Walker drops the conservatism of Walker, Texas Ranger, but it ends up being a blank slate

The A.V. Club

At least the original Chuck Norris version had a personality, says Roxana Hadadi. "One hour into The CW’s reboot of the show, which has dropped Texas Ranger from the name and incorporated numerous other members of the Walker family into its narrative, Jared Padalecki’s Cordell Walker is still a curiously blank void. Walker has updated this character for our times—he’s not casually making gender- or race-based jokes anymore, which hey, I appreciate!—but it hasn’t really replaced those qualities with anything else. Walker is Anguished, and Walker is Committed to the Job, and that’s about it. What is Walker like? His interests? His passions? His disappointments? Anything about his life that isn’t related to his career, or to his dead wife? We have no idea. I suppose that gives Walker room to grow in upcoming episodes, but for now, he’s a Raylan Givens facsimile with extremely sanded-down edges." ALSO: Walker is so different from the original you wonder why they bothered.