Walker, Texas Ranger

The verdict? Not as gosh-awful as I expected...sort of a "Hunter" with heart. [4 Apr 1993]

This sort of harmless escapist fare is the kind of thing some members of the Senate are deploring in their uninformed campaign against TV mayhem.

what was left was such a confusing big-city western, it was hard to tell the good guys from the bad. [21 April 1993, p.8]

Overinflated two-hour pilot shows promise on a simpleminded action-film level. "The A-Team" did the same thing with much more wit, though, and in a timeslot more consistent with its greatest potential audience.

The quality of the debut would indicate this series to be dead in the water. [23 Apr 1993]

The cornball Walker, Texas Ranger looks like a parody early on; it has the strangest camera angles since Batman. Soon enough, it's clear this is just another violent show filled with cartoonish villains, helpless victims and a taciturn martial arts hero who lets his hands do the talking. The low point comes when a rapist ogles his victim a second time and confides to pals, "Just chalk it up to hormones." [21 Apr 1993, p.E7]

Walker, Texas Ranger would have been retrograde in 1972. The acting is wooden. The bad guys are drawn in the dimensions of cartoon characters. I'm not even going to start to talk about how it handles racial stereotypes. It celebrates vigilantism. There's violence and more violence.

I love every episode of Walker Texas Ranger. It is awesome. There has never been a better show.