Yesterday, while watching Amazon Prime, I came across the Lone Ranger TV series. I originally watched these as Saturday afternoon reruns since the original show aired before I was born, but I remembered really enjoying them when they were on.

So I grabbed a cup of coffee and a couple of Pepperidge Farm Double Chocolate Nantucket’s, plopped my backside on the couch, and watched season 1, episode 1 of The Lone Ranger. It was the origin story, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It’s a multi-part story, so there’s more to come, but what I saw was even better than what I remember watching when I was a child. While it wasn’t an adult show, it wasn’t really a kids’ show either. I think that anyone of any age could be entertained by it. I’ll probably watch the second episode this afternoon and look forward to watching the whole series over the next few months.

Watching the first episode brought back memories of what happened to Clayton Moore back in the 70’s.

Moore was the actor who played the Lone Ranger on the TV series, which ran from 1949 to 1957. The show had been off for around twenty years, and Moore, who was in his sixties, apparently wasn’t doing well financially. Unlike today, early TV shows did not pay residuals, and actors and actresses were often paid little for their work. To supplement his income, Moore would put on a black mask, a fake six-shooter, and make appearances at rodeos, home shows, and anywhere else he could find work. He had done this for a number of years, and I remember seeing pictures of him at some of the appearances. The pictures were kind of sad. He was a little old man in a costume, looking like a feeble version of the character he once played, but people loved it and got to see the hero they grew up with.

Along the way, the studio, Wrather Corporation, got wind of what was going on and, in 1979, obtained a court order prohibiting Moore from wearing the costume and appearing in public as the Lone Ranger. They claimed they were planning a Lone Ranger movie and feared that Moore in costume would tarnish the brand. To get around this, Moore substituted dark sunglasses for the black mask and, I imagine, the appearances were probably advertised as ‘Meet Clayton Moore, the man who played the Lone Ranger’ rather than just saying it was an appearance by the Lone Ranger. The lawsuit lasted 5 years, and Moore fought it all the way, refusing to give up. Simultaneously, the Wrather Corporation’s movie ‘The Legend of the Lone Ranger’ was released and was a box-office bomb, possibly in part because fans knew how Moore had been treated by them and refused to support it. Anyway, between the movie flopping and negative publicity surrounding Wrather Corporation, they finally decided to drop the lawsuit, and Moore went on to make appearances as the Lone Ranger until his death in 1999.

Good versus evil, and the good guy won, just like in the old TV shows. I like it that way.

As a setup for this, they have their friends Charley Halper (Sid Melton) and his wife Bunny (Pat Carroll) babysitting the kids, so the stories mostly involve the two of them and the kids. A lot of the stories are decent, and Melton and Carroll do a good job filling in, but a lot of the stories are pretty bad. From what I can see, most of the original writers have moved on, which often happens when a show is close to ending because the writers want to beat the rush and land new jobs before they’re unemployed. This leaves a show in the hands of inexperienced writers or writers that are not top tier, which results in some pretty bad scripts. It also doesn’t help that after 10 seasons, most everything has been done already, and there’s not a lot of areas left to explore.

The show that I watched today was called ‘Tonoose Needs Glasses’. In it, Danny’s uncle Tonoose, played by Hans Conried, finds out he needs glasses but doesn’t want to get them because he feels it’s an indication of him getting old and feeble. Charley, Bunny and the kids decide that they must convince him to get glasses, and they do so by staging fake events that make it look like Tonoose is not seeing well. Where the script really fails is with the events. Rusty wears a tie that pops up, Charley wears a bow tie that flashes, Bunny wears a Groucho Marx nose, and Linda has a flower on her dress that switches back and forth between the left and right sides. Somehow, this convinces Tonoose that his eyesight is bad, and he goes into a state of depression and starts acting like an old, worn-out man. The reason this doesn’t work is because in real life, nobody would believe it, yet the lazy writers don’t care and go with it anyway. This type of episode is an insult to the intelligence of the viewers and yet is fairly common on TV. It’s too bad, when a show has run its course, it’s time to get off the stage.

I’ve still enjoyed most of ‘The Danny Thomas Show’ and it’s worth watching but just be aware that towards the end, the quality does suffer.

My wife and I started watching ‘According to Jim’ a little over a year ago. She bailed out after about ten episodes because she found the title character so repulsive. She had a point. Jim, the lead character, is an obnoxious, spoiled brat who’s loud, overbearing, egotistical, and always needs to get his way. However, he’s also very funny, which is why I stuck with the show to the end.

The show revolves around Jim, his wife Cheryl, their two, three, five kids (depending on which season you’re watching), and his brother-in-law Andy and sister-in-law Dana.

Cheryl, the wife who is out of his league, puts up with just about everything Jim does because, even though he’s obnoxious, she loves him dearly. Dana, the sister-in-law, is not a big fan and is constantly trading barbs with Jim, although in one very funny episode, we find out she’s having sex dreams about Jim. Finally, Andy, Jim’s brother-in-law, is his sidekick and best friend throughout all his antics.

Every episode pretty much has the same plot: Jim, with Andy’s assistance, does something selfish, stupid or crazy, Cheryl gets angry with him about it, but eventually she realizes she loves him even though he’s a horse’s ass. It sounds boring and repetitive, but because of the great scripts and comedic talents of the actors it isn’t.

While the whole cast does a great job, Jim Belushi and Larry Joe Campbell are standouts. They’re funny and will do anything for a laugh. A lot of the episodes involved physical stunts, and both men, although very large, do a great job pulling them off.

I really recommend this show, but like the ‘Three Stooges’, it’s probably more for men than for women. It’s also not a good show to binge-watch. The characters are funny but can be grating, and watching them one after another, for a lot of people, could be stressful. So watch it, enjoy it, but take your time with it.