I recently discovered I could watch episodes of Lou Grant on Hulu, and the first one I watched was Hooker, because I remember so distinctly being blown away by the girl who played The Hooker. That girl, Dee Wallace Stone (the mom on E.T.), is wonderful because her performance feels so real. She completely confirms the point of the episode, which is that prostitutes are not cartoon characters but actual people.
Stone is wonderful at conveying the sort of translucent emotion I associate with Jennifer Jason Leigh in which you feel you can see deeper into the character's emotional character than she wants you to. She is wonderfully affecting, and her offhand description of her early traumas is far better than a more typically dramatic delivery.
The episode itself is, like most of the early ones, fantastic. As with many much of Lou Grant, there can be a little too much time spent teaching the audience IMPORTANT THINGS, and, especially in the early scenes the dialogue can feel a little artificial, but overall it's great.
It's a shame that one of the best performances ever on TV is in an episode of a fairly forgotten TV series.
Stone is wonderful at conveying the sort of translucent emotion I associate with Jennifer Jason Leigh in which you feel you can see deeper into the character's emotional character than she wants you to. She is wonderfully affecting, and her offhand description of her early traumas is far better than a more typically dramatic delivery.
The episode itself is, like most of the early ones, fantastic. As with many much of Lou Grant, there can be a little too much time spent teaching the audience IMPORTANT THINGS, and, especially in the early scenes the dialogue can feel a little artificial, but overall it's great.
It's a shame that one of the best performances ever on TV is in an episode of a fairly forgotten TV series.