The Walker reboot drops the conservativism of the original, but hasn’t yet replaced it with much
TV Reviews Unknown
Who is Walker, Texas Ranger? In the ’90s, that question had an easy answer. Chuck Norris’ karate-kicking, drug-discouraging, cowboy-hat-wearing version of the character was like a daydream created by conservative white America to maintain its values. He was a badass who carried a huge gun who also did community service. He didn’t like men with pierced ears! He operated without jurisdiction in Mexico! But every step out of line he took (and every guy he punched) served the greater purpose of law and order, and during the eight seasons of the show and the TV movie Walker, Texas Ranger: Trial by Fire, well, he sure punched a lot of guys.
But at least that Walker had a personality! One hour into The CW’s reboot of the show, which has dropped “Texas Ranger” from the name and incorporated numerous other members of the Walker family into its narrative, Jared Padalecki’s Cordell Walker is still a curiously blank void. Walker has updated this character for our times—he’s not casually making gender- or race-based jokes anymore, which hey, I appreciate!—but it hasn’t really replaced those qualities with anything else. Walker is Anguished, and Walker is Committed to the Job, and that’s about it. What is Walker like? His interests? His passions? His disappointments? Anything about his life that isn’t related to his career, or to his dead wife? We have no idea. I suppose that gives Walker room to grow in upcoming episodes, but for now, he’s a Raylan Givens facsimile with extremely sanded-down edges.
Walker’s pilot is most committed to hyping up the legend of Walker, Texas Ranger—excuse me, just Walker, as he requests—and the opening moments make that clear. As he did in the preceding series, this Walker drives a big ol’ truck (red, naturally), and he dons an omnipresent cowboy hat (both official issue or otherwise), and he wears a couple of gun belts with fancy shiny buckles, and as he confirms to his loving wife Emily (Genevieve Padalecki, Jared’s real-life wife), he always gets his guy. They’re all flirty banter and lingering kisses before Emily goes off on the “approved route” Walker set for her, and if you needed more evidence that this Walker is a more tolerant version than his predecessor, you’ll find it in the realization that Emily is off to leave water and food in the desert for migrants. Her voicemail greeting of “I’m probably out trying to save the world or something” is doing a lot of work to confirm for us that Emily was an amazing person, but that is admittedly a very good thing to do! So when Emily is chased down, shot through the abdomen, and left to die, was it because of her activism? Or was it something else?
Cut to Walker dropping to his knees in slow motion in an anguished scream—I hope every episode of this show has at least one moment as melodramatic as this one—and then… cut to 10 months later? The greatest flaw of this pilot episode might be in how rushed everything feels, and this time jump doesn’t help things. We don’t see Walker finding Emily’s body, or grieving her, or attending her funeral, or spending time with their two teen kids, August (Kale Culley) and Stella (Violet Brinson). Instead, Walker is drunk outside a gazebo, imagining his dead wife, and it’s somehow 10 months later, and Walker was working undercover outside of Texas all this time, and he spills these admissions to Officer Micki Ramirez (Lindsey Morgan) while she drives him home. Little does he know that the next day when he reports for work, she’ll be his new Ranger partner. And also little does he know that his children have struggled in his absence, in particular the rebellious Stella, who gets arrested for possession the first day that Walker is back on the job. Am I a jerk for laughing when Walker sarcastically says this altercation is more embarrassing for him than it is for her? I guess so!
It’s curious how little we know about Walker after this first hour because everyone else gets a ton of screen time. Walker’s parents, Bonham (Mitch Pileggi! Skinner!) and Abeline (Molly Hagan) live in a gorgeous, sprawling rancher on their horse farm outside Austin; I particularly coveted their exposed wall of white brick in the foyer. Are we going to pretend the Walkers aren’t wealthy? They are clearly doing pretty damn well! Also introduced is Walker’s younger brother Liam (Keegan Allen), an assistant district attorney whose homosexuality is mentioned in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment, and Walker’s former partner-turned-captain, Larry James (Coby Bell), who tells Walker he’s not going to put up with his rough handling of suspects. (LOL, OK; I’m sure the show will stick that.)
The most developed characteris Walker’s partner Micki. She’s Mexican American, and burned bridges with her family for serving in the military, than becoming a police officer, and finally becoming a Texas Ranger. (I mean, are her parents really wrong in being disappointed that their daughter is defending American imperialism in any way she can? That’s arguable!) And she seems to have absorbed a fair amount of the qualities of Old-Walker that this reboot didn’t give New-Walker. During the episode’s bust, she’s the one who kicks the gun out of the baddie’s hand and then chases her down and tackles her to make the arrest. She’s the one clearly hoping to get invited onto the special task force that wants Walker. And she demands loyalty from Walker: “I’ve got your back, that’s my job. I need to know that you have mine,” she tells him, and I’m assuming that at some point in a subsequent episode Walker does betray her or cut her out of a situation, because this is totally the type of show that will blow up the trust between them so that it can be built back stronger and better.
Will that moment when the two stop saying “respect” to each other come when Walker begins investigating his wife’s death? Probably. I thought it was strange how clearly over Emily’s death Walker’s parents and brother were, until the show filled in—a couple scenes later than necessary—that someone had confessed to her killing. But if there weren’t loose threads for Walker to pull on, we wouldn’t have a show! Someone closed Emily’s eyes. Someone left a poker chip on her body. Someone seemingly knew where she would be, and was able to chase and then kill her. What did the drug mule who taunted Walker know? Walker and Emily only shared one scene together, and we never saw her interact with her children, so I’m hoping we get some flashbacks to better fill in who Emily was. “What did I miss?” Walker wonders, but the real question is whether Walker is going to develop its main character enough for us to care.
Stray observations
- This show is trying to take on the cartel, and the plight of undocumented people, and the casual racism of good ol’ boys like Walker’s dad? Best of luck. Here’s hoping the Walker writers’ room has at least one, if not more, Latin American and POC voices who can speak to these issues.
- I am legitimately intrigued by Walker not being religious at all—he disapproves of his parents putting his kids in Catholic school, and he is pretty scoffing toward that plaster cross. Did he lose his faith after his wife’s murder? Or is his atheism more deep-seated than that? I think the “cop who has seen too much” angle is pretty familiar for this genre, but I wonder what spin Walker will put on it.
- Way too many background songs used throughout the show, which was probably a choice of both director Jessica Yu and show creator Anna Fricke, who also scripted this premiere episode. You can let people have a conversation without some plaintive guitar and lyrics about coal mines accompanying the dialogue, you know! But two women in charge of a show that used to be the patriarchal masculine ideal? That’s good and fine.
- When Walker said of Emily’s panicked phone call to him in her dying moments that it was “just work stuff,” was that genuine—was Emily somehow involved in one of Walker’s cases?
- Emily’s ghost outfit—floral spaghetti-strap dress, white cardigan, cowboy boots—had some real Instagram influencer vibes.
- Not gonna lie, I want to know more about Walker’s last case investigating the “Rodeo kings.” Sounds like this should be a Point Break sequel!
- Of course Walker signed up for the Marines after Sept. 11, and of course the show treats that like it’s an admirable thing. Of course.
- The Texas Rangers’ belt buckles being hand crafted by the Department of Corrections (yes, prison labor) is in fact a thing. How much do you think they’re getting paid for this work? Probably not enough.
- Also: The show’s very first villains had to be the people running a place that provides job opportunities to rehabilitating criminals? That’s a real throwback to the original show’s “Do bad people really deserve second chances?” messaging.
- What’s the deal with Geri (Odette Annable)? She was with Emily the night she died, and she certainly seems to have some sexual tension with Walker. Is there history we don’t know about yet?
