Recap / Walker Texas Ranger S6E5 "Forgotten People"

Forgotten People is the 5th episode of the 6th Season of Walker, Texas Ranger. It aired October 25, 1997.

Joshua Patrick Leonard, an old friend of Trivette's staying at a nursing home called Quiet Rest, mysteriously turns up dead when trying to tell him what was going on there, apparently under the guise of a heart attack, but an autopsy reveals he was murdered due to what's really going on at the home: its corrupt director and her team of rogue doctors and ex-con orderlies are using elderly patients as guinea pigs for their illegal experiments in the hopes of putting variations of an outlawed Alzheimer's drug, known as PSL-130, on the market, and nine patients had died as a result of those experiments. C.D., a retired Ranger, is sent in undercover as a patient to prove this, meeting a new friend who is undercover there for the same reason, while Walker, Trivette and Alex try to secure a search warrant by exhuming the bodies of the patients and having them autopsied in the hopes of finding traces of the illegal drug.

Teleplay by Mick Curran; Story by Mick Curran and Mitchell Schneider
Directed by Tony Mordente

Tropes seen in this episode:

• Anyone Can Die: Our body count is a downright terrifying and tearjerking example since this episode takes place in an evil nursing home, with a death cart lurking around at night, either loaded with deadly drugs for its residents or a patient strapped onto a gurney being led into the laboratory, and it has the patients terrified they will be experimented on next. Our body count is as follows:
  • The first victim shown in the episode was the ninth patient that died due to the experiments.
  • Next in line is Joshua Patrick Leonard after the orderlies find his tape recorder explaining everything before he could give it to Trivette, under the guise of a heart attack through an acute anxiety attack, but an autopsy proves otherwise, showing he died of an embolism (an air bubble that entered his bloodstream and found its way into his heart), which also uncovered the traces of PSL-130. Josh's death, plus Fisher's rude behavior towards Trivette during his visit, is what triggers the episode's plot.
  • The evening after C.D. is admitted, another patient, Samuel Wilson tries to escape the nursing home and ask for help from people about to board a bus across the street, but he is too exhausted to make sense. Derrick and Fisher catch him and take him back into the home so he can face the same fate as Josh. To make this episode all the more nightmarish and tearjerking, the next morning afterwards, we see Wilson's corpse in Quiet Rest's morgue.
  • Mr. Collinswood becomes the tenth patient to be tested in the experiments, though not before C.D. has a nightmare that Fisher and Derrick are giving him the lethal drugs they gave Josh and Wilson that evening after stealing the keys for the testing room.
• Battleaxe Nurse / Orderlies are Creeps: Easier said than done, as those at Quiet Rest are all ex-cons!
• Big Bad Ensemble: Dr. Janet Monroe, Dr. John Daniels and their team of rogue doctors and nurses and ex-con orderlies.
• Bleak Abyss Retirement Home: Quiet Rest is most definitely this.
• Blind Without 'Em: When CD sees a staff member of the home leave behind a set of keys, obviously leading to the testing room, Head Orderly Derrick takes note of this, only for Maisie to distract him and Fisher. In doing so, she steals Fisher's glasses, and CD was able to snatch the keys. Fisher and Derrick are less concerned about those keys when they confront Maisie in CD's room, demanding that she return his glasses. In addition, chances are, after CD snatches the keys, they might change the locks before he could use them.
• Brick Joke: "Just dancing", Maisie has to say when she's somewhere she's not supposed to be in the nursing home, but she masqueraded as a Cloudcuckoolander during her time undercover. She and C.D. finish the episode with a dance after Monroe and Daniels are locked up.
• Catapult Nightmare / Nightmare Sequence: After stealing the keys for the testing room, C.D. is still worried Derrick and Fisher would come after him for doing so and has a nightmare he will be killed by the doctors, to which he blurts out "I'm a Texas Ranger!". He wakes up after the fatal injection in his nightmare then goes to see who Monroe and Daniels are experimenting on next. Mr. Collinswood is the next victim when he takes a peek into his room.
• Chekhov's Gun: The bible Walker and Alex give C.D. when they get him admitted into Quiet Rest, which is outfitted with a transmitter hidden in its binding that will transmit a signal to Walker's pager. If at any time the doctors are about to experiment on him or kill him if they catch him either escaping the facility or looting the testing room, C.D. has to press "Holy" on the bible, which will send a signal to alert Walker, upon which he and Trivette will come running. When Head Orderly Derrick and Fisher catch C.D. and Maisie looting the testing room shortly after Walker and Trivette obtain a search warrant into the nursing home after the bodies of the nine patients who died there are exhumed and autopsied, whereupon traces of the illegal drug they were using were found, C.D. does just that!
