Lou Grant: 30 years ahead of his time
Bill Walsh at Blogslot points to the first season of Lou Grant at Hulu. Lou Grant premiered in 1977 when I was on my first reporting job and it caught the magic of being a journalist. The reporters were self-absorbed idealists (as was I at the time). The photographer was aptly nicknamed "Animal." I especially enjoyed the depiction of the executive editor as a milquetoast yes man who sucked up to the publisher, which was my view of editors. At the time.
The opening montage is a classic in itself: A bird sitting on a tree branch chirps. The tree is cut down. A load of felled trees is taken to the mill. Newsprint is made. The newsroom characters are introduced. The newspaper comes off the press. A carrier tosses one in a puddle, another on a rooftop. A reader reads the paper with coffee, then tears a page out and slides it into the bottom of a bird cage. The last scene: The bird in the cage chirps.
Classic. Pretty much the way it works 30 years later.
Bill refers to a darker scene in episode 71:
Art Donovan: "Mrs. Pynchon is very interested in endangered species."
Lou Grant: "Yeah. That's why she owns a newspaper."
Comments (1)
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I wasn't around when it aired the first time, but I just watched the first episode on Hulu last week, and I was amazed at how much still held true. :-)
Posted on March 31, 2008 4:21 PM