- “I am realizing how stupid you are, and it’s making me very depressed about my prospects as a Texas Ranger” was the episode’s best line. I’m not entirely sold on Micki as a character yet, but Morgan is pretty amusing.
182 Comments
I think you may be conflating Chuck Norris’ actual beliefs with Walker’s, especially since the original show emphasized him being half-Cherokee and a very spiritual person quite often, especially in the early seasons. Also, while Walker was a conservative, he was also very anti-racism. Hell, probably 1/4 of the bad guys on the show were blatant racists, and they all got kicked through a wall by the end of the episode. If OG!Walker was still around, he would very much be pro-BLM. Also, the bad guys didn’t get second chances in the original show because they were always, always unrepentantly evil. There were no exceptions.As for this episode, there was so little from the original one wonders why they didn’t just make it a new IP. Seems like Trey is the replacement for Trivette (personality wise) while Walker’s bro is the replacement for Alex, which is a bit weird for many reasons.But Walker doesn’t have his puffy leather jacket, was told being rough with bad guys who needlessly antagonize him was a Bad, and most egregiously, didn’t perform a single roundhouse kick during the entire hour. How the fuck do you screw that up?All the angst piled on angst would have gotten annoying, but I could barely hear the dialog over the loud ass country music.
“Hell, probably 1/4 of the bad guys on the show were blatant racists, and they all got kicked through a wall by the end of the episode.”It’s been a loooong time since I watched the original show, so I assumed the author knew what she was talking about when describing it as heavily conservative, but, given your post and her general tone, now I’m not so sure. She should at least clarify how much of the original show she’s seen.
Oh, every bad guy in the original was a super blatant cartoonishly evil bad guy. If any bad guy had a sympathetic backstory, they switched sides and helped Walker by the end of the episode. Hell, one episode actually had the bad guys swipe a WMD JUST to kill Walker.
Well, it’s the AVClub, so conservative automatically means racist.
I haven’t seen Walker Texas Ranger in ages either, but it’s very clear how hard the reviewer is projecting modern sensibilities onto the show, which is nowhere near as nefarious as implied.
It got a lot more Jesus-y in later seasons, but yeah I don’t really remember the kind of proto-Trump vibe described here from what I saw of the original show.
That was mostly to appease Moral Guardians. The show started out as a gritty action drama (well, as gritty as late 90’s CBS could get), but after a few seasons, CBS and the showrunners discovered that a LOT of kids were watching. So, to appease parents, they started doing moral lessons every other episode and focusing on one-shot kid characters, though they still had old-style episodes every now and then (like the episode where Alex and Sydney were captured by the drug cartel and were almost sold into sexual slavery).
Wasn’t it also partly a reflection of Norris himself becoming more devout? I think he’s always been fairly religious, but my understanding is that he became moreso when he met his current wife.
focusing on one-shot kid charactersWho had AIDS.
I used to watch Walker, and I don’t remember it being politically anything. It was mostly cliches. The stories were simple. Clarence Gilyard had a lot of charm. Chuck Norris kicked stuff. The bad guys were super bad. Plenty of white criminals. Things exploded. But I don’t remember the Walker character ever going off about politics. A real Walker could easily have been a Democrat. (Texas Democrats are a unique mix). This new series looks pretty dull. I’m not interested in a Sad Humorless Walker with Monk’s back-story.
Pretty much. 90’s CBS was all about taking a recognizable name and making a comfort food drama starring them. Walker, Diagnosis Murder, In the Heat of the Night, Nash Bridges, etc.
There WERE characters who were former criminals or gang members trying to reform and they were generally portrayed as decent people, it just so happened that all the other criminals/gang members were so EVIL that they constantly tried to get the reformers to commit crimes/help their gang again. It was similar to the bizarre lengths people would go to in anti-drug fiction to try and get other people to take drugs.
It was similar to the bizarre lengths people would go to in anti-drug fiction to try and get other people to take drugs.Kind of a tangent, but that actually kind of disillusioned me for a while when I was in my late teens. I was brought up on a steady diet of D.A.R.E. and Very Special Episodes, so I had this huge scenario in my head of how I’d react when I was inevitably confronted with intense peer pressure.It never happened. My step-brother was the only person who ever offered me a cigarette. I said no, he said “cool, let me know if you change your mind” and never offered me one again. I got offered pot once in high school. Again, I said no, and my friends basically said the same thing.I experience more peer pressure now, in my late 30’s, than I ever did in my teens. And it comes from my wife and one of my best friends, when my wife and I are hanging out with him and his wife and I’ve decided I’m either done drinking or don’t feel like drinking.
The over the top nonsense in DARE and anti-drug stuff definitely had the opposite of their intended affect on me. I was a pretty logical small child so I noticed there weren’t pushers on my playground trying to get me hooked on smack, and figured that if smoking pot once made you have a deadly accident or made you an addict it would have had a more noticeable effect on society around me. Once I figured that was bullshit, I just assumed it was all bullshit and sure enough I smoked weed, drank, and took hallucinogens as a teen and never microwaved a baby or failed a class or anything. I guess they did instill an initial fear of hard drugs in me that was reinforced by some stories from/about people I knew (but my aversion to both needles and snorting also probably had a big part in that also).
What WOULD have been useful information would have been someone saying “hey, you can smoke weed and still be a functional person, but you can come to depend on it for emotional, physical, or social needs and that kind of dependence can ultimately stunt your emotional and social growth.
As a US Navy veteran and an Elizabeth Warren fan, I’m extremely unimpressed with the overt and wholesale smearing of the military and police organizations throughout this review. Painting them as inherently malicious is an excellent way to discourage liberal and progressive persons from joining them, so it seems to me that, by airing views like these, you forfeit your standing to complain when their ranks are filled by people you disagree with. (Unless you support completely abolishing both institutions, I guess, but that’s another matter.) Because, let’s be honest, neither the military nor the police are going away, and those jobs will be filled. It’s the height of arrogance, therefore, to blithely and callously discourage those who think like you to participate in them, while simultaneously declaring your entitlement to dictate the attitudes amongst their ranks.
(And no, to state the obvious, it isn’t enough to be encouraging of those who only join the military and police forces on righteous and deliberate missions to reform them as quickly as possible. Progressives must also be open to engage in meaningful and constructive dialogue with those who join for traditional, even “conservative” notions such as service to country, protecting fellow citizens, and even fighting those who would do harm to innocents. We can and should draw the line at those who join to hurt particular ethnic/religious/national groups, of course, as well as those who seek out combat for the pleasures of inflicting pain. But, though there is likely some degree of overlap, those motives aren’t at all inherently intertwined with the aforementioned traditional/conservative values, and to say or imply otherwise is, quite frankly, unacceptable.)
Gaith, did you have your fingers in your ears and your eyes closed during the last 12 years? The police shootings and other use of lethal force on Persons of Color, while letting heavily-armed openly-bigoted White Men (mostly) just walk away, has either skyrocketed ever since Obama was first sworn in, or public awareness of it has increased a great deal. (Myself, I think it’s some from Column A, and more from Column B.) The current militarized, racist-recruiting system of policing is broken, badly. What you suggest has already been tried by Progressive politicians like NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio — and all he’s gotten for his pains is the undying enmity of the NYPD and the police union! (If I were him, I’d be terrified to even walk down a New York City street for fear a cop will “accidentally” shoot or beat him to death.)
There needs to be a better way of keeping the peace and fighting actual crime (you know, robbery, assault, rape, murder) than sending out a bunch of heavily-armed people, generously laced with sadistic bigots. Even non-White cops get the mentality — maybe more so because they know they can’t always count on their brother officers to have their back if they’re in a tight spot.
Americans are not a conquered people ready to rise up and kill you — stop acting like we are.
