Lou Grant (TV Series) Nazi (1977) User Reviews

Character Study Of A Lost Boy

[tiekbane · 10/10 · 7 March 2024]

This is not the story of a Nazi & what his goals & beliefs are. This is the story of a boy who was a victim. Forget the synopsis, this review is about the writing & direction of the episode. Ed Asner gives his usual compelling performance mentoring green reporter Billy in developing the story. And after Billy discovers that Stiker was originally Jewish, they decide to run with the story. But there is another angle to this episode. Is it news to discover such a personal background story and print it without the subjects' approval or is it just a tabloid hit piece they might sell some papers? Peter Weller gives a gut wrenching performance worthy of an Emmy. The writing is snappy, crisp & contemporary.

This is Good television.

The biggest and baddest Nazi of them all

[kapelusznik18 · 6/10 · 9 July 2015]

****SPOILERS**** Based on the true story of American Nazi Deputy Commander and former KKK honcho Dan Burros who upon being uncovered in an article by the NY Times of being Jewish ended up blowing his brains out while listening to a recording of Richard Wagrner's stirring and very pro-Nazi, before there were ever any Nazis, classical music. It's here that L.A Nazi Commander Donald Stryker, Peter Weller,tries to start up the now long defunct Nazi Party and plans to take over America in what he calls a non violent peoples revolution. The fact that Stryker's Nazi Party has about a dozen members doesn't seem to bother him in that, as he a proudly says, his hero Adolph Hitler started out with only 8 members in 1923 and in ten years was installed as Chanchlor of what was to be known as "Nazi Germany"!

It's news reporter Billie Newman, Linda Kelsey, who gets her boss newspaper editor Lou Grant,Edward Asner, to assign her to write an in dept article about Stryker's meteoric rise to the top of his profession as an American Nazi Commander and what were the reasons behind them. Digging deep into Stryker's past Billie not only finds out that his real name is Donald Sterner but he comes from an orthodox Jewish Family who have since disowned him! A very cooperative and full of himself Strykler at first goes along with Billie's attempt, in his mind , to glorify his actions as a man, in the true American way, who pulled himself up from his boot or jack boot straps and become a leader of, all 12 of them, men. It's when she laid the truth on Stryker about his true racial identity as being Jewish he suddenly became openly violent and threatening towards her.

****SPOILERS**** With the truth on his Jewish background about to hit the news stands Stryker in an attempt to for-stall it practically pleads with Billie's editor, who's office he crashed into, Lou Grant to keep the story from coming out only to get thrown out by Grant threatening to call the police on him. Back at his Nazi headquarters Stryker seeing that the end, in him being an American Nazi Commander, is but hours away takes the only way out to not only save himself from the humiliation of being exposed as being Jewish and kicked out of his beloved Nazi party by blowing, like Jewish American Nazi Commander Dan Burros did in real life, his brains out!