He’ll attempt to reconnect with his creative and thoughtful son (Kale Culley, “Me, Myself and I”) and his headstrong, somewhat rebellious teenaged daughter (Violet Brinson, “Sharp Objects”) and navigate clashes with his family - an ADA brother (Keegan Allen, “Pretty Little Liars”) who stepped in during Walker’s absence, his perceptive mother (Molly Hagen, “Herman’s Head”) and his traditional rancher father (Mitch Pileggi, “The X-Files”).
But after watching the Walker pilot, it’s hard to want to watch another episode, let alone a full season (which The CW has already ordered).Walker, a reimagining of the long-running series “Walker, Texas Ranger,” stars Jared Padalecki (“Supernatural”) as Cordell Walker, a widower and father of two with his own moral code, who returns home to Austin after being undercover for two years, only to discover there’s harder work to be done at home. Pilots are, by their very nature, incredibly hard to pull off well: a lot of establishing information has to be given to the audience while also introducing the plot in a way that invites continued investment. The seeds planted feel generic, and the more timely elements - like the situation at the border - not particularly well-engaged. It’s hard to see a world wherein this show gets interesting, based on the pilot alone. The more procedural case of the week is little more than set-up for an ominous drug cartel and a tiny, not particularly impressive fight.
Problems are not really problems, and the exposition we get from these moments lands with a thud.
The inclusion of these new parts doesn’t really add much interest to what plays out, in the end: a bunch of inconsequential, family drama filler. Unfortunately, he’s also not handling it in a particularly interesting or edifying manner, either. And guess what? He’s not handling any of it well. Ramirez, too, has a lot riding on her new partner and his ability to follow orders and not ruin her chances in an extremely white, male-dominated profession. Now that he’s returned home from an undercover assignment after two years away - seemingly immediately following the death of his wife - there’s a lot of tension with his kids and the rest of his family who stepped in to fill the void while he was gone. The Ranger’s new partner, Micki Ramirez (played by The 100’s Lindsey Morgan), also plays a fairly large role in Walker’s life. The show, its showrunner Anna Fricke posited during a recent Television Critics Association panel, is about the entire Walker family. But not even the charm of Padalecki can liven up this one-trick pony. (The show even shoots in the actor’s hometown of Austin, Texas). This is clearly the reason the series was made: to keep one of its bread-and-butter attractions on the network and happily employed. In place of Norris’ cheeseball “badass” is the much softer, more subdued Supernatural star Jared Padalecki. Gone is the ass-kicking Cordell Walker fans of the old series are used to in his place is a tired, possibly alcoholic widower who - we are told but only once is it allegedly really seen - plays by his own rules. Alas, that doesn’t mean what we get is much better. In short, The CW's Walker is the complete antithesis of everything the older version was, which itself wasn’t particularly good. In fact, there is nary a similarity at all to its predecessor, save the name Cordell Walker, and the fact that he is indeed a Texas Ranger. The CW’s take is absolutely nothing like that. It was very much a series of its era and home network, CBS. Imbued in all of this was an often cheesy, overriding sense of machismo - ass-kicking and bad guy-busting in the name of protecting the good ol’ US of A. Its lead, Chuck Norris, is a very specific man. Walker, Texas Ranger was a very specific show with a very specific audience from a very specific time.