“What you suggest has already been tried by Progressive politicians like NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio” – lemme stop you right there, because it’s the key to your fundamental misunderstanding of the situation. The military and police forces have in large part been drifting rightward since the Left became opposed to the Vietnam War, though the heavy presence of POC has been a counterbalance. In other words, we’re talking about generational issues here. De Blasio has been mayor of NYC since 2014. To expect him, or anyone else, to make generational change in just seven years is not rational. (Especially when a large number of veterans have been leaving the military and joining… police organizations.)Generational change isn’t easy, and it takes generations. You don’t get to “try” for seven years and then declare it a lost cause when you don’t get everything you want.
And you don’t get to unilaterally set the rules — this isn’t Starship Troopers, after all.
“service to country, protecting fellow citizens, and even fighting those who would do harm to innocents.” These are not conservative notions, progressives believe in them just as deeply. BLM, amongst others, is actively doing all those things.
The [American] military and the police are inherently malicious. Individuals within might not be, but they are surely aiding and abetting an agenda that is highly focused on destroying anything outside of the white, capitalist norms that most western nations adhere to. Sorry that there’s no soft way to put that. There’s no progressive reason to join the army. Nobody is going to convince the higher ups that killing brown people is wrong on the ground in Afghanistan. That might sound horribly reductionist to you, but again, there’s no soft way to put that we are there fixing problems that we created the last time we went in to fix the problems that we made the last time we went in to fix the problems. I don’t doubt your progressive credentials, and a few of my progressive friends are in the military too. People are complex, and the desire to protect and serve that some people have is unfortunately in direct opposition to the nature of policing domestically and policing the world. It would be great if a huge segment of the military and police forces weren’t suckered idiots who believe in conspiracies and/or uncritical aggro folks who think America can do no wrong(until they get back to deal with the VA). But because the problem with both organizations is in fact inherent in their structure, the change simply can’t happen from the bottom up.
That’s why the call to Abolish the Police went up last year. It’s not that there’s no use for these roles, but that the rot has already done its work. Encouraging more progressives to join the military would just result in
more deaths. Better to overwhelmingly fill the ranks of the peace corps, which really ought to be expanded domestically.
“…that is highly focused on destroying anything outside of the white, capitalist norms that most western nations adhere to.”*fart noise*Seriously, step out of your liberal arts college for three seconds and join the real world. Capitalism as a system of economic organization isn’t going anywhere, and isn’t innately evil. And the idea that your local cop stopping B&Es is engaging in white supremacy is the height of neo-progressive wankery.
“The [American] military and the police are inherently malicious.”Well, thanks for being upfront with your wrongness. Who’s going to answer domestic violence calls after you abolish the police? You? The author of this review?“Nobody is going to convince the higher ups that killing brown people is wrong on the ground in Afghanistan.”In a democracy, the military follows the orders of elected civilians. If the elected civilians tell the military to wage war, its duty is to make war within the limits of the law and rules of engagement. If you don’t want the war, change the elected civilian leadership. Welcome to Civics 101; take a seat.“There’s no progressive reason to join the army.” The military has several branches, including the Army. (Still on Civics 101 here; settle in.) And progressives have a right to serve their country and draw a paycheck at the same time. In other words, if they consider the pay and benefits worth their time, they can be legitimately progressive in their politics and join up for self-interested reasons.“That’s why the call to Abolish the Police went up last year.” And it’s an incredibly divisive call that scares the bejeezus out of moderates, and helps right-wingers lose elections. Why do you think Cheeto got 12 million more votes in 2020 than 2016? Hint: it wasn’t because the economy was fabulous. It was because a lot of people were terrified of losing their country as they know it. Given that Biden is a moderate, they were objectively wrong to fear that, but not all of them are through-and-through bigots, and progressives must engage with them constructively if they hope to make, y’know, progress.“Encouraging more progressives to join the military would just result in more deaths.” No way. About the same number of deaths, maybe, but probably fewer deaths, due to progressives promoting critical thinking and diplomatic approaches when possible.Regardless, I’m not asking anyone with deep moral objections to the military to encourage progressives to join. I’m just asking them to have a basic respect for those who serve unless they have specific reason not to on an individual basis, or, at the bare minimum, not accuse them of making the world a worse place. (Because, again, these jobs will be filled if Congress asks for them. It’s just a question of who will fill them.)“I don’t doubt your progressive credentials”I know I’ve been snarky in this reply, but thank you for saying this.
“Nobody is going to convince the higher ups that killing brown people is wrong on the ground in Afghanistan.”In a democracy, the military follows the orders of elected civilians. If the elected civilians tell the military to wage war, its duty is to make war within the limits of the law and rules of engagement. If you don’t want the war, change the elected civilian leadership. Welcome to Civics 101; take a seat.Gotta respectfully disagree here. I could spend a lot of time arguing my case but I think a lot can be summed up by just pointing out that literally there was an entire set of trials after WWII that firmly established that following orders was not a defense even under the law (leaving aside morality itself here!) for unlawful or immoral actions.
“there was an entire set of trials after WWII”WWII was started by Germany, which had shed its democratic processes years beforehand. So, yeah, when you don’t have elected civilian leaders, you can’t stop/prevent wars by winning elections. Fortunately, however, the US does have elected civilian leaders. That doesn’t mean everything the American military does is legal of moral, but it does mean the ultimate accountability for setting foreign policy rests with We the People, not the armed forces.
following orders was not a defense even under the law (leaving aside morality itself here!) for unlawful or immoral actions.That’s not at all what he said. He practically said the opposite:If the elected civilians tell the military to wage war, its duty is to make war within the limits of the law and rules of engagement.In other words, if the elected civilians specifically tell the Army to go slaughter women and children, the Army won’t do it.I know the last administration was a big fan of pardoning convicted war criminals, and those pardons reportedly really pissed off the military.
To be clear, I think the last three administrations have waged wars with enough crimes against international law and humanity itself that there’s no real excuse for continued obedience. Even just take your statement here:In other words, if the elected civilians specifically tell the Army to go slaughter women and children, the Army won’t do it.Clearly untrue, as even going with the questionable figures released by the U.S. military themselves we know there’s a very large portion of unavoidable civilian casualties of drone strikes, yet military members nonetheless follow the orders to carry those out.
To clarify a few things:
My wording is unclear, but I meant that there is no way that foot soldiers can dictate war policy. It is as you say, the will of elected officials. And elected officials have elected to wage war time and time again, and not for any good reasons going many decades back. Changing the elected official has not yet changed the status of our military as tool of indiscriminate (sometimes moderately discriminate) slaughter.
This statement [“There’s no progressive reason to join the army.”] is not equivalent to what you’re arguing against[There is no reason for a progressive to join the army]. Of course a progressive might find themself wanting to enlist or become a police officer. But even if they do, they will not further progressive causes. They will be systematically denied the ability. I did also take some pains not to use the Army as a synecdoche for the military as whole, but I guess I slipped. Sorry for that, I do recognize that there are other branches and that they perform many functions.
I do doubt your progressive credentials. There’s nothing remotely progressive about anything you’ve said here. These are liberal centrist talking points, complete with the argument that if leftists want to win elections, they should just try being centrists. The know-it-all condescension really confirms it.
I don’t even have the words to describe how delusional or dishonest the idea that ANY military anywhere answers to its country’s citizens is.
Who’s going to answer domestic violence calls after you abolish the police? You?Nobody’s suggesting we not have law enforcement; that’s not what “abolish (or defund) the police” means. It means “the current system is inherently flawed and needs to be replaced in its entirety.” You can’t fix the problem by just hiring nicer people. These systems need to be rebuilt from the ground up.
That you have to write a mealy-mouthed paragraph explaining why “abolish the police” doesn’t actually mean abolish the police shows what a pointless slogan it is.
It’s not a great slogan, no argument here; but at this point, anyone who wants to get into detailed arguments about policing systems has no excuse not to have found out what it actually means.
