YMMV / Walker, Texas Ranger

• Angst? What Angst?: Whatever trauma Alex is put through, she's always over it by the end of the episode. You would think someone who's been kidnapped, almost raped, and almost killed as many times as she has would have a therapist on speed dial.
• Anvilicious: We get it. Criminals are scum. That's no excuse for thinking we won't know it unless they are utter bastards or at least Kick the Dog in every other scene.
• Ass Pull: "Blood Diamonds" to a T. Not only is the plot wildly over the top (in an ultra-campy series, no less!), but in the opening minutes of the episode, we see Trivette has been hanged and Walker is desperately running away from crooks critically wounded. Then, in the ending minutes, Walker is gunned down by automatic weapons all around and tumbles off a storehouse roof. And then the episode smash cuts to Alex waking up in bed. Fortunately, the episode gives us an ominous twist by revealing Walker is about to undertake the investigation that leads to the events of her dream... Alex freaks.
• Awesome Music:
  • The theme song. And yes, Chuck Norris himself is the one singing.
  • Not the first Theme Song the show had; the original was a rather forgettable steel guitar solo, which was replaced by a more rockish tune, which was replaced by "Eyes of the Ranger". This list might not be conclusive.
• Catharsis Factor: Every Villain of the Week is an arrogant Hate Sink or an absolute monster (or both) who get their kicks committing heinous crimes and stomping helpless people underfoot, for money, power, or just for their own cruel amusement. Seeing these tormentors becoming the tormented at the hands of Walker and his group becomes satisfying. The most satisfying was against LaRue who, after three appearances of tormenting Alex and taunting Walker about how superior he believes himself to be, Walker finally just straight up kills the bastard in Tranquil Fury by shooting him, completely skipping any ass-kicking since it didn't stick. The bastard was Stupid Evil enough to press Walker's Buttons repeatedly, and this level of stupidity can only be cured with death to get the message across.
• Complete Monster:
  • "Cowboy", "The Return of LaRue", & "Trial of LaRue": Victor LaRue is a psychopath who was dishonorably discharged from the military and who kidnaps and kills others seemingly at random. When he captured Alexander "Alex" Cahill, amongst other hostages, he attempted to rape her. When he is released from prison, he begins stalking Alex to drive her insane and leaves his two guards to burn to death, before again attempting to rape Alex. At his trial, LaRue feigns insanity while implying he may have killed his mother. He then uses his military training, he gets a gun at his trial and murders several people—including his own lawyer and the judge—before taking the courtroom hostage. While waiting for Walker to arrive, LaRue presides over the court as a "judge". In his insane whims, he orders a divorced couple to get back together for their child, but when the child contradicts LaRue, he decides to "reopen" the hearing, planning to murder the kid and killing his other ally when the man is disgusted by this. Finally, LaRue attempts to rape Alex for the third time before Walker busts in and guns him down.
  • "The Day of Cleansing": Cliff Eagleton, debuting in the Martial Law episode "Honor Among Strangers", is a white supremacist encountered by Sammo Law and Cordell Walker. Having murdered a Texas Ranger, Eagleton sets up shop in Los Angeles where he proceeds to attempt to hijack a set of stinger missiles to bomb LA in order to remove "foreign" businesses. After being thwarted, he returns to Texas in part 2 of this crossover to initiate "The Cleansing", taking a group of trucks loaded with enough explosives to make the Oklahoma City bombing look tame, before driving them to foreign business centers and black churches, before detonating them all over the city in order to subjugate minorities and show them their "proper" place.
• Damsel Scrappy: It seems like not one episode can go by without Alex screaming "WALKER!" while being kidnapped.
  • One would expect that with all the time Alex spent with Walker she would take some self-defense lessons or take a few levels of badass.
  • She almost got Seasonal Rot with this one— a first-season episode has her successfully fighting off a rapist, while in later seasons she never even makes an attempt to fight back.
    • One could say that it's just a case of Flanderization on Alex's part. In the earlier seasons she was presented as a strong and competent D.A yet in later seasons she has to constantly depend on Walker to get her out of a jam.
