I've been cranky in today's posts, haven't I? But I do still have a heart, the cockles of which remain capable fo being warmed, as they were by Mason Currey's tender and uproarious reminiscences of watching Walker, Texas Ranger with his father. Now, I know I normally talk about things like this in the context of how I missed out on them and discovered them years after everyone else. But one of the only television shows I watched growing up was Early Edition (I really need to get my hands on those DVDs). And Walker, Texas Ranger ran adjacent to it, so I ended up catching a fair amount of Chuck Norris proving, as Currey puts it, that "Precision karate kicks are, apparently, the primary means of law enforcement in Texas." I can't remember, exactly, what I thought about the show--I was was more interested in the adorableness that was Kyle Chandler, and his relationship with a clever reporter with lots and lots of red hair. I'd like to think that I recognized that Walker was ridiculous at the time, and that it fostered a deep and cheesy appreciation for on-screen absurdity. But I think I was so far removed from understanding even the most basic formulas of cop shows and procedurals in general, that I couldn't see how Walker diverged from them.
Rather, I think Walker was one of the first things that helped ingrain a sense of ridiculousness as the default in me. I like straight action movies, sure, but I kind of appreciate the absurdity that Starship Troopers wore on its sleeve. I like trash, especially when it's winkingly self-aware. It's my own version of Emily Dickinson's admonishment to "tell all the truth but tell it slant." I like culture that doesn't just capture the weirdness of the world, but that magnifies it. Norris' discomfort, lack of actual acting skills, and reliance on the martial arts stuff, and the fact that folks took this entirely seriously while it was airing for a long time, seem like a perfect example of that sublime oddity.