As Lou Grant, Ed Asner Showed That Vulnerability Is Masculinity

If you were born before 1990, then you can sum up Ed Asner’s pop culture legacy with three words: “I hate spunk.” If you were born in the last 30 years, there are probably just two words: “Elf” and “Up.” But back to those three words, an iconic line delivered by Asner in the pilot episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. You know the scene: meek Mary Richards (Mary Tyler Moore) is interviewing for a job at WJM-TV, a news station in Minneapolis. She’s broken an engagement, moved to the city, and is ready to live her life on her terms. There’s just one big obstacle: a stocky bulldozer of a man parked behind a desk. His name’s Lou Grant (played by Asner) and he’s the exact opposite of meek. After a disastrous interview wherein Lou asks questions he legally can’t ask and Mary answers questions a few prompts too late, the cantankerous newsman gets up close to Mary, delivers his final verdict on her as a job candidate, and makes history:

“You know what? You’ve got spunk… I hate spunk!”

This is an iconic moment for a reason. Asner performs the line as a helluva misdirect, his face going from giddy to growling in milliseconds.

It’s the perfect summation of the Mary/Lou dynamic that would fuel seven seasons of television, win a truckload of Emmys, elevate the sitcom to a higher plane of artistry, and it lays the foundation for easily dozens of beautifully, hilariously fraught boss/employee relationships on numerous later sitcoms. This became Asner’s legacy for a reason—but it shouldn’t be all of it. There’s another half of that legacy that’s not talked about enough, another half of the character and performance that’s the opposite of “I hate spunk.” Lou’s remembered as the archetypal cranky boss. He was absolutely that, but it’s important to point out the moments when this paragon of masculinity showed tens of millions of 1970s TV viewers that manliness can and does comfortably exist alongside vulnerability and empathy.

Lou Grant had a softer side that MTM gamely explored time and time again, while never letting it overtake that gruffness. This side of Lou reveals itself slowly, the kind of gradual character evolution that an actor could really lean into when given the chance to play the same role for 168 episodes. There’s a moment that sticks out in the first half of Season 1, though, in the masterpiece that is “Christmas and the Hard Luck Kid II.” Mary’s reluctantly agreed to work Christmas Eve on top of her scheduled Christmas Day shift, which means she’ll spend one of the more traditionally emotional nights of the year all alone at work. Lou feels bad about this; he didn’t ask her to cover for a co-worker on Christmas Eve. He even volunteers to stay behind instead, but Mary won’t let him. On his way out, he pauses at the door, turns around, and…

It’s the kind of moment that absolutely could not have been scripted. No writer would direct Asner to “tap your thumb twice against Mary’s middle finger.” This has to have been all Ed Asner, as the actor found a way to let his own inner sensitivity work its way into the persona of Lou Grant.

That’s who Asner was IRL, by the way. He was an endlessly empathetic and passionate man who, yes, was a veteran and loved cigars and football. But he also stood up for worker’s rights, leading the SAG strike of 1980 (and boycotting an Emmy ceremony in which he won). He devoted his spare time to charity events, ones he either ran himself or lending his considerable weight as a bonafide legend to the causes of others. And over the past few years, you just had to follow the guy on Twitter to see how big of a softie he really was on a daily basis, sending birthday wishes and congratulations to fans and spreading the word about causes that meant something to him. That’s who Ed Asner was, but it’s not who Lou Grant was back in 1970—not yet.

There are a bunch of great examples of Lou’s sensitivity coming out. He and his wife briefly separate in Season 1’s “The Boss Isn’t Coming to Dinner,” which ends with Lou making a muted but heartfelt call home. The blustery boss gets a case of stage fright in Season 2’s “Thoroughly Unmilitant Mary” when he’s forced to deliver the news on-air in place of a picketing Ted Baxter. And then there’s “Operation: Lou,” where Lou let his guard down and became friends with Ted. But the clearest example of this is Season 4’s “The Lou and Edie Story.”

In the episode, written by MTM mainstay Treva Silverman, the marital tensions introduced way back in Season 1 reach their climax as Lou’s wife finally moves out. The episode is, from top to bottom, a perfect Lou Grant episode. Asner plays a man faced with losing his entire world, but he still has to keep up the masculine facade. He doesn’t know how to lie about going to marriage counseling, but he has to. He doesn’t know how to tell his problems to Mary, but he has to. He doesn’t know how to ask his friends for help, but he has to. And ultimately, he doesn’t know how to say goodbye to the love of his life… but he has to.

Throughout the episode, Asner bounces back and forth between the Lou we know—him demanding that Mary tell him one of her devastating secrets if he’s open up to her about all this—and a Lou we haven’t seen before—him drunkenly, aimlessly drifting into Mary’s apartment. It all culminates in a scene that, according to those who don’t get that comedy is art, shouldn’t be on a sitcom. Edie leaves Lou. This problem is not solved in a half hour. The show goes there, and it goes there in 1973 at a time when divorce was not normalized and it certainly did not happen to main characters on situation comedies.

This scene should be up there with “I hate spunk,” as essential to Asner’s legacy as Elf and Up. It’s heartbreaking, watching Lou come home to his wife one last time, her carrying a suitcase into the living room. Lou can’t deal with this, and he fixates on everything else, anything else, so he can avoid thinking about her leaving and delay her from doing so. He rails against the “little clicky things” on suitcases not having a name and he gives a long monologue about how annoying it is that fruits have pits.

In a deft bit of writing, or maybe this is reading too much into it, the pits monologue parallels what happens to a marriage when you let the problems fester. A fruit is the marriage, a thing you’re supposed to enjoy. But the pit is the inedible thing, the thing you have to deal with. If you don’t deal with it the right way, it can end up in an ashtray with ashes all over it, “and it doesn’t even look like a fruit anymore. Looks like some furry, gray, dead thing.” And then, pause…

This is the other side of “I hate spunk.” This moment is what makes Lou Grant so fascinating, so real—and it’s what made Ed Asner such a master at his craft. Sitcoms don’t have to go this hard and they don’t have to ask this much of their performers. The main goal is to get a laugh. But by casting big-hearted Ed Asner in the role of Lou Grant, they got this. They got a guy who was believably a hardened newsman with a sensitive soul hiding in the cigar smoke.

“I hate spunk” is what the writers wanted Lou Grant to be in the first episode. “How can you leave me, Edie?” is what Ed Asner brought to Lou Grant. He—like all men—was both of those things simultaneously, gruff and vulnerable. That’s who Lou Grant was, and it’s who Ed Asner was. He was so much more than just his dislike of spunk.

Stream The Mary Tyler Moore Show on Hulu