"In this brilliantly heartbreaking report, at 8 on Channel 9, a whole complex of social changes comes into new focus, and The Mall is made to serve stunningly as metaphor, symbol, avatar and harbinger. And yet all that darned old significance never gets in the way of the fact that the program is about people and, to some extent, about how helpless they are when it comes to letting slip away things they all know, deep down, they would be better off hanging onto." - Washington Post, 1982