Exactly. It started out being “no, police reform isn’t enough; they need to be abolished”, but when pressed it turns out that really they just want police reform.
I pretty much agree that the systems need to be rebuilt from the ground up, but “rebuilt” is part of that. At any rate, people should say what they mean. If the dreaded centrists—who get to vote just like the left—get spooked by the “abolish the police” idea because they take it at its word, maybe there’s an issue with the messaging. Bernie Sanders–the furthest left candidate that was at all viable–has expressed very reasonable and nuanced thoughts on police reform, and I don’t think he’s being helped by the “abolish the police” crowd.
I personally agree that the “abolish” and “defund” rhetoric remains a sizeable speedbump to widespread acceptance of the underlying ideas; I would have chosen other terms. (“Rebuild”? “Restart”?) However, at this point, anyone who wants to write long bloviating arguments about how the police really aren’t that bad has no excuse to not have looked into the arguments on both sides and found out what “abolish the police” means.
I think progressives’ biggest problem with messaging is that they adopt short, pithy slogans that makes their positions sound more extreme than they actually are, while the right adopts short, pithy slogans to make their extreme positions sound more reasonable. Something like “reform” or “remake” the police would have sounded a lot clearer and more reasonable. “defund the police” or “abolish the police” makes it sound like you want an anarchist state, which most people aren’t going to go for. If you need a paragraph to explain how it doesn’t actually mean that, then the slogan fails at what it’s trying to do.
You’d be surprised (or maybe not) by how many people on this network of sites is absolutely aiming for actual abolishment.
I’d be very surprised, since I haven’t actually seen anyone say they support the idea of no longer having law enforcement of any kind. I’m not saying they don’t exist, but… I haven’t seen any.
A lot of it was concentrated on Splinter when it was around. They somewhat migrated to Jezebel and The Root, but most of them remain in the greys so they tend to go unnoticed.
I can see it happening a fair amount early on, when its intended meaning still hadn’t percolated enough, but I still don’t think I ever came across anyone who was advocating for no law enforcement.
Gaith…you’ll never get AV Club Progressives until you become a rich white kid whose parents paid, in full, for their private college tuition.AVC reviewers, and the loudest commenters, don’t give a flying fuck about helping people. Their first and last priority is being as performatively ideologically “pure” as possible, so that they can get validation on the interwebs from other rich white kids.
Wow — when you’re done throwing the rest of us under the bus, Call Me Carlos the Dwarf, you will put your money where your mouth is and join the Military, yes?
Because otherwise, you’re no better than some gun-toting chickenhawk Trumper.
At least Gaith, who I disagree with immensely, did that much – I can respect his service while still thinking he’s wrong, because…America, and all that.
Eh. I’ll stick to not throwing everyone who’s ever served in the military under the bus.Just like I don’t blame every 2016 Bernie supporter for the feckless pieces of shit who didn’t vote for Hillary, and worked to convince others not to, because she was “Just as bad as Trump.”
Because they’re exactly the same, right?Not really.
Oh, not at all.Most service-members have an unequivocal moral high ground over the pathetic, entitled bourgeois fucks who campaigned for Jill Stein in swing states…solely because they’ve ever put others’ needs before their own desires.The only ones who don’t are war criminals…and the traitors who assaulted the Capitol.I know a few incredibly Trumpy servicemembers who haven’t committed war crimes or participated in an attempted coup…and I have a ton more respect for them than any Jill Stein 2016 voter.The former group are idiots. The latter are horrible, horrible people.
As BBC5 film critic Mark Kermode says, “Other opinions are available.”
Other opinions might be available…but other facts are not.And anyone who voted for Jill Stein, and spent months telling everyone that Hillary was just as bad as Trump, is an entitled piece of shit with blood on their hands.
No, because everything YOU say tells me you’re a no-Good Hive-Mind supporter of #TheTraitorHillaryRodhamClinton – and you can TAKE you fucking purse-lipped judgment and shove it up your ass.I voted for Bernie Sanders in 2016, and my only regret is that Hillary STOLE the Democratic Nomination from him. Trump’s on you, not us, for giving us the ONLY candidate Donald Trump could beat – a scandal-ridden treasonous PoS.BERN in Hell, Hillary NeoLib.
Oh, my judgment ain’t “Purse-lipped.”I’m quite full throated in calling out people who throw tantrums when a balding populist promising them free shit gets his ass kicked in a free and fair election.Whether they get all their opinions from Jordan Peterson or Glenn Greenwald, they’re all white, cishet, bourgeois pieces of shit who take personal offense at the concept that other people matter.Hell, they even all hate John Lewis!
The exact words may change, but there’s the impotent rage of mediocre white men has a unmistakable stench.
Well, thanks for being upfront with your wrongness. Who’s going to answer domestic violence calls after you abolish the police? You? The author of this review?Is this where I drop the statistic about something like 40% of cops being accused of domestic violence?Also the only time I’ve dealt with cops the most I ever got was “we’ll see what we can do.”
Been really admiring your take in this thread.I wonder if there aren’t already a lot of progressives in and joining the armed services but concentrated in operations like medical and communications (including tech). That seems to be our comfort zone.Perhaps that’s how to enjoin more to enlist? Stress the service aspect over the “defense” one? Point out that our armed services do world-bettering work in so many arenas outside the battlefield (there too, but let’s stay on message). Stress the cutting-edge leadership training (seriously, West Point may be the most progressive leadership-education institution anywhere) being pioneered by the armed services. How it is a dynamic culture changing with the world and in a lot of ways closer to progressive values than other big institutions.I wish more folks would hear out perspectives like yours rather than seek to “refute” them with some harsh judgments drawn from the spectacle of media coverage of current events.
I’m not asking anyone with deep moral objections to the military to encourage progressives to join.
There is one reason why there are fewer progressives in those places: they are better educated and have more job options. Maybe the bar for starting as a soldier or cop is simply too low. Also: the irrational nationalistic propaganda/ patriotism is poison for the brain. Of course it’s not tempting for progressives to be part of that. It’s like drinking your own piss instead of a good bottle of foreign vine. First politics need to change the mantra: don’t do it for “your country” – do it for humanity! But I don’t see the willingness to reform.
“Well, thanks for being upfront with your wrongness. Who’s going to answer domestic violence calls after you abolish the police? You? The author of this review?”This is an odd example to pick, considering that statistically a higher percentage of police officers and military/former military engage in domestic abuse compared to the rest of the population. Calling the other cops when your cop spouse beats you is not always productive.
Wow. What an incredibly naive post.
Were you deliberately aiming to argue in bad-faith or something?
The notion that wars are engaged upon and conducted via democratic process rather than a hierarchical chain-of-command is foolish right off the bat; before you get to the numerous ways American democracy especially fails to grant proportional representation to the public at large.
The idea that voting for the candidate that lowers your taxes somehow confers your share of a mandate to subsequently start a war with whomever…
Also the idea that “civics 101″ somehow justifies any and all of society’s ills shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the topic in general, re: tyranny of the majority.
The idea that liquidating the current police force, its specific hierarchical structure, its current membership, its culture, and its processes for conducting the business of law-enforcement means you *simply don’t bother to replace it with anything else at all, not even posters to an AV Club thread* is asinine in itself.
Again, this is ignoring the fact that “defund the police” is mainly a demand that punitive and authoritarian policies be replaced by civic schemes that actually have demonstrable efficacy and don’t victimise the people they’re supposed to be serving and protecting. And it’s an incredibly divisive call that scares the bejeezus out of moderates, and helps right-wingers lose elections.It’s hyperbole, and its incredibly valuable tool for weeding out people who are so far up their own arseholes that they can’t hear what people are telling them.
