What I watched: The twenty-third episode of the first season of The Lone Ranger, a kid-oriented Western created by George W. Trendle. This episode starred Clayton Moore as the titular hero and Jay Silverheels as Tonto, with guest appearances by Rand Brooks, Ray Bennett, and House Peters Jr. (what a name!) Brooks and Bennett both previously appeared as different characters in a previous episode of The Lone Ranger, with Bennett playing the immortal Hardrock Jones. Bennett also was in the first episode of Life of Riley, so he’s an Eternal Couch Potato all-star. This episode was directed by George Archainbaud and written by Tom Seller. “Jim Tyler’s Past” aired on Thursday, February 16, 1950 at 7:30 PM on ABC, and is available to watch on YouTube.
What happened: The Ranger and Tonto are at it again, trailing a mysterious figure. Apparently this guy, Blackie Kane (don’t worry, he’s not black. There are no black people in The Lone Ranger), has outsmarted them twice, which honestly doesn’t seem that difficult. They follow his trail, and find his signature, a paper cigarette
In the next town, Blackie (Peters) is already at work robbing a bank. The sheriff (Bennett) rounds up a posse to chase after him, but he hides behind a rock and lets them ride past. After being outfoxed, the sheriff gets in a fight with his deputy, the titular Jim Tyler (Brooks). When Jim goes home Blackie comes through the window, and lets us know that him and Jim are old partners in crime. Blackie wants Jim to help him and his goons escape.
Tonto overhears enough and goes back to report. Tyler was previously known by Jim Wadsworth, a name which the Ranger immediately recognizes. He drops in on Jim. (Geez, just send him a text.) Jim denies any connection with Blackie, but he quickly succumbs to the Ranger’s interrogation technique of maternal guilting and starts feeling bad about himself.
The Ranger next stops by to visit the sheriff and points a gun at him. He lets the sheriff in on Jim’s connection to Blackie, narc that he is, but also suggests that Jim is a good man. (The Ranger has infinite uses of detect evil.) The sheriff gives Jim the task of tracking down Blackie by himself, then follows him on horseback with our heroic duo.
Jim goes to the shack where Blackie and his goons, a pair of brothers, are hiding. Jim draws and tries to take the bad guy in, but it turns out there’s a third brother who knocks him out. Blackie then comes up with a plan of impersonating Jim to get the supplies they need. Man, what is it with this show and impersonation?
The Ranger immediately sees through the ruse, and sends Tonto to trail Blackie. He and the sheriff try to take the cabin, but the Ranger is also surprised by the third brother and gets dropped. But Jim comes to and helps beat the bad guys. Blackie comes back, and also gets captured, but he shoots Jim in the shoulder. He then tries to blackmail Jim into letting him go. But it turns out that Jim wasn’t really a bad guy: he just shot one of Blackie’s accomplishment in self-defense.
The Ranger uncharacteristically gives Jim a gun and says that he has the option to kill Blackie to save his own neck. Jim passes the moral test and doesn’t shoot. Blackie tries to escape again, but he gets clocked.Jim decides to return to Abilene and face trial, with the sheriff testifying on his behalf.
What I thought: Normally in these recaps I focus mostly on plot — I’m a writer and a literary critic, so my expertise and interest mostly lies in the writerly side of television, how a group of mostly low-status professionals produce new stories every week. However, in the case of The Lone Ranger this production is often done by repetition, so here we have yet another good man trying to get over a criminal pass and yet another villain who disguises himself as something he’s not.
These themes do tie into the thematic fixations of The Lone Ranger, particularly Trendle’s cod-Christian morality plays — the Ranger is distinguished here not just by his goodness, but by his ability to discern good from evil. As he stresses in this episode, he “knows people.” But I have also talked about this before, possibly ad nauseum.
So I thought I would briefly address the reason why kids actually watched these shows: the action. Unlike film, television does not demand a particular practice or mode of viewing. It is typically watched in the home, full of distractions and interruptions. A young viewer (or an old viewer) of The Lone Ranger might spend a good deal of its running time fighting with family members, eating, playing, or doing homework, only focusing on the set when the action picks up. In such a setting, the repetition of the plots and the lulls in the action may have served a utilitarian purpose. (And remember, these episodes — at least at first — didn’t have lengthy commercial breaks during which one could let their concentration lapse.)
A typical episode of The Lone Ranger begins with an action sequence, usually some sort of chase or robbery that incites the plot. This action acts as a promise of the fisticuffs that will conclude the episode, providing a motivation for the viewer to sit through the 10-15 minutes of dialogue and investigation that follows. These opening scenes are often also set outdoors, on a prototypical Western set with the hills and scrubland associated with the American southwest.
These outdoor sets are realistic as far as postwar Hollywood goes, but they serve a primarily symbolic purpose. In Western films (particularly more artistically-directed ones by the likes of John Ford and Howard Hawks), the sweeping sets were used as spectacle, a demonstration of the panoramic powers of the cinema. In The Lone Ranger, they’re used to remind the audience of Western movies. Opening chases promise the audience a free, in their-home equivalent of what they’d doubtlessly seen on the big screen. This was the promise of shooting television on film, which few had yet realized.
The counterpart to this opening chase is the closing action scene. This sequences typically take place indoors, usually in some kind of cabin or shack. We have moved away from the unpredictability of the open road and towards the Lone Ranger’s stated purpose: creating an urban, civilized version of the West. The villains hope to use this transition to their own ends, and must be punished with violence.
The nature of producing a children’s Western means that the action must be bloodless and mostly nonlethal. When the Ranger offers Jim the chance to kill his tormentor in this episode, we know he ultimately won’t end up doing so. As a result, guns and knives are practically useless in The Lone Ranger, with only the percussive power of fists able to win the battle. The smacking-meat sound cues and the overexaggerated reactions of the goons further reinforces this. I like to joke about flying clotheslines, but the fights in the series really are a lot like pro wrestling: a formalized version of fighting designed for spectacle rather than verisimilitude.
Neither of these action sequences are really part of the plot. This episode’s main narrative arc is about Jim Tyler’s repentance, and he’s introduced after the chase and rejects killing before the final fistfight. That doesn’t mean that these elements are inessential filler: rather, for most viewers I expect that they made up the main point of the show. There’s a lot more to say about the Lone Ranger‘s action sequences and their relationship with the thematic content, but I’ll save that for uninteresting episodes in the future.
Coming up next: A show I am not yet sick of, What’s My Line.
-Blackie has a great beard.
The Eternal Couch Potato 