  • Alex did get her one Moment of Awesome when she and a group of women from a women's support group helped a woman from her violent husband by beating the crap out of them. And for once Walker didn't help her in that!!!
• Designated Hero: In Real Life, about half the things that Walker and company do would get them in serious trouble. The cops have beaten the crap out of various villains at the slightest provocation, and Alex has repeatedly flat out lied to criminals—"If you talk to a lawyer, all chances of a deal are off." This is always portrayed as the absolutely right thing to do and the team made out to be saints.
• Fanon Discontinuity: Most fans reaction to the "Trial By Fire" movie, given the rampant differences from the series, and the Bolivian Army Ending in which Alex is shot and possibly killed.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • An episode featured an Arab terrorist purchasing a sonic laser ... intending to destroy the Capitol building with it, and, he says, "maybe the White House too". The episode aired in the spring of 2000, a year and a half before the events of September 11 and one of those buildings (to this day, reports vary on which) was almost certainly the target of the fourth plane.
  • The season five episode "Plague" has a group of Corrupt Corporate Executives distributing a vitamin supplement for the cows to eat on an Native American reserve. This is despite previous attempts at testing profit boosting drugs on live communities ended horribly in Uganda. The local shaman comes off as the Only Sane Man when he widely disapproves of the supplement being introduced into the reserve's farms until the milk got poisoned. Fast forward a decade later and many Americans are complaining about similar methods of vitamin and steroid boosted animals affecting our food supply to negative effect (though thankfully, not nearly as lethal as this episode).
  • The most notable instance of this, however, is with the episode "Trial of LaRue", where LaRue, on trial for rape, steals the gun of a courtroom bailiff and murders several people in court. Fast forward to 2005, where in real life accused rapist Brian Nichols steals the gun of the officer assigned to escort him, and kills several people in the courtroom before making an escape attempt.
    • This was most likely inspired by the case of George Lott, an attorney who shot up a Tarrant County courthouse in 1992 after a messy divorce, killing two people. He waived all of his appeals and was executed just 18 months later, the speediest execution in modern Texas history.
  • Season 8's "Rise to the Occasion" has a gang member named Billy whose bullying drove a middle schooler to suicide becomes this when Billy's actor, Mark Salling, took his own life in 2018 after being convicted of possession of child pornography but before he could be sentenced for his crimes.
  • The 2001 episode "Division Street" has Hulk Hogan play an ex-con who hated all non-whites prior to his Heel–Faith Turn becomes this considering Hogan was effectively blacklisted from WWE as a result of audio of Hogan making racist comments was leaked to the media in July 2015.
  • The subplot of the 2001 episode "Unsafe Speed" had Trivette busting a corrupt DPS employee at a Driver License Division office for illegally issuing commercial licenses after one trucker (unqualified due to too many traffic violations and minor drug convictions) killed a family while high on crystal meth, which alerted the Rangers to a meth lab run by bikers. 18 years later, a corrupt DPS employee in San Antonio was busted for taking bribes in order to issue commercial licenses.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the episode with Haley Joel Osment, when Walker talks to him about spirits, Haley replies "You mean like ghosts and stuff?" This episode aired two years before Haley saw dead people. In the same episode, Osment's character is named Lucas Simms.
  • Trial by Fire features a criminal whose last name is Gibbs. By this time, NCIS, which features one Leroy Jethro Gibbs, who pursues criminals, was beginning its third season.
  • The script for "Plague" is credited to a Ron Swanson! Interestingly, Swanson's IMDb page only lists Norris-adjacent projects.
• Ho Yay: In "Mind Games," Walker and Trivette respond to Alex claiming Walker has two left feet and Josie claiming Trivette has two right feet by deciding that means they should dance with each other.