It’s, in fact, the best thing the left can do, because like right-wing radicalism, it shifts the Overton window far more effectively than the softly-softly approach of humouring and appeasing centrists and moderates which perpetuates the very system which has drifted inexorably rightward to this very point of this very day.
It didn’t come to this because black people ‘just didn’t give moderates enough time to stop cops from killing black people’.
We might go back as far as Juvenal to ask “Who watches the watchmen?” and consider the systemic and cultural pressures that tend towards authoritarianism, towards the police state, etc. About structures of power and how the military and the police are the apex of civic and national power (hence why most coups are military, and most post-coup governments are juntas).
It’s a shame that after nearly two millennia of consideration, some people still haven’t taken the opportunity to engage with the topic beyond “cops-n-robbers, few bad apples, you won’t get in trouble if you ain’t done nothing wrong, you gotta have a police force, innit?”
Or, to bring us back round to the core thesis put in a pithy way: If your cider press is constantly discharging chunks of rotting wood and an endless supply of bird faeces into its mix, it really doesn’t matter how many “good apples” you try and add to the batch, it’s still going to come out toxic on the other end.
And sometimes a cider press can be so badly designed that there’s no patching, or tweaking, or extra care that can be taken that will guarantee the cider that comes out the other end is “good enough”. Guess what you have to do then? Throw it out, and go back to the drawing board, even if that means the people whose grand pappy designed the press no longer get the same share of the proceeds; even if it means the people happily making the bottles that the poisonous cider ships in will face disruption; even if it means the person who owns the orchard doesn’t get to pick when and where the cider-making equipment needs must be located.
until they get back to deal with the VAThe VA gets a lot of grief (not unlike how the Post Office gets), and certainly there are individual VA hospitals that aren’t very good. But many are equal or better to civilian hospitals, and most significantly the costs are covered for the patients. For all the talk of “medicare for all” people seem to forget that there is already another system of free healthcare that could be expanded.
Get in a time machine and go back to the USSR, commie mexican drug dealer with an earing and your crazy rock and/or roll!- Chuck Norris
Meh, tell it to the founding fathers, who were so leery of a standing army’s definitional and inherent threats to liberty (both due to all the guns and due to their structures’ anti-democratic and anti-Enlightenment elements) that they didn’t even want their national government to have one.The military, when it feels existentially threatened, will be the first to shriek that it’s a necessary evil – with emphasis on the ‘necessary’ but a sneering insistence on the ‘evil’ – and do you know what the smart thing to do with necessary evils is? Make them as small as possible, box them in, rein them in, and remind people over and over again that they’re nothing to be proud of.
The Founding Fathers also largely disapproved of political parties, but they’ve proven to be necessary to maintaining functional democratic governments. News flash: they didn’t get everything right.
Political parties are only necessary in the sense that they’re inevitable, not that government couldn’t function without them. Indeed, the founders’ disapproval of them – being an evaluation of their likelihood to cause major problems rather than the likelihood of their emergence and persistence – seems pretty spot on.Their failure was in utterly neglecting to regulate them at the constitutional level.
“Political parties are only necessary in the sense that they’re inevitable, not that government couldn’t function without them.” Well, that’s a distinction without a difference if I ever heard one. Can you name a single durable democratic government representing, say, at least a million people that doesn’t have political parties? Because I sure can’t.“an evaluation of their likelihood to cause major problems” And yet, all the governments I can think of that don’t have political parties are authoritarian regimes. It’s almost as if political parties might well be a vital and necessary bulwark against despotism, and thus a clear net positive. Hm…
I can clarify if you want. Political parties are inevitable unless opposed by an outside force.Meanwhile, I invite you to consider two realities: first, that a sufficiently small community can operate just fine without political parties, and that second, the vast majority of authoritarian regimes do have a political party. Indeed, a lot of the more sophisticated ones make sure to have more than one, because the optics are far better. China stands as the profound exception currently, and it’s a testament to how wildly successful they’ve been in controlling their populace. North Koreais not a great counterexample, because they are not comparatively sophisticated.
Political parties are made inevitable unless opposed by an outside force when issues of scale begin to arise. It’s only natural that people will try to organize with other strangers, rather than relate more directly to their neighbors, when they perceive that local politics has become inextricably intertwined with “global” (read: bigger than local) politics.
Argh. You’re not getting it.Police and military are the sole cause of all the woe in the world. If the US just got rid of their police force altogether AND their military, world peace would finally be achieved and no one would ever die again!
Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious.
Thank you for saying this. While I’m certain the show will suck just like its predecessor did, the review itself read more like a Conservative’s parody of what a “Libtard” review of such a show would look like than it did an actual review.
AVClub is more like AOClub these days.
What a load of horseshit.
yeah well out the nazis in your ranks, instead of protecting them. or fuck off.
I would have some respect for that take if I could even find the “overt and wholesale smearing of the military and police organizations throughout this review” that you’re referring to. What are you even on about? You’re just coming across as a paranoid nutcase.
Im an Army vet and nothing said in the review was wrong.
I get your point, and certainly agree that the Left has a general naivety when it comes to how we should manage those parts of society enabled to dispense violence with good or at least legal purpose. But lumping the cops and military together is part of the reason America’s police situation got out of hand in the first place.
The military by definition needs weapons, but you can disarm the police, to an extent. Doing so would cut down on both the “FORGET ABOUT THE BADGE — WHEN DO WE GET THE FREAKIN’ GUNS!?” assholes and also the flippancy with which cops are dispensed to deal with nonsense that no one should have called 911 for in the first place. And at least when the military rolls up and guns down children, there’s some technical level of international accountability. In American policing, that’s Tuesday and paid vacation.Also, one of the greatest benefits of our military is, rightfully so, a salaried path of service to achieve higher education. Our cops suffer from a lack of higher education, and requiring cops to be degreed and educated means that maybe we won’t treat them as expendable fodder for every minor white person problem that seems to get “solved” with bullets. I’m a strong proponent for investing in our communities, and police should be part of that, if for no reason other than the community won’t want to waste that investment by jeopardizing an officer’s life or livelihood or the department’s reputation on some egghead who won’t even bother to put the car in park before jumping out and shooting down own a 12 year old kid.
Easiest way to solve that, at least as a pilot program outside large cities? Start your cops out with a Taser. Make them earn the gun. As in demilitarize them. I think that’s a pretty reasonable ask.
Can we not get more of “the bridge ” instead?
Most fans of the original Walker, Texas Ranger watched it for Chuck Norris. Full stop. Chuck Norris. That’s it.They would have watched almost anything with Chuck Norris in it, but the fact that he played a martial arts cowboy cop in a show with no complicated space or fantasy elements helped immensely.That some studio execs did not realize this and thought a different, non-Chuck Norris Walker, Texas Ranger would be a good idea is a fact that puzzles me. Maybe they thought Boomers would follow the IP even without Norris? Seems improbable. Maybe they thought Padalecki had a huge Supernatural fanbase that would follow him into a show with no demons? Who knows.
Agreed, but, hey, at least it’s filming in Texas. What with all the CW’s DC shows, Smallville included, being produced in the Vancouver area, I was nervous.
Im surprised it’s filmed in Texas. This is supposed to be Austin but it does not feel authentic.
I wonder if they’re not shooting in Dallas, like the original series did.
They’re shooting in Austin.
Wow – set a show in Austin, and make it look like it’s shot in LA faking Austin! That’s…quite a trick….
I know someone who works on the show. It’s definitely filmed in and around Austin. As for the lack of authenticity — that’s down to the direction, I guess.
Why do you care if they filmed in TX? Honestly curious.Filming in a Red State in the pandemic sounds comically dangerous.
Until recently, Austin was one of the few places in Texas not suffering a massive surge in cases. That’s changed now, unfortunately.I do know everyone working on the show is being tested twice a week — even peripheral staff — so they’re not completely dumb.
