(First published April 24, 2003.)
And now, for the electronically deprived, here is a summary of Chuck Norris’ lines from this week’s premiere episode of Fort Worth’s first TV series, “Walker, Texas Ranger.”
“Beer!”
“I reckon.”
“They hurt me. Real bad.”
“I don’t know what you’re cooking, ma’am, but it sure smells good.”
“How’s the water?”
(While flattening a bad guy with a boot to the face) “You have the right to remain silent.”
(While comforting a rescued teen-ager) “The way you’re feeling is thanks enough for me.”
(And preparing for the usual car-crash-and-explosion climax, set appropriately in explosion-prone downtown Fort Worth) “Payback time.”
For those who were out Wednesday night, CBS’s new series-turned-trilogy, “Walker, Texas Ranger,” debuted for a TV audience of 15 million, depicting Fort Worth in our usual typecast role as a thrill-packed, crime-plagued cowboy town.
Maybe you saw the Star-Telegram in our supporting role. We played a bank, and we got robbed.
Rey Olivas created thousands of unique belt buckle designs, including the badges and buckles used in Walker Texas Ranger. Photo shot at his office in Fort Worth on Tuesday, February 19, 2002.
(M.L. Gray/Star-Telegram archives)
Had we only known, we could have loaned Walker some writers.
Our TV guy Steven Cole Smith called it “reasonably entertaining drama . . . crippled by a slow-moving, stilted script.”
Knight-Ridder Newspapers’ Mike Duffy said simply: “Not as gosh-awful as I expected.”
And even former high school English teacher-turned-Mayor Kay Granger said: “I love the Fort Worth scenes. . . . But it should be much tighter. It took a long time to get into it.”
But with Norris playing Tarrant County-based Texas Rangers lawman Cordell Walker, the show cleaned up in the ratings anyway.
Now CBS and Cannon Television Inc. must decide whether to resuscitate Walker after the last two episodes tonight (8 o’clock, KDFW/Channel 4) and next Saturday.
“Absolutely no one expected this,” Channel 4 spokeswoman Karen Cage said yesterday, when the station looked at Wednesday’s No. 1 local rating and juggled the schedule to work in tonight’s show after all.
“It’s a surprise,” she said. “A big one.”
Film crew and cast members of the television series Walker Texas Ranger film a scene from the front of the historic Tarrant County Courthouse in downtown Fort Worth. Members of the cast Judson Mills, who plays Ranger Francis Gage, (l-r) Nia Peeples as Ranger Sydney and Michael Costello, as Texas Ranger Jensen. Filming was done Tuesday, March 27, 2001.
I’ll say, considering that the first episode was a solid one-hour drama.
Unfortunately, it lasted two hours.
The best hour started about 9 o’clock, long after a Mexico barroom scene where bandits with wretched accents spat out every stereotype line except “We don’t need no stinking badges.”
The next farcical scene came when Walker’s love interest, Tarrant County criminal prosecutor Alex Cahill (Sheree J. Wilson), urged him to protect a witness so “this case won’t slip through the cracks of the criminal justice system.”
In the real Tarrant County, of course, we nudge cases toward the cracks of the criminal justice system.
The traditional fat-Texas-lawman is “Hee Haw” actor Gailard Sartain as retired Ranger C.D. Parker, owner of C.D.’s Bar & Grill, which bears an awfully close resemblance to Exchange Avenue’s White Elephant Saloon.
Parker also writes an advice column for the Gazette under the name “Ol’ Trail Buddy,” helping “the lovelorn, lost, bewildered and lonely.”
It must be only coincidence that Fort Worth’s real Stockyards Gazette prints an advice column by Cowtown Coliseum’s Hub Baker, called “Dear Hub.”
That’s the lowdown on Walker.
Oh, yeah. I didn’t tell you about the bad guy.
I’d say it’s the writer.