“Both Sides” of Walker: Texas Ranger
Why a modern reboot misses the point.
A female, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC-led Supernatural spinoff capped in the eleventh hour. A BIPOC-written, produced, and led superhero groundbreaker cut short. A 15-year legacy show censored in its last episodes to deny any trace of its queer leads, queer romance, or disabled characters.
A veritable slew of marginalized characters on The CW have faced traumatic deaths, erased storylines, and harmful tropes across shows from The 100 to Riverdale.
But why would we need any of them? We have a Texas Ranger.
The reboot of Chuck Norris’ action police procedural comes at the heels of an unprecedented year of social, political, and economic unrest. Nationwide Black Lives Matter protests against institutionalized violence and systemic racism, a failed coup and siege of the U.S. Capitol by right-wing extremists, the unstable twilight of Trump’s presidency — all against the backdrop of a deadly pandemic that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and put millions out of work and livelihood.
It’s a high order for any show to address, let alone one inherently rooted in the glorification of law enforcement and the moralistic ideals of a mythologized, benignly conservative middle America. Such an order begs the question, really, why this series was the one chosen to reboot at all, woke rebrand or not.
As our new godsend of “tolerance,” Walker promises to take on the tough issues facing our fraught and polarized sociopolitical landscape. Immigration and detention, police brutality, turbulent liberalism and complicit conservatism, the perils of being a woman in a man’s world — Cordell Walker will sit on the edge of a coin and observe the powerfully brave practice of refusing to call heads or tails. After all, it’s about time someone took both sides.
This is another in a long line of willfully out of tune marketing choices by The CW. And an even longer line of disingenuous overtures to progressive fanbases in an effort to disguise the ultimate priority repeatedly given to the network’s “safer,” more conventionally mainstream stories. The CW has a long-documented history of targeting marginalized audiences through progressive-leaning PR campaigns like “Dare to Defy” and promises of diverse characters, stories, and experiences. These campaigns are too often directly at odds with the stories that end up on screen — LGBTQ+ characters violently killed, BIPOC voices removed and undervalued, disabled characters killed and erased.
This history inspires little trust in the ability of a show proffering a “both sides” approach from the start to address similar stories in good faith.
Walker is presented as a modern update to the original series, led by a female showrunner (Anna Fricke) and adding a more diverse cast of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ leading characters including Cordell’s partner, Micki Ramirez (Lindsey Morgan) and brother Liam (Keegan Allen), although it should also be noted that the reboot has seemingly chosen to delete the series’ flawed Native American representation in connection to Walker’s character rather than improve its caliber.
On the introduction of a Mexican-American woman to the main cast, Morgan hopes to “tell a story of tolerance from two perspectives.” Walker’s brother, a gay conservative man, will add an LGBTQ+ viewpoint lacking in the original. These character and creative updates will lend a sense of credibility to Walker’s attempts to address the pressing issues facing marginalized communities, but it remains to be seen whether their voices will be enough to overcome the show’s underlying premise with a cishet, white male law enforcement POV that innately upholds the institutions and established powers that perpetuate harm against these very same communities. Can any contemporary facelift meaningfully strip Walker of its own identity?
The early details are, to put it mildly, troubling, not to mention the initial tepid reviews that do little to assuage these doubts. Jared Padalecki has already defended the virtues of his character’s apoliticism, stating that “we don’t want the audience to ever know whether Walker is quote conservative or quote liberal… This version of Walker, we play with the gray area.” A political middle ground that is embodied by Liam, a conservative LGBTQ+ character carefully paraded through each piece of PR as Walker’s woke-establishment safeguard to appeal to all audiences.
And, perhaps most offensively, producers have referenced the illegal and inhumane detainment of human beings and violent separation of families at the border as inspiration for the show. Inspiration, no less, to sympathize with the moral dilemma of the officers bound by duty, not the unimaginable pain and injustice for the victims of the ongoing humanitarian crisis at the U.S. border.
This is a show that, in the midst of longstanding sociopolitical crises that have been actively fostered by the enabling bothsidesism which — in the name of balance — elevates extreme viewpoints with the credibility of fact, is choosing the same tactics to paint itself as a safe middle road while claiming progressive credentials. It is this call for a fair and balanced approach, perhaps, that allows Walker to just as easily advertise on Fox News as Tumblr.
A show entrenched in sympathy for the sacred duty of law enforcement, evidently monetizing the suffering of immigrants and exalting the very apoliticism that allows this suffering to continue. A show asserting a modern take on its conservative foundations, yet led by a network with a problematic history and dubious commitments to honoring progressive or marginalized stories.
The CW is choosing to elevate this story, a conservative approach to progressive ideals that puts passive unity above active resistance against the very real problems that are harming the communities it claims to champion. Elevating this story, at the expense of the rest.
Why a Walker reboot, indeed.
Media interests continue to profit off of the identities and suffering of marginalized communities, turning their pain into entertainment while refusing to tell their stories meaningfully or respectfully. But we can push back. We can advocate for each other and raise our voices, no matter how many times they are suppressed.
One way to start now is by donating to causes like RAICES, which fights for immigration rights and protections, and continuing to raise awareness about the real suffering that is too often ignored or used as “inspiration” for others’ stories. It’s our collective voices that can bring about change. It is through our compassion and our dedication to what is right that we have gained ground, time and again. Let’s speak out about expecting better from networks like The CW and from the stories being told and sold to us. And let’s come together to do as much good as we can where it counts.
Finally, be sure to make your voice heard by using our hashtag #WalkAwayTexasRanger on social media.