Maybe they thought Boomers would follow the IP even without Norris? Seems improbable. Maybe they thought Padalecki had a huge Supernatural fanbase that would follow him into a show with no demons? Who knows.My guess is a little of column A and a little of column B. Plus I guess they’re thinking about the reboots of Hawaii 5-0 and Macgyver, which have inexplicably both each been on for like 7-10 years.
I guess the name alone has a comfortable familiarity that draws in the 80+ year olds in droves.
Yes, but the name Walker is pretty ambiguous, and tying it the old show about a Texas Ranger isn’t obvious for name recognition. Perhaps the show is about a magically alive mobility device for the elderly that solves crimes by itself. Which granted, would also draw in the coveted 80+ demographic.
Actually, it would be 40+ year olds, since the show was VERY popular with kids back in the day, which is why the show had more Very Special Episodes in the latter half.
My mom’s in that age group but she was only watching it for Chuck Norris in tight jeans.
Five-0 had a dynamite cast that worked very well off one another. And it’s one of the few dramas that had a father/daughter relationship that was actually relatively healthy.That, and the copious amounts of Ho Yay between Steve and Danny. Same reason why NCIS LA is still around.
They can always add demons. It’s the CW.
It’s CBS which is the default channel for Boomers and olders they can show whatever crap and it will probably be #1 in its time slot. It’s my only explanation why CBS has some of the worst yet highly rated shows on network TV.
CW, not CBS. CW’s ratings are high cable. Flash, CW’s top show, gets 1/3 of the viewers of the worst rated show on CBS.
Do Boomers watch a lot of CW? If this reboot were on CBS, the chances of Column A would be a lot more likely.
I only cared when Conan O’Brien used clips of the show as part of a running gag.
I tried to like that, but I was already tired of Chuck Norris Facts by then.On several forums I visited, people had a huge problem posting just one or two and then letting it go. Anytime someone posted just one, the thread quickly devolved into reposting giant walls of them that had been copied and pasted from the last thread.Edit: Upon a bit of digging, it appears O’Brien’s bit precedes Something Awful’s propagation of the Chuck Norris Facts by about a year. I must have come into O’Brien’s gag later after the meme had poisoned the well.
I remember the height of Chuck Norris facts on SA, those were good times. A year later I overheard a guy reciting them in real life. The girls he was talking to at the time let them know they didn’t think the jokes were very funny. He insisted that they were, in fact, very funny, and he was going to keep telling them. “Big cringe,” as today’s kids would say.Speaking of, that was fifteen gosh-darn years ago. I’m so old.
Big cringe is right. I love good jokes and puns, but as with all things, I believe in moderation. The first 10-12 Chuck Norris Facts? Funny. The list with hundreds? Not so much.
“reposting giant walls of them that had been copied and pasted from the last thread.”Chuck Norris would never disrespect a Chuck Norris Fact by reposting it; he’d craft a new Chuck Norris Fact.
“Walker told me i have AIDS!”
I cared a second time when Conan executive produced “Eagleheart.”Which presents the question: Why would I watch this stale refry when I could watch “Eagleheart” again, if for no reason other than the theme song?
I’d assume it’s the same people who saw Robocop and Total Recall and thought, let’s suck all the goofy sardonic fun out of these films that were better than they had any right to be and put out lifeless and straight remakes.The only thing the original Walker had going for it was Norris’ charisma and its gleeful stupidity. No reboot is going to recapture that.
The thing that really puzzled me about those remakes is that the humor in the originals seems to me to be very much in line with the kind of humor that’s popular in the 21st century, with the fake commercials and such, so it’s bizarre the remakes would ditch that aspect. With all the tongue-in-cheek re-imaginings of old properties these days I think it’s weird they would take tongue-in-cheek movies and strip the humor from them.
I won’t defend the Robocop reboot but it did at least echo the grimness of the original. And that scene where he realizes he’s just a head, hand, and pair of lungs? Amazing.
Hey now. Clarence Gilyard also had a minor fanbase thanks to Matlock.Aso, following the Twitter live tweets, CW is indeed banking on Supernatural fans.
When I heard about this, I figured it was a joke — like Bill O’Reilly and Ted Nugent writing an All-White musical about Nathan Bedford Forrest in response to Hamilton’s popularity.
As you said, Cordell Walker was Chuck Norris, full stop — and a place for the far more talented Everybody Else to pick up a generous weekly paycheck for not much effort. When my wife (a long-time Norris fan, which she only walked away from when he started sounding Just Like Trump!) and I tried a few of the early episodes, we both wondered why they didn’t just call the series LONE WOLF MCQUADE, since the characters are practically identical.
Honestly, until I looked it up tonight, I thought Norris had come up with the show for himself the way so many comedians invent shows that are their stage act with a slightly different (or not different) character name (Rosanne Barr/Conner, Tim Allen/Taylor, Jerry Seinfeld/Seinfeld, etc.). The character always struck me as Norris’ idealized version of himself.
Funny enough, there wasn’t much of a recurring cast. There were the four stars (Norris, Clarence Gilyard, Sherice Wilson, Noble Willingham), Walker’s Native American mentor in the early seasons, and then the two rookie Rangers in the last few seasons. Practically everyone else was a one-shot, so there weren’t a whole lot of weekly paychecks for the cast.
For some reason, I thought there was a larger recurring cast than that….The most WALKER, TEXAS RANGER episodes I watched in one go was when we spent a week with my Mother-in-Law — she had the television on from when she got up to when she went to bed, and it switched by default to The Hallmark Channel, which included the show in a block alongside blocks of TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL, HIGHWAY TO HEAVEN, and SEVENTH HEAVEN(!). That was a television viewing experience….Although I kind of wonder why in later seasons they didn’t just make Chuck Norris an Angel of Vengeance, given where it ended up!
Yea, the recurring cast was small. However, they reused actors a LOT. One dude played eight different bad guys on the show, including the first episode, two guys in the series finale (the Big Bad and his ancestor), AND in the TV movie. And they were all different characters. No clue about 7th Heaven, but Touched airs on Start TV (a diginet dedicated to female-led series) nowadays and Highway to Heaven airs on Cozi (another diginet that is a mix of 70’s/80’s dramas and 90’s sitcoms).
a martial arts cowboy cop in a show with no complicated space or fantasy elements helped immensely.
I would kill for a show about a martial arts cowboy cop with space or fantasy elements.
Doesn’t Cowboy Bebop fit a lot of that definition?
In many ways Into The Badlands meets this criteria; post-apocalyptic to the point at which a whole new society now exists, and we start out by following a wire-fu practicing, sword-wielding head of enforcing the laws of the regime, who rides a motorcycle rather than a horse.
Maybe they thought Boomers would follow the IP even without Norris? Given it’s the CW, I think they’re really hoping for young Millennials and older Zoomers—who have heard the name and are unfamiliar with it—to tune in out of curiosity, when they wouldn’t for a brand new police procedural with an unfamiliar name.That, and shows like Walker are probably much cheaper to produce than most Arrowverse shows or Supernatural, not requiring elaborate sets, costumes, and expensive CGI.
Sheree J. Wilson was the only thing that interested me, as she was very good on Dallas, but I’m sure I am not in the majority…
This feels like another one of those reboots for nobody, like MacGyver.
I see your point and think it’s the latter. By casting Jared Padelecki, Keegan Allen and Lindsey Morgan they’re not going for IP recognition, they’re going for fanbases.It def gives it some appeal to the CW/Freeform crowd, who can sometimes rally so aggressively they can change show trajectory! All three were fan-fave actors in shows with massive YA followings (and from that, massive social followings; Supernatural, Pretty Little Liars, and The 100, respectively). You could have remade any shiftless 90s show about cops (Pacific Blue: cops on bikes! Sheena: cop of the jungle! Renegade: Bounty Hunter Cop!) and cast those three or similar and at least get a season out of it.
