MovieChat Forums > Lou Grant (1977) Discussion > 'Henhouse' - season 1 number 4

'Henhouse' - season 1 number 4

posted 17 years ago by LCShackley
1 reply | jump to latest

This was a very strange episode. No mention was made of the departure of Rebecca Balding's character (after only 3 shows), but the producers quickly replaced her with another perky redhead, the excellent Linda Kelsey.

The entire episode served to set up Kelsey's character and to give a reason for her to join the team at the city desk. This involved, among other things, having to make Lou try to hit on the "woman's section" editor without knowing who she was.

There were many clunky passages of dialog where the writer was trying to be cute, and failed. ("Kidney beans" gag repeated twice, Rossi smarting off repeatedly to the cop at the press conference, Kelsey and chewing gum, etc.) Not one of the best episodes, but now that we've got Kelsey on board things ought to pick back up again.

[–] horsenbuggy 11 years ago

What I thought was most odd about this episode was how it kinda went backwards for Lou's character. I just couldn't fathom the man who mentored Mary Richards being so aggressively chauvinistic. He also ended up having a great relationship with Mary's aunt Flo, at least on MTM - I haven't seen her Lou Grant episodes yet. I understand that maybe he wouldn't want to mentor another young woman just because she was young and he didn't think he had the energy to go through it again. But not because she was a woman and it felt very strange that he was so rude to a woman with so much experience (Irene, the editor). It just didn't ring true for me.