Episode 180: The Lone Ranger – “Troubled Waters” (March 9, 1950)

What I watched: The twenty-sixth 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 Eula Morgan, Harry Lauter and Dick Alexander. This episode was directed by George Archainbaud and written by Herb Meadow based on a story by Doris Schroeder. “Troubled Waters” aired on Thursday, March 9, 1950 at 7:30 PM on ABC, and is available to watch on YouTube.

What happened: The Ranger and Tonto arrive, parched, to what Tonto describe as a “dry county.” I think he’s using the term very literally. They encounter a woman in the buggy named Emmy Bryson (Morgan), who naturally thinks they’re outlaws, but tells them to hit up the Circle J ranch for water. Our heroes find a puddle and start drinking from it, but a man starts promptly shooting at them. Hey, you’ve got to protect your puddle.

Our rugged heroes enjoy a fancy tea party.

They track the man, Dave Tucker (Lauter), down to his cabin. It turns out that he also distrusts the Ranger, thinking that he’s come to poison the water. They sit down to tea, and Tucker says that he’s in bad straits with a broken arm, debts to pay, and someone trying to ruin his life.

In town, we see Bryson berating a mentally-slow guy named Jed (Alexander). We learn that she’s the villain of this episode, and has sent Jed to “take care of” Tucker. The Ranger comes in, and Jed tries to fight him, but Bryson stops him. There’s some stuff about how she owns part of the ranch and wants him to sell.

The Ranger goes to see Barton, the banker, who turns out to be an old friend. Barton protests that times are hard and he’s not rich. I’m sure this guy has written a Washington Post op-ed. The Ranger says that Tucker’s water has gone bad because oil is coming up through the pond, which could make the property much more valuable. But someone has overheard, and they shoot the good banker dead. I wonder who it could be.

When he gets back to the ranch, the Ranger finds that Tonto has been knocked out. Tucker says that someone has let all the cattle out — a “goblin”, as he says. I remember that D&D adventure. In the town, the sheriff wants to arrest the Ranger for the murder, but Bryson takes things into her own hands and starts shooting, presumably because there are only six minutes left in the episode.

Our heroes quickly summon a massive wall of chairs to barricade the doors, but Jed is still inside and starts brawling with the Ranger. Bryson wades into the battle, and shoots Tucker. But Tonto gets the jump on her, and the Ranger eventually knocks out big Jed. The Ranger convinces the sheriff to arrest the woman, and Jed is finally tired of his mistreatment and willing to snitch on his employer. Hooray!

What I thought: After being an all-male affair for the first few episodes, the presence of women on The Lone Ranger has been raising steadily. Here, we have the first female villain — well, I suppose the wife from “Man of the House” was a villain, but she wasn’t the one hatching criminal schemes that our hero had to stop. Mrs. Bryson is almost likable — she has the same kind of hard-bitten, androgynous folksiness that past women on this show have had, she’s just a little more ruthless.

Eula Morgan also does a good job not letting the character get too over-the-top.

Maybe there is a little bit of similarity between Bryson and that shrewish wife from the episode I hated. Her evilness is established entirely through her cruelty through men, both Tucker and her slow-witted henchman. Jed’s confession at the end is reminiscent of the suicidal bros-before-hos moment at the end of The Hateful Eight, realizing that loyalty to his gender and its project of domination overrides material concerns. And yet, the punishment of Bryson never feels as cruel or gratuitous as that of the more innocent housewife. There’s a certain amount of respect for the industrious villain.

And is it just me, or is it remarkable just how often the Ranger and Tonto are mistaken for criminals? It happens multiple times in this episode, with every guest character good or bad greeting them at gunpoint. In part, this is simply a way to wring out a minute or two of action when the screenplay is a little light. (This is the same reason why confrontations between people who will be on the same side became a staple trope of superhero comics.)

But these confrontations are also a result of the series’s central contradiction that I’ve pointed out before: that the vigilante Ranger is both an outlaw and an enforcer of the law. The series is forced to covertly acknowledge that any reasonable person would be suspicious of this masked man taking an unusual interest in your problems. It will be interesting to see if this contradiction is resolved or continue to bubble up in future episodes. Hey, I have to find something to be interested in about this show.

Coming up next: Ed Wynn brings in another classic silent comedy act.

Episode 151: The Lone Ranger – “The Man Who Came Back” (January 5, 1950)

What I watched: The fifteenth 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 Martha Hyer, Emmett Lynn, Bob Carson and Roy Gordon.. This episode was directed by George Archainbaud and written by Doris Schroeder. “Cannonball McKay” aired on Thursday, January 5, 1950 at 7:30 PM on ABC.