Didn’t they try something like Walker Texas Ranger: The Next Generation after the original show? Or did they just add some younger rangers for the final season?
There was a six-episode spin-off called Sons of Thunder. It started as a backdoor pilot in season 4 of WTR and then eventually got a very short series several years later.WTR also included a couple rookie Rangers in the last two seasons.
Latter. The last few seasons introduced Gage and Sydney, though they were only younger by proxy. It seemed to be more of an excuse to give Chuck Norris some time off than anything, though.
I don’t think they expect Chuck Norris fans to watch this. Supernatural fans, on the other hand, might tune in. That’s who they are going for. It’s like Sam Winchester is stuck in one of the western episodes forever.
And probably most of the people watching this version are wondering if Jared Padalecki can carry a show without Jensen Ackles propping him up.
According to the ratings, they DID follow Padelecki. We’ll see how long they stick around, but for now, that was the highest-rated CW series premiere in years.
What I want a random reboot of is Martial Law. Getting someone remotely like Sammo Hung is probably even tougher than recasting a Chuck Norris, let alone a politically palatable one, but if we’re going to revive random CBS ip’s that’s the one. Maybe Daniel Wu from Into the Badlands could do it, though it’d probably not be a comedy anymore.
I’m not even sure who the big-name comedy martial artists are anymore. It used to be Jackie Chan, Sammo Hung, and Stephen Chow, but they’re all getting up there in age. Who are their successors?
I have no idea…Chow is the youngest, and half of Kung Fu Hustle was a look back into the earlier eras of martial arts movies. I don’t want anyone to go through the what Chan and Hung did in the old Peking Opera system, where people were drilled into being all around physical entertainers, but straight action is going to be the only thing people create with this particular moment.
I genuinely think they asked Jared Padalecki what he wanted to do. He said Walker, Texas Ranger so that he and his family can be based out of Texas (where his parents live) and his wife can be in it.
I believe, as they say, cocaine is a hell’uva drug.
Ugh, this looks terrible and very much smacks of a team who dont really understand WHY an original IP is beloved but somehow feel like they have to put their stamp on it anyway.Shame. Hopefully once this dies the miserable death it will undoubtedly receive, Padelecki will still have enough residual pull from Supernatural to get into something worthy of his talents.
There are always FlexTape commercials that need D-list celebrity endorsements.
characteris?
Padalecki to me was always far better when he got to do comedy on Supernatural so I don’t know why, when the CW probably would have greenlit whatever he project he wanted (okay within reason obviously) he decided to do this instead of playing to his strengths. I just don’t find him a compelling enough actor to be able to lead a show without someone like Ackles’ (who I thought a far more compelling actor) to play off of especially not a show that seems heavy on the angst and drama of it all.
Padelicki apparently originally wanted to produce this show & for Jensen Ackles to star in it
I like Padalecki (but like most people, think Ackles is easily the better performer), but man am I glad that didn’t happen. I’m still waiting for Jensen to finally blow up and become the star he deserves to be (which reminds me that he apparently had to turn down the role of Hawkeye in the MCU, which… maaaaaan, what a kick in the nuts that has to be for him in retrospect), and hopefully The Boys will do the trick and launch him to another audience.
By the way, naming the pilot “Pilot”…-chef’s kiss-
My favorite first episode title not called “Pilot” has to be “The End” from Red Dwarf. “The End already? Huh, that was quick.”
Sadly, they did not make the episode about a plane or pilot the way Lost and The Lone Gunmen did.Once upon a time, I had 3-4 other examples of shows doing this, but I’ve lost them.
Did the X-Files do this too? I feel like they did, but I also don’t feel like looking it up to check. Seems like the sort of the thing the show would do. But about, like, a UFO pilot.(or I might be thinking of the Lone Gunman pilot, actually)
“Pilot” for The Lone Gunmen was disturbingly prescient — it was about an airplane that had been hijacked by remote control to crash into the World Trade Center. It aired in March 2001.“Pilot” for The X-Files was about alien abductees. There’s a scene with Mulder and Scully on a plane, but the episode isn’t specifically about it or its pilot.
I’ve watched all of Gilmore Girls and Supernatural, and I have some positive feelings about both, including Padalecki’s performance in them, but he really doesn’t strike me as the sort of person with a tenth of the charisma necessary to reboot this franchise. I’m not sure he can really play lead at all, even without the baggage of doing this character. I’m sure he’s acting because he likes doing it, but it might be best for him to take whatever pile of gold he earned from doing Supernatural and just disappear.
This takes place in Austin? Why is everyone riding horses and wearing cowboy hats?
Reminds me of 911 Lone Star where the bar that the firefighters all hang out at after work is a honky tonk bar on 6th St. And you get to Austin from NYC by driving through the desert.
Yikes. I live in the Dallas area and have made the drive down to Austin many times, and I’m sitting here thinking, “Well maybe they went… no, no desert there. Hm. Maybe they took… hm. Nope. No desert there, either.” And all I can think is that maybe they accidentally overshot and wound up in El Paso and had to drive back east?
I knew I should have taken a left turn in Albuquerque.
Hmm. I really like Lindsey Morgan (from her work on The 100), but this sounds pretty awful.I’m conflicted. But only slightly.
I will give this show a chance for Lindsey Morgan, who single handedly almost saved the terrible final season of The 100 as Raven, like her character saved humanity
I hope for your sake that it gets good. I will tune in if there’s an episode where Bob Morley plays the villain of the week and she gets to shoot him repeatedly. Raven deserves to get to shoot Bellamy so, so, so many times.
Ha, I don’t have super high hopes for this show, but I love Raven and I hate Bellamy like poison so I certainly will pull for this scenario
The main criticism I repeatedly hear about Supernatural is that they always killed off the female characters, so it’s really hilarious and dumb that the show meant to be the next starring vehicle for one of the two brothers starts out with killing off a female character.
They killed everyone on Supernatural and didn’t discriminate. Pretty much anyone who got close to the Winchesters was eventually killed. Hell, they killed Bobby!
And the main characters aren’t exempt from that either, although they always do eventually return (and that’s also true of some of the female characters, like Charlie). Heck, there’s an episode that even makes fun of how many times the Winchesters have died.
Repeatedly.
Walker going to the icebox straight out tells me pretty much all I need to know.
Ooh Odette Annabel is in this? It would be cool if her character turns out to be Reign and this is a stealth Supergirl spinoff
If this is a stealth spinoff chronicling the adventures of Nola the kung-fu motorcycle assassin from Banshee I’ll watch it.
Man Banshee was awesome. The fight between Nola and Burton was one of my favorite fight scenes ever. The whole time my wife and I were popping like a pro wrestling audience with each back-and-forth, and both characters were secondary characters and pretty much antagonists to the leads so you had no idea who would survive (and we didn’t know which of them we WANTED to survive because they were so entertaining!).
C+ you say? Solid showing for the CW, sounds like at least 8 seasons.
I guess we won’t be getting any more iconic scenes to add to the retired ‘Walker: Texas Ranger Lever’
If they don’t bring Haley Joel Osment on for an episode and have Walker tell him he has AIDS then they’re really dropping the ball.
I’m glad someone else caught the “Raylan Givens cosplay” of it all, every time I saw an ad for this I thought they were rebooting Justified.
