’t the only one. There have been spinoffs from other TV shows before, but I can’t think of any of them that jarred one’s (well, mine) expectations more. As I’m sure you all know, Lou Grant was Mary’s boss over on her show, which took place in a small TV station in Minneapolis.
Now that gig is over (I think he may have been fired), Lou is in Los Angeles looking for a job. Thinking of going back to his first love, newspaper work, he tries his hand with the Los Angeles Tribune, where he has an old fiend who might put in a good word for him.
The task seems daunting – he’s been away too long, and the new gadgetry in the city room makes him feel out of place. The Mary Tyler Show was a comedy, as I’m sure you’ll recall, and the first half of this program seems headed in much the same fashion, in an “old guy, new tricks” sort of story line.
But once a viewer has settled in an old shoes comfortable way, all of sudden he finds that someone has gone off with his slippers. All of a sudden a story breaks out, a real story, a scandal in the making involving a certain precinct of the police department and some underage girls. The current fellow covering the police beat knows about it, but he’s been covering the beat too long and has become in effect one of the club.
Should the paper cover the story or not? The owner of the paper says no, but Lou shows some guff and stands up to her, guff the previous Lou Grant, over at the TV station,seldom had. It’s quite a transition, almost from one semi-comic scene to the next one, with Lou in an instant becoming a tough tough city editor not afraid to tackle serious social issues of the day.
Viewers must have liked it, though. Lou Grant the series was on for five seasons and in that time won all kinds of awards, including 13 Emmys.
April 5th, 2024 at 11:19 pm
I liked this show and series, especially Ed Asner who did enjoy a significant carry from Mary Tyler Moore. Funny about that, Mary had nothing much, she was unable to sustain, for all her charm and talent, another series. I auditioned or read for the male lead in her final go, but James Farentinio won the part. I was okay with that, but he was difficult to work with and they soon let him go, followed by cancelation. About auditioning for the series, a casting unit visited several cities, Toronto was one. The men I also read were Ken James and Gordon Pinsent. Both great guys, good actors, and gone now.
April 6th, 2024 at 12:24 am
Probably the best thing the series did was take the idea of Lou Grant and not the incarnation specific to the first series. Lou gradually morphed into all those tough city editors from every press room movie ever made but with a modern post Watergate Ben Bradley energy that seemed fresh.
For some reason an episode about a suitcase nuke loose in LA, atypical of the series, sticks in my mind.
April 6th, 2024 at 8:48 am
Initially, I was put off by the relocation of Lou to drama, but the series won me over. I watched all five (?) seasons. Trivia: Robert Walden who played Rossi, the young Carl Bernstein go-getter on the news desk, was Donald Segretti in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, the forerunner of all the GOP dirty tricksters to follow.
April 6th, 2024 at 3:16 pm
Rebecca Balding played the feisty young female staff reporter for only three episodes. She was replaced in the same general role for the rest of the run by Linda Kelsey.
This probably really isn’t worth a mention, except that I saw the latter night before in an episode of THE ROCKFORD FILES, and I thought she looked familiar.
And so she was.