The Lone Ranger

There was a time, from my childhood up until the mid-1980's, when shows such as the Lone Ranger and The Little Rascals filled week-day afternoon and Saturday morning TV slots. Old movies could be readily found on TV late at night and on Sunday afternoons. Ever since TV stations began filling every extra additional minute with infomercials and their own first-run productions and reality shows, as well as the beginning of the continuous news cycle, these old classics have not seen the light of day. This shows early years are on DVD, and if you ever get the chance to view the show, do understand that the TV show, at least at first, borrowed heavily from its radio roots.

Also note that some of the first episodes are very short - in some cases only 11 or 12 minutes long. That is because sometimes the sponsor would put two short serials in the same half hour slot. The time really belonged to the sponsor back in those days, and thus early TV schedules looked a lot like radio at first.

One of my favorite episodes was "The Silent Voice" towards the end of season two. The witness to a crime is a stroke victim who is completely paralyzed. The Lone Ranger comes up with a way for the woman to communicate by blinking in response to letters of the alphabet.

The other episode from this early part of the series that sticks out is one in which the wife in a husband/wife crime team betrays the husband and shoots him. He is presumed dead and taken to the undertaker's. The Lone Ranger discovers that the husband is not dead, and the husband makes a confession as to what is going on before he dies as he lies on a slab about to buried - alive. The Lone Ranger tricks the wife by claiming that her husband is still alive. That's what I liked about the Lone Ranger - it really could be very dark. There would always be the happy ending with the criminals rounded up and jailed, but that didn't mean that some good people didn't fall along the way or that something really creepy or cringe-worthy wasn't part of the plot.

Highly recommended if you ever get the chance.