• Jerks Are Worse Than Villains: This show would feature a villain or a gang of the week, who are just here to be irremediably hateable, so that when they get beat up by Walker and/or Trivette, the audience would enjoy their comeuppance. However, there are some characters that aren't the main focus of an episode and yet they can be just as unpleasant as the antagonists. For example, we have a young boxer's father, who was responsible for killing himself and his caring wife in a drunk driving car accident and yet he is more unlikable for being an abusive douchebag, than the drug dealers of the episode who are selling counterfeit ecstasy. There was another episode where a mob tried to lynch a mentally disabled man because he was accused of murdering an elderly woman. Walker was able to bring the real killer to justice, but that didn't absolve how callous everyone else was. Even Walker was disgusted with how they were all so quick to murder a man without due process, that he called them out on this.
• Memetic Badass: See Chuck Norris Facts.
• Memetic Mutation: Many clips popularized by Conan, but most of all... "Walker told me I have AIDS."
• Moral Event Horizon: Most of the show's Villains of the Week tend to Kick the Dog half a dozen times before the episodes are over, but some villains really show their cruelty and cross the line.
• Narm:
  • In the "Lucas" two-parter: The villain growls at his wife: "You and your son will DIE." Meant to be scary, but comes across as hilarious due to the overacting.
  • The numerous "Alex In Danger" plots started to get this by the tenth (that's not an exaggeration) or so time it happened. As a commentator on another board snarked, "When they brought on Nia Peeples character, I thought, "This is great! Now at least Alex will have some company the next time she's kidnapped!"" And sure enough, that's exactly what happened.
  • Any episode featuring Irish people are so full of stereotypes that any seriousness is quickly eliminated—just try not snickering when a leukemia-stricken girl tells her blood marrow donor, "Thank you for saving me life."
    • In that same episode, the little girl is kidnapped. As the kidnappers are taking her from one hideout to another, Walker and company leap into the scene from out of nowhere and kick them down, while she just walks off like nothing happened.
• Narm Charm: Let's face it, the show is campy and ridiculous, but it wouldn't be nearly as entertaining if it wasn't.
• Retroactive Recognition: A two-fer. First, yes, that is a 13-year-old Mila Kunis as Pepper, one of the troubled kids the Rangers take to C.D.'s ranch in season 5's "Last Hope". Another of the kids, Lisa, is played by 16-year-old Ash Sroka (Tali'Zorah from the Mass Effect franchise), in one of her early - and rare - live-action roles.
  • A young Cherami Leigh, best known for her roles in anime such as Lucy Heartfilia in Fairy Tail, appeared twice in the series in two different roles – as Sally in “A Ranger Christmas” and as Amelia Allen in “Safe House.”
  • Another episode, “Saturday Night”, has Laura Bailey, just around the start of her voice-acting career, in a minor role as Roberta, the daughter of a club owner (played by Frank Stallone Jr.) who has ties to the mafia.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • The surreal lightning strikes in the episode where Walker is sent back in time to the Old West are very crude and blocky.
  • The close-up of the warplane's gun turrets opening fire on Walker and Alex's plane at the cliffhanger of "In Harm's Way, Part 1". It is painfully obvious that they are using either an enlarged photo or a still frame of the turrets and airbrushing some cheap gunfire muzzle flashpoint effects onto the turrets- without wasting any money on anything resembling ammo. JAG fell victim to similar treatment throughout its run with plane action sequences, as it was also airing at the time on CBS with the occasional ill effects of a slashed budget.
  • All the Bullet Time scenes in "The Final Showdown" (a missile hitting a Huntsville Prison watchtower, a bullet felling a Texas Ranger, Walker's bullet hitting Lavocat's gun scope) because they were made with crude CGI effects from the time, which may have looked good back then, but stick out like a sore thumb now. Plus, the finale aired around the time The Matrix had just debuted in theaters and people were trying to play copycat all over.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Buzz, the computer hacker seen in the four-parter at the start of season 8. She could've easily become part of the team and helped them on other cases, but after she's granted a full pardon for helping Walker and his team track down some computer terrorists, she's never seen again.
• What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: The show was sometimes seen as "family-friendly" and was popular with younger kids even though the show dealt with adult themes more often than not.

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