  Fisher: Hey, old man. What you doing, huh?
  C.D.: I'm looking for ice cream! I like ice cream every night! I like ice cream! I scream, you scream, everybody screams! (punches Fisher, then alerts Walker and Trivette with the Bible)
• Cloudcuckoolander: Both Maisie and C.D. have to assume this cover while both are undercover at Quiet Rest.
• Designated Girl Fight: Maisie to Dr. Monroe during the final fight scene. After taking out Dr. Daniels and Orderly Fisher after she and C.D. are caught looting the testing room, upon which the latter alerts Walker and Trivette they're about to be murdered, she has to fight Dr. Monroe while Walker and Trivette deal with her orderlies and takes her out with one punch!
• Destroy the Evidence: Walker and Trivette are alerted via CD's bible that Monroe and Daniels are going to murder him and Maisie. The moment they arrive at Quiet Rest to save them, Monroe demands that Derrick get the other orderlies to hold off the two Rangers and Daniels give CD and Maisie the fatal needles while she frantically shreds the experiment records. Luckily, some pieces of evidence survived after Walker and Trivette beat up the orderlies and Maisie takes out Monroe after she and CD escape before the fatal drugs are administered.
• Elder Abuse / Would Harm a Senior: The premise of the episode. Easier said than done, as they are being used for illegal experiments during their stay at Quiet Rest, especially when the doctors have ex-cons hired as orderlies to do their dirty work.
• Get Out!: During the final fight scene, while Monroe is shredding the experiment records in her office after Walker and Trivette arrive and clobber the orderlies, this exchange occurs between her and Maisie after she and C.D. escaped the testing room after neutralizing Daniels and Fisher:
  Monroe: What are you doing here?
  Maisie: Just dancing.
  Monroe: Well, get out!
  (Beat)
  Maisie: I think not! (punches out Monroe)
• Girl of the Week:
  • Paula Leonard to Trivette. The murder of her father, Trivette's old friend from the Dallas Cowboys, Joshua Patrick Leonard, is what sets off the investigation into Quiet Rest.
  • Maisie Whitman to C.D., both of whom going undercover at Quiet Rest to expose Monroe's experiments after the former's best friend, Helen Sawyer, died due to the experiments, and for the latter, an old friend of Trivette's dying while trying to expose Monroe.
• Got Volunteered: C.D. knows straight up what Quiet Rest is doing after an autopsy revealed the real cause of Josh's death and when Walker and Trivette open an investigation into the nursing home and ask C.D. to go undercover there, he is reluctant, at first, but decided to go along with a gag.
• He Knows Too Much / Leave No Witnesses: Residents of Quiet Rest stay, but they never leave, lest they turn up dead trying to escape or trying to tell an outside source of what's really going on within its walls. However, C.D. is an undercover (retired) Texas Ranger and he has backup...
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Quiet Rest may seem like a picturesque nursing home, but don't be fooled with what goes on within its walls! Many of its patients have been dying at an alarming rate. Nine patients total since the start of the episode have died, and according to a check on senior care facilities Walker ran for the last three years, their death rate ranks 27% higher than any other comparable senior care facility.
• The Infiltration: The premise of the episode involves C.D. going undercover as an Alzheimer's patient at a nursing home that turns out to be a front for an illegal drug-testing facility.
• Just in Time: Walker and Trivette are alerted via C.D.'s Bible that Monroe is going to murder him and Maisie after Derrick and Fisher catch them looting the testing room (due to them entering C.D.'s room so they can test him next), and as Monroe and Daniels prepare the lethal drugs previously used on Josh and Wilson while CD stalls them for the two, cue the Fight Scene outside the testing room! When the other patients and nurses hear the commotion, the patients cheer on the two Rangers with one of the nurses looking on helplessly watching the orderlies get pulverized.
• Kidnapped for Experimentation: Subverted. Patients are being experimented, but they're being admitted into the nursing home, and the doctors are lying to their families of what's really going on.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Ranging from the drugs themselves, the leftover experiment records that weren't shredded during the final fight scene, the autopsies of the nine patients who died since the start of the episode (ten if you count Josh) and the testimonies of the other patients, Walker, Trivette, C.D. and Alex have a sufficient amount of evidence to convict Monroe and Daniels and send them to prison while their ex-con staff members are sent back to prison.