Of course Walker signed up for the Marines after Sept. 11, and of course the show treats that like it’s an admirable thing. Of course.because…of course this is laughable and should be taken as a terrible thing?Not sure how old you are- maybe you’re too young to recall that time?- but there was a certain…can you say…”desire to protect our country”, after we (some of us in person!) watched 3000+ people die in a sudden, violent terrorist attack on our beloved NYC, as well as DC, PA, etc. (My cousin died in Tower #2, big laughs?!?) Many people signed up out of a sense of frustrated “what can I do?” kind-of-helping. But saying “someone joining the service after 911″ is anything besides admirable- even if you don’t support the military members- is kinda sh*tty, honestly, AND also implies that the people who did that were somehow ignorant, had ulterior motives, or should be NOT admired for doing so. I didn’t join up- I was already too old and had medical issues- and I’m about as much a non-military-interested person as one can get, but that’s a cheap, ignorant line about something you clearly wanted to get haha points for. And of course there were some yahoos that joined to go “kill terrorists” but honestly, that’s ALWAYS been the case w/ the service. It doesn’t mean that a lot of people who joined after 9/11 were not doing so out of sense of wanting to help their country and possibly, make it safer for all of us. For a lot of people, that was- and still is- an admirable thing. (I never ran to put myself in harms way for “America”, unlike most of them.)Also, believe me, I’m not here to defend the reboot of WALKER. That’s literally the last thing I expected to be doing today. Or ever. But, come on, already.
Ah, yes, but you forgot that Military = Bad and that if the US just stopped having one, the world would be super safe and junk.
The A.V. Club writers run a daily competition to see which of them can have the dumbest take of the day. This is Roxana’s entry for yesterday.
Honestly, I dont think the reviewer has a problem with people enlisting after 9/11, just with the fact that it has become kind of a trope in tv and movies, and is just very simple writing. “He (re)enlisted after 9/11″ is tv-shorthand for “he loved his country, and wanted to make the world a better place, and eventually became disillusioned with the war on terror and may have mild PTSD”. I personally dont mind the trope that much (Reese on Person of Interest is one of my favorite characters ever) mainly because it is probably based on reality, but I do think it is lazy writing.
Soldiers invading other countries and murdering civilians isn’t “protecting their country”.
I am not American and the level of self hatred that you people developed toward your own country, a country that is of course not perfect but a beacon of freedom and democracy for folks all over the world and overall a force for good, is more than sad. It’s sickening. Why don’t you go live somewhere else?
I was a huge fan of Supernatural, watched every single episode and would have watched more seasons if they made them. So I kind of expected this review from watching Jared Padalecki on that show for the last few years as Supernatural relied heavily on Jensen Ackles energy and charm. Jared has been listless as an actor for a while and I can’t imagine him carrying a show as the sole lead.On top of that, Walker Texas Ranger just seemed like such an odd choice of a show to revive. The vast majority of memories people have about that show were about Chuck Norris. It’s a definitive case of when a show was successful because of the actor in it, not the other way around.
…does this Walker even have Cherokee blood?????
[Ctrl-F] “roundhouse kicks”Nothing.Fuck this show.
Damn it. I want to watch Justified again.
Honestly I’m just glad that Sam Winchester FINALLY got a freaking haircut.
Hopefully, we’ll discover next episode that his passion is racial-based humor.
It’s interesting that the reviewer thought the fact that the show was directed and produced by women, where it used to be ‘patriarchal’ was more important than the quality.
Coby Bell and Odette Annable. OK you have my attention.
What WTR did you watch? It wasn’t what i did.”“created by conservative white America to maintain its values. He was a badass who carried a huge gun who also did community service. He didn’t like men with pierced ears!”“Walker has updated this character for our times—he’s not casually making gender- or race-based jokes anymore, which hey, I appreciate!”“and if you needed more evidence that this Walker is a more tolerant version than his predecessor, you’ll find it in the realization that Emily is off to leave water and food in the desert for migrants.”“Are we going to pretend the Walkers aren’t wealthy”“This show is trying to take on the cartel, and the plight of undocumented people, and the casual racism of good ol’ boys like Walker’s dad? Best of luck. Here’s hoping the Walker writers’ room has at least one, if not more, Latin American and POC voices who can speak to these issues.”“The show’s very first villains had to be the people running a place that provides job opportunities to rehabilitating criminals? That’s a real throwback to the original show’s “Do bad people really deserve second chances?” messaging.”Walker didn’t like men with peirced ears… Walker didn’t like CD’s fancy sandwiches either. Because he was a practical, simple living man, not a discriminatory type.“making gender- or race-based jokes” When???? This is just not true. He was 1/2 Native American and treated women with respectI could go on. But i loved walker. He was good to all people but tough on criminals. He cared for the troubled but kick the butt of those who harmed others. As a Christian (in Australia) i most loved being able to watch a show where the respect of faith was shown to all, especially the Christian. Most American tv paints us as the problem. Walker showed a realistic portrayal of how a person who follows Jesus lives.It was funny, thoughtful tolerant of all that were living a not so Christian lifestyle, and caring to Minorities.The 4 lead character/actors were loveable, friendly and as far as i can tell, their only crime is that two were white and Walker looked too much like his mother’s side of the family… and he had a need to carry a gun.Don’t forget the two sets of support acts. One hated guns, two were from latin American backgrounds, andone was a butt kickin lady Ranger.I think your intolerance of old fashioned values, and those who still live by them, is showing.WTR was a great show, its sad that it had to end.
The thing I noticed about Walker, Texas Ranger which read as strangely progressive in the 90’s but comes across as pretty racist today was the template seemingly every episode used …Episode opens with bad guy minions, who embodied every awful racial stereotype you can think of, perpetuate awful crime against white folks or sympathetic minority. Cut to opening credits and Chuck Norris crooning the Walker theme.
Walker and his African American partner karate kick their way through the investigation, utilizing informants and/or subject matter experts who are also sympathetic minorities or white women. But whatever their expertise, they do whatever the fuck Walker tells them to do.Couple of slow motion karate chops later, the big baddie is revealed, who is always a white guy. A little white on white violence, and the big baddie ends up in jail.Back in the 90s I got out of work and home just in time to watch Walker, so I’ve seen way too much of this show. And like I said, at the time it seemed progressive. It portrayed minority and women as competent professionals working cooperatively with white guys toward a positive end. And as bad as the street thugs were, the white guy pulling the string was always worse.But now I think back, and those “good” minorities were basically white people with melanin. And no one ever, ever, ever contradicted Walker because he was “The White Guy in Charge”. The show preached racial unity, so long as minorities were willing to act like, and take their marching orders from, white men. The 90s were all sorts of screwed up!Yes, this post isn’t about the re-boot. Sorry, but I have been waiting decades to uncork my dissertation.
The only racism I see here is yours, honestly. Your whole text is pure 100% racism.
Give them time.“Hasn’t replaced them with much”?This is the CW. Walker will be randomly boning hot just-post-teens while fighting off supernatural serial killers in a few weeks.It’s the CW.It’s what they do.
I liked it when Chuck Norris kicked Jeff Jarrett and Jarrett sold it by doing a handstand.
When Chuck Norris dives into the ocean, he does not get wet, the ocean gets Chuck Norris-ed.I am here all day folks!
Why, uh… why did they do this?
Of course Walker signed up for the Marines after Sept. 11, and of course the show treats that like it’s an admirable thing. Of courseHold the fuck on. You’re saying it’s NOT admirable? You are a piece of shit Roxana
Agreed that the show seemed to throw a lot at the viewer but does not do a great job of blending everything together (at least not yet), however, at least I really like the Micki character and her boyfriend. The interplay between Micki, her boyfriend and Walker while he is in her house getting patched up was fun.
I also was pleasantly surprised that I did not get a will they or wont they vibe as far as Walker and his partner are concerned, it was refreshing that the writers did not immediately go there.
I mean good for Jared Padalecki for landing on his feet after Supernatural, but this will get a second season because he was in Superanatural and maybe if they’re REALLY lucky they might get a third.