As we’re entering the 1950s, we’re exiting the realm of public domain. Fortunately, some kind soul has uploaded the later Lone Ranger episodes to DailyMotion, so I don’t need to buy a $250 box set. Here’s this one.

What happened: The Ranger and Tonto arrive at the ranch of their old friend Joe Crawford, hoping for a cup of coffee. Two men tell them that Joe’s sold the ranch and that the new owner doesn’t want them around. Joe’s cook Tom (Lynn) signals to the Ranger that something’s amiss, as if they couldn’t tell already. They sneak around back to meet Tom and finally get their cup of coffee.

Molly doesn’t do much in the plot. Her application to the Lone Ranger Birds of Prey is rejected.

Tom tells them that Joe went to town a week ago, and hasn’t sold the place. Joe’s daughter Molly (Hyer) arrives from boarding school with the alleged owner, Pinto Brown. Mr. Brown (Carson), a city slicker, tells them that he has the deed to the place with Joe’s signature and they all need to get out. Tonto goes to the nearest town to look for Joe, which seems like main-guy work, but he comes back quickly and says that it’s a bust.

Our heroic duo decides to search the ranch. They find a recently-dug hole with a bag of gold in it. In a cabin, they find a letter written from Joe to Pinto Brown. On the way back, they see Brown riding with the town marshall. Brown has a court order evicting Molly and Tom, which Tom threatens to resist by force. The Ranger compares the letter to the signature on the bill of sale, and decides that they’re too much alike and must have been traced.

Pinto meets up with two goons, the confirmation that he’s the bad guy. An old prospector rides up on a horse with a letter for Tom. Pinto says that he’s Peters, and the hobo gives him a letter. The letter is purportedly from Joe and says that he’s coming back immediately to settle things. Brown takes off to Silver Gulch, and the Ranger and Tonto follow him.

It turns out that Joe’s been in jail this whole time, arrested for busting up a saloon. The Ranger meets up with Joe (Gordon), who tells him that he’s been set up by Brown. Pinto comes back, and the Ranger confronts him with his crime. It turns out that the old hobo was actually the Ranger in disguise, and that he spooked Brown so much he set up an ambush on the road back to the ranch.

When they take Brown to the site of the ambush, his goons shoot at him, thinking that he’s Crawford. (I’m still not sure why this plan requires goons, but whatever.) The bad guys spill the beans in convenient dialogue, and the Ranger tackles Brown as he tries to escape. Back at home, Joe promises to lay off the sauce, and the Ranger and Tonto take off before they can have another cup of coffee.

What I thought: The Lone Ranger boldly charges into the new decade, using his derring-do and crime fighting skills to combat a thrilling instance of…. real estate fraud! So yeah, this is another one of the more investigative Lone Ranger episodes. I’ve talked about the formal reasons for why this series has such surprisingly bloodless plots (even the villain initially doesn’t want to kill people in this one), but there were also likely external pressures on the producers to make the Ranger more of a detective than a brawler.

This shot positions the Ranger as being behind bars, suggesting his sympathy for the wrongfully accused.

The influence of violent media on young people would soon become a moral panic, with fear that even the cartoon violence of Westerns and comic books would lead to kids thinking that violence could solve their problem. Producers of other children’s shows were explicitly told that their hero should win by outsmarting their opponent, with both networks and sponsors wanting to keep things as inoffensive as possible.

And yet there was, as always, a contradiction. The possibility of fisticuffs was what drew kids to The Lone Ranger, after all, so there still had to be some action. Moreover, if children had to be taught not to use violence to solve their problems, they also had to be taught that it was okay for people in authority to use violence to solve their problems. The result is a kind of compromise structure, in which the Ranger outwits the villain, the bad guy tries to flee or fight, and then the punching can commence.

There’s not that much to say about the actual content of this week’s episode. It is a little interesting to note, after coming off an episode of TV where property was assumed by everyone to be automatic and moral, an episode in which property claims are seemingly conditional. Sure, there’s the business with the too-perfect signature, but for most of the episode it seems that Pinto’s claim to the property is legitimate under the law — but somehow morally illegitimate. He’s the old-west version of a slumlord, buying a property and evicting the tenants so he can gussy it up and hike the rents.

To a limited extent, this episode expresses an ideal of stewardship and obligation. Pinto arrives and immediately mistreats the indigent (a woman and an old man) on his property, thus making him an illegitimate ruler. This is not a particularly progressive idea — in fact, it hews pretty close to the medieval idea of lordship — but in an era so infatuated with untrammeled capitalism, the antiquated morality of The Lone Ranger is charmingly quaint.

Coming up next: It’s right back to Life of Riley. Hey, have we got any more of those undated shows?