• Lazy Alias: Walker and Alex's cover while they get C.D. admitted into Quiet Rest is an expecting couple under the names of Paul and Norma Hayes, and C.D. is playing the role of Alex/Norma's grumpy father, Rex Carlton. It's not until Maisie tells C.D. she is also undercover does he tell her who he really is, and it's also not before the two are caught looting the testing room does he tell Monroe, Daniels, Derrick and Fisher who he really is while stalling them after alerting Walker and Trivette.
• Let's Get Dangerous! / Never Mess with Granny: Maisie's reason for being undercover at Quiet Rest is the same reason as the Rangers': a friend mysteriously died due to Monroe and Daniels' evil experiments. She may be elderly, but in a way, she's one senior citizen next to C.D. not to be messed with, also knowing a thing or two about self-defense when she confronts Monroe in her office during the final fight and takes her down with one punch.
• MacGuffin: PSL-130, an experimental Alzheimer's drug used as a counteragent against the disease. Patients using it were showing signs of improvement, but was later banned by the FDA due to the devastating side effects it has, ranging from significantly high rates of strokes and heart attacks to unexplained seizures. Using a nursing home like Quiet Rest is the perfect cover for Monroe and Daniels to conduct their experiments of getting variations of this illegal drug out on the market. After Monroe and Daniels murdered Josh and Trivette requested an autopsy, Daniels was worried a sample of the drug would show up during the autopsy, but Monroe hoped it wouldn't prove a thing; she was dead wrong, ultimately triggering the investigation into the nursing home. After Walker and Alex get C.D. admitted into Quiet Rest so he can try to find any paperwork verifying their suspicion of their illegal testing or samples of the drug, five out of the nine families agreed to exhume the bodies while they and Trivette try to get court orders for the remaining four, and if traces are found of the drug in any of the patients, Walker and Trivette would be given probable cause for a search warrant. During the autopsies of those patients, the Medical Examiner finds traces of the drug in all of them, giving the two Rangers the warrant they need.
• Mad Doctor / Mad Scientist: Monroe and Daniels to a T!
• Noodle Incident: Maisie's reason for being undercover is that her best friend, Helen Sawyer, succumbed to the evil experiments by Monroe and Daniels 3 weeks after she was admitted into Quiet Rest. Helen may or may not be one of the nine patients whose bodies Walker, Trivette and Alex had exhumed and autopsied to find traces of the illegal drug the nursing home was using.
• Scatterbrained Senior:
  • Josh Leonard to a T. He asks Paula to bring Trivette to Quiet Rest, but he seemingly forgets, but remembers he had a tape recorder explaining everything. Josh can't find it, because the orderlies found it first! Cue Derrick and Fisher going to Josh's room to kill him that evening, followed by the show's opening credits!
  • Strongly averted with Maisie and C.D., as they have to maintain this cover while infiltrating Quiet Rest for the evidence needed to put Monroe and Daniels away.
• Shout-Out:
  • To Looney Tunes when Fisher is demanding that Maisie return his glasses after stealing them from him to distract him and Derrick so CD could grab the keys to the testing room:
    Fisher: Where are my glasses, you looney tunes old crazy?!
• Slasher Smile: Derrick and Fisher both sport one when wheeling out the death cart in the middle of the night, and whenever they give any patients who threaten to blow the whistle the lethal drugs, especially during CD's nightmare.
• Special Guest: Gail Strickland as Dr. Janet Monroe, Michael Krawic as Dr. John Daniels, Gwen Verdon as Maisie Whitman and Carlos Machado as a Quiet Rest Orderly.
• Tsundere: Maisie.
• Victim of the Week: Josh and Paula Leonard, Samuel Wilson, Mr. Collinswood and nine other experimented patients. Helen Sawyer may or may not have been one of those nine patients who succumbed to the lethal experiments.
• Wouldn't Hit a Girl: Played straight. The episode's lead villain is a woman, and since this episode takes place prior to a female Ranger joining the main cast, if a final fight is demanded, another woman has to do it. Doing the job is Maisie while Walker, Trivette and C.D. deal with Daniels and the orderlies.
• You Wouldn't Hit a Guy with Glasses: Orderly Fisher had this coming during the final fight, having been K.O.'d by C.D. along with Dr. Daniels while he and Maisie escape the testing room before they are to face the same fate as Josh, only to alert Walker and Trivette beforehand. At the end of the episode as a result, we see C.D. with his hand bandaged and complaining that he even had to get a tetanus shot.