spinoff from The Mary Tyler Moore Show  

this should be deleted

1. Cophouse  

First aired: 9/20/1977    Production Code: 7501

50-year-old Lou Grant, down on his luck, is hired by his old friend Charlie Hume to be the new city editor of the Los Angeles Tribune. He is immediately faced with a dilemma, when brash young newshound Joe Rossi accuses the paper's veteran police reporter of covering up a scandal concerning cops having sex with underage girls in a police-sponsored soccer league.

2. Hostages  

First aired: 9/27/1977    Production Code: 7510

A gunman takes the Tribune newsroom hostage, ordering Rossi to rewrite his story about the man's brother, who was supposedly killed by a store owner while committing a robbery.

3. Hoax  

First aired: 10/4/1977    Production Code: 7503

Veteran journalist Jack Riley convinces Lou and Rossi to go to Jamaica to find a missing Los Angeles industrialist who was thought to have been kidnapped.

4. Henhouse  

First aired: 10/11/1977    Production Code: 7509

Lou and the editor of the women's section of the paper engage in a turf war by proxy as their respective reporters, Joe Rossi and Billie Newman, clash over whether the death of a prominent New Mexico playwright is murder or suicide. At the end, Billie is offered a chance to move up from the "Today" section to the "City" staff.

5. Nazi  

First aired: 10/18/1977    Production Code: 7505

Trying to delve behind the headlines about a violent demonstration by American Neo-Nazis, Billie uncovers the fact that their leader comes from an Orthodox Jewish family.

6. Aftershock  

First aired: 10/25/1977    Production Code: 7506

Rattled by his first exposure to a Los Angeles earthquake, Lou sends Rossi and Animal to investigate a local researcher's claim that his insects can predict upcoming earthquakes. Meanwhile, a recently-deceased colleague's widow comes to depend more and more on Lou as a replacement for her husband.

7. Barrio  

First aired: 11/1/1977    Production Code: 7504

Billie and a Hispanic community leader try to help a teenager whose mother was shot by a barrio gang from getting caught up in the endless cycle of gang violence and retaliation.

8. Scoop  

First aired: 11/8/1977    Production Code: 7502

Billie and Rossi have problems trying to cover the news in a timely fashion. Billie keeps taking too long to verify her stories and misses the deadline, whereas Rossi keeps turning them in too soon and getting the facts wrong.

9. Judge  

First aired: 11/15/1977    Production Code: 7508

When Lou visits the Courthouse to verify reports of a Superior Court judge's bizarre behavior, he ends up getting jailed for contempt and the newspaper's publisher threatened.

10. Psych-Out  

First aired: 11/22/1977    Production Code: 7515

Without telling anyone, Rossi has himself checked into a mental hospital to gather information on patient abuses, and then has trouble getting out. Meanwhile, Lou becomes concerned that fear of litigation is causing the Tribune to censor its news reporting.

11. Housewarming  

First aired: 11/29/1977    Production Code: 7512

Working on a story about spousal abuse, Billie gives advice and refuge to a battered wife, then discovers that one of her co-workers at the paper is a wife-beater.

12. Takeover  

First aired: 12/6/1977    Production Code: 7513

A charming media mogul romances Mrs. Pynchon and attempts to add the Tribune to his somewhat disreputable media empire.

13. Christmas  

First aired: 12/13/1977    Production Code: 7507

Billie's holiday assignment to profile a needy family leads to an oupouring of sympathy and monetary support, whereas Rossi's assignment leads him to discover that an uninteresting official is a bigamist supporting two separate families.

14. Airliner  

First aired: 1/3/1978    Production Code: 7514

The Tribune staff are called back to work after hours because of a jet liner experiencing mechanical troubles which might crash. Joan Hume, Charlie's daughter, is on the plane.

15. Sports  

First aired: 1/10/1978    Production Code: 7516

When the Tribune's sports department refuses to cover the UCLA football team's recruitment scandals, Lou steps in, but he meets unexpected resistance from a columnist whom he has long admired.

16. Hero  

First aired: 1/17/1978    Production Code: 7518

When a gubernatorial candidate is saved from an assassination attempt by an anonymous bystander, Rossi identifies the man and writes a story about him that reveals a hidden conviction for armed robbery in his past. This causes the hero to lose business clients, as well as his girlfriend. Meanwhile, Billie's story on a struggling halfway house for women newly released from prison gains sympathy from Mrs. Pynchon.

17. Renewal  

First aired: 1/30/1978    Production Code: 7511

Lou tries to help Earl, the local newsstand owner, when an urban renewal project threatens to destroy his building... along with the artwork he painted directly on his room's walls.

18. Sect  

First aired: 2/6/1978    Production Code: 7517

Charlie Hume and his wife are upset about their son Tommy's conversion to the Hare Krishna religion, but have second thoughts after hiring a "de-programmer" to kidnap him. Meanwhile, Rossi and Billie do a story on such religious cults.

19. Scandal  

First aired: 2/13/1978    Production Code: 7520

Because of his disrespectful attitude toward a city supervisor, Rossi is pulled from covering the man's re-election campaign and replaced by a female reporter. But when she comes up with scoops, Rossi suspects that she has become romantically involved with the politician she is supposed to be covering.

20. Spies  

First aired: 2/27/1978    Production Code: 7519

When the Trib receives a request from the CIA to stop investigating two young men arrested for drug dealing, the staff comes to suspect that there is a CIA informant in their midst. Meanwhile, Rossi starts to date Charlie Hume's daughter.

21. Poison  

First aired: 3/6/1978    Production Code: 7521

When a friend of Rossi's is killed after claiming that there are safety violations at the nuclear plant where he works, Rossi and Billie attempt to initiate an investigation themselves.

22. Physical  

First aired: 3/20/1978    Production Code: 7522

Lou is feeling unusually tired as he helps a copy boy who is trying to become a reporter, and has to fire a promising intern who impishly inserted a fake award into a list of awards. Then a routine checkup reveals that Lou has cancer of the thyroid, which requires immediate surgery.