A Programming Note: For the sake of my sanity and yours, I’ve decided to start merging Lone Ranger episodes together for blogging purposes. This was occasioned by the fact that we’re entering a period where LR will be available reliably weekly, but nothing else will be. There are two episodes in this post, but for future ones I’ll probably be doing a month of episodes at a time. I’ll do this in the future for other prolific and repetitive shows, as well as possibly for other things that read better in combination. All episodes starred Clayton Moore and Jay Silverheels, and aired on ABC at 7:30 on Thursay nights.
Season 1, Episode 32 (April 20, 1950), dir. George Archainbaud, writ. Tom Seller, guests, Lucien Littlefield, Lee Shumway, James Griffith, Steven Clark
We open with yet another stagecoach robbery, this time at the hands of one Rex Creek. The Ranger and Tonto follow the tracks to a nearby cabin, where a long-haired old man named Uncle Taffy is reclining. The Ranger assumes he’s innocent, but he’s actually hiding the outlaws underneath the floorboards. Hes also got an old mining shaft that he intends to use as a titular “death trap.” They then shove him down there, although we don’t get to see it.
Rex is also a lawyer in town, hoping to get rid of the local marshall so he can have all the power. He’s killed his last four deputies. One of their sons, Jimmy, angrily holds the marshall at gunpoint, but is subdued by the Lone Ranger. Shortly afterwards, he volunteers to be the new deputy and serve as bait for the criminals. I love these changes of heart. Tonto poses as the criminal, of course.
Still posing as a lawyer, Rex volunteers to spring Tonto on his way to the local prison at Abilene. The Ranger puts up the money, but Rex recognizes him and realizes the whole plan. I guess that’s the whole problem with a masked persona.
Tonto and Jimmy get kidnapped anyway, and brought to Uncle Taffy’s cabin. Taffy tries to disarm the Ranger by pretending to be a harmless old man again, but he’s not having any of it. As he goes to tie him up, the Ranger falls down the big hole, but grabs onto a ladder. (One major flaw in the whole death trap thing.) They have a big slobberknocker, with the good guys prevailing. Taffy falls down the hole, and presumably straight-up dies. But everything is okay, because Jimmy agrees to be the permanent deputy.
Season 1, Episode 33 (April 27, 1950), dir. George B. Sietz Jr., writ. Herb Meadow, guests Don Haggerty, Dick Curtis, James Arness and Juan Duval.
The Ranger and Tonto are in the process of setting up a trap for some outlaws. This involves the Lone Ranger’s favourite activity: wearing a disguise. He has a different outfit, but it’s the same voice as his old prospector voice. They want to use a reluctant banker as bait. Also in the mix is the sheriff’s absent-minded nephew Buck.
The Ranger in his disguise rides through town, yelling and hollering about having hit a big score. He might as well be yelling “it’s a trap.” Meanwhile, we see Buck getting in a confrontation with two hombres in the barber shop. Some exposition reveals that these are the outlaws the Ranger is looking for. Buck denies seeing them to his uncle, deciding to capture the two men himself and collect the $500 reward.
The hombres hold up the cliched Mexican barber, making him give them a shave at gunpoint. Tonto comes into the shop and gets knocked out for probably the twentieth time. The Ranger notices the commotion, and gets in a gunfight from across the road. There are some really loud and goofy ricochet noises. The hombres escape, using Tony the barber as a hostage.
However, the bad guys disagree — one of them wants to go back to kill the Ranger, while the other wants to make a run for the border. They compromise by shooting the sheriff. (But they did not kill the deputy.) The hostage situation continues, with one of the men throwing out his gun under the pretense of surrender. This is, of course, a trap that the honourable Ranger dutifully walks into. But the barber discovers his cojones, and he and the Ranger knock the hombres out. He then gives the greedy Buck a lecture about courage.
What I thought: These two episodes highlight almost immediately the reason why I’m shifting to (and creating) a multi-episode format for The Lone Ranger. The show has a limited number of tropes and ideas it cycles through — certainly not enough for a 200+ episode series. In part this is because of thematic preoccupations, both those dictated by Trendle and ones that emerged seemingly unbidden from the writers’ minds. In part it’s just because the show was uniquely appealing to young viewers, and they knew they could get away with phoning in the plot.
For an instance of this repetition, both of these episodes feature paternalistic sheriff/deputy duos, in which the would-be deputy is a young hothead. The exact details are a little different — one deputy proves himself in the course of the episode, while the other’s efforts to go solo make him realize how much he needs guidance. In both cases, the episode ends with order restored, and the deputy’s putative rebellion at an end.
The social subtext of this particular recurring plot is not hard to suss out. While it was progressive in some aspects, The Lone Ranger had a highly conservative worldview. Part of this ethos involved the respect for authority, and the orderly obedience of sons to fathers. Here, this relationship is tied to the more explicitly hierarchical relationship of sheriff and deputy.
Each episode of The Lone Ranger details a community disrupted by crime and greed — here we see the ordinary rhythms of the justice system and small town life (respectively) sent into chaos by violent crime. The resolution requires not just defeating the villains, but restoring order through the submission of deputy to sheriff and son to father (or uncle.) The Ranger’s hasty departure at the end of each episode is a reminder that, while he has acted as a catalyst of change, it’s ultimately up to others to maintain the community.
Of the two episodes, “Death Trap” is the better one, if only because it’s campier. An old coot who turns out to be sinister is a fun character, and the idea of villains whose secret weapon is just a big hole in the ground is great. The problem with The Lone Ranger isn’t just that it isn’t good, it’s that it isn’t silly enough to be fun either — this episode at least tries to rectify the latter.
“Matter of Courage”, on the other hand, has a pair of especially generic villains and more speechifying than usual. We’re supposed to cheer on the barber as an underdog action hero, but he’s too much of a cartoonish Mexican stereotype for me to empathize with. Nobody even gets thrown down a mine shaft. It’s a reminder of why the idea of spending half of this year on individual episode recaps of this show ultimately broke me.
Coming up next: The other, thankfully less well-preserved titan of early kid’s TV. His name rhymes with “Dowdy Boody.”
The Eternal Couch Potato 