Episode 123: The Lone Ranger – “Return of the Convict” (December 1, 1949)

What I watched: The twelfth 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 John Kellogg (not the cereal man), Robert Emmett Keane, Steve Clark and John Daheim.. This episode was directed by George Archainbaud and written by Gibson Fox and Doris Schroeder.. “Return of the Convict” aired on Thursday, December 1, 1949 at 7:30 PM on ABC, and is available to watch on YouTube.

What happened: The Lone Ranger tells Tonto about John Ames (Kellogg), a man who’s just been released from prison and is swearing to “get even” with two men who’ve wronged him in the past. The Ranger and Tonto track down the stagecoach in which he’s riding, and spot him with a gun. When he gets into the town with the curious name of Alkali Den, and the town sheriff (Clark) immediately tells him to move away like his wife and child did. Ames swears that he didn’t have anything to do with the robbery he went to prison for, and that his mission is to make the men who set him up pay.

The Ranger and Tonto go to the home of the Gunder brothers, the men who testified against him. They find no sign of the brothers, but spot blood, a hat with a bullet hole in it, and Ames riding away very fast. Tonto rides off to town, as he does approximately nine times every episode, and  the Ranger spots a trail.

There’s a nice long-distance shot of the stage, which is so out of character for the series’ direction I would guess it’s taken from another film.

Back in town, the sheriff arrests Ames, having been filled in by that snitch Tonto. An angry posse has already gathered outside, lead by a man named Sim (Keane) and the sheriff quickly takes his captive out the back. The mob gets so angry they start throwing rocks at the sheriff, and quickly descend into mass brawling. The Ranger and Tonto come in to restore order.

Our hero supposes that someone else has murdered the Gunders and stirred up the lynch mob to pin the crime on Ames. Sim comes in and orders the sheriff to arrest the Ranger as an accomplice to the crime, and he goes on and does it. Fortunately, our outlaw hero is able to make an escape by clumsily wrestling the villain.

The Ranger and Tonto go out to investigate the ravine the brothers’ bodies were supposedly found in. They find the bodies, very much alive. The Ranger holds the Gunders (at least one of whom is played by Daheim) at gunpoint, and acts like he’s about to shoot them. He fires in the air, and they flee.

Back in town, the mob leader Simm tells the sheriff that he’s fired and is putting together a posse to hunt Ames and the Ranger. Of course, he’s in cahoots with the brothers, and they’ve been spooked enough to come to meet him. They verbalize their whole history of crimes while the sheriff sits outside the window. The brothers turn on Simm by slapping him around a lot, then the Ranger comes in to punch everybody out. And with that, justice has been restored!

What I thought: Once again, The Lone Ranger deals with its almost obsessive themes of the law and mistaken identity. Once again, we have a character who is being framed for another’s crime, and again we see the Ranger in an investigatory role, helping to expose the true evildoer to a friendly law enforcement official.

And yet there is a bit of uneasiness in this particular iteration of the plot. The inciting incident is a failure of state justice: the wrongful imprisonment of John Ames. The sheriff, while still portrayed mostly positively, is shown to be easily influenced by the crowd. The episode even portrays the tough-on-crime mentality represented by the lynch mob as an obstacle to justice and not a means to it. Okay, it’s not exactly Rectify but it’s an interesting idea to put forward on a kid’s show.

Kellogg actually has some screen presence, but it appears he was already on the downslope of his career.

Of course, this only goes so far, which is not very far at all. Even though the legal system has given us no reason to trust it, the Ranger still hands over the real bad guys to the sheriff at the end. (We at least get an actual action scene at the climax this time, even if it’s not a long or interesting one.) In the end, the blame lies at the feet of specific individuals engaged in a conspiracy, not any kind of institutional failure.

This tension is indicative of American popular culture. Television as a whole is full of heroic police and prosecutors, with the police procedural being the dominant dramatic genre for at least two decades. At the same time, American media is full of stories about wrongly-accused men, heroic outlaws, and rebels who may or may not have the cause. The rule of law, it would seem, is best used to keep everyone else in line — you yourself have good reasons for your rebellion.

The plot point of mistaken identity is also one which the series has already returned to over and over again. This is characteristic of superhero stories, which The Lone Ranger is essentially a predecessor to. There must be a dozen stories in the early years of Marvel alone where some villain impersonates the heroes and ruins their good name. This series hasn’t used that particular plot yet, although I would bet on it occurring somewhere in the remaining 250 (yikes) episodes.

But even the repeated plots of other people being wrongly accused reflect an anxiety of the masked-vigilante genre — that the good guy’s actions are not that easily distinguishable from the villainy of the bad guys. This is the anxiety that also pushes the antagonists towards being mustache-twirling caricatures. Ironically, it is this insecurity about identity that makes the genre so distinctive.

Coming up next: A different kind of kid’s show, withKukla, Fran and Ollie.