Renegade – Season One

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Episodes: C+

 

 

Renegade may simply be the oddest action show Stephen J. Cannell will ever produce.  Launched in 1992 via syndication, it gave Lorenzo Lamas something more to do that follow in the romantic lead footsteps of his legendary father Fernando Lamas.  Buffing up, getting a Harley Davidson and being a sort of “bad boy” would mark the traits of his “different” character, a criminal who has escaped prison.  The show simply has a problem as to whether he is a hero or anti-hero.  In the storylines, he is the hero and Lorenzo never makes us believe otherwise, only one step away from a Halloween costume as an anti-hero.  With that said, it was enough to make it a surprise hit for a few seasons.  Women got to see more of him, and male viewers got to see him punch people several times a show.  The six DVDs, nicely boxed in three slender cases, are:

 

 

1)     Pilot

2)     The Hunting Accident

3)     Final Judgment

4)     La Mala Sombra (The Evil Shadow)

5)     Mother Courage

6)     Second Chance

7)     Eye Of The Storm

8)     Payback

9)     The Talisman

10)  Partners

11)  Lyon’s Roar

12)  Val’s Song

13)  Give & Take

14)  Samurai

15)  Two Renos

16)  Billy

17)  The Hot Trip

18)  Headcase

19)  Moody River

20)  Vanished

21)  Fighting Cage (two shows in two parts)

 

 

To add to the oddity of the show and its hour-long commercially-slotted episodes, the series wants to conjure the Western in sly ways and feels like a holdover from the 1980s, though the sensitive anti-hero (an oxymoron that never becomes a paradox) feels more like a relic or time capsule from the first brief Bush presidency.  They have a Native American friend Bobby (Branscombe Richmond) whose main purpose is to add faint elements of The Lone Ranger in some (again) unusual updated revision.  With all this, the show touched on enough elements that had not been dealt with in a long time (The Legend Of The Lone Ranger feature film in 1981 bombed, despite some interesting elements) and the show filled in the gap temporarily.  It may also have happened because of the surprise success of the original 1988 film Young Guns.  The Western had returned in a new cycle by the time it aired, so that helped.  Renegade is not for everyone, but fans of Lamas, the genres, those whose tough guys characters are always “frontin’” and the show itself might want to see it again just to see how it holds up.  For this critic, what little did work did not improve with age.

 

The full frame 1.33 X 1 image was shot on film and looks good for its age, especially with all the shows being shot digital and High Definition.  It is also from clean masters like all the Cannell shows have been since he has had the initiative to have Anchor Bay release them.  The Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo has no Pro Logic action, but is clean for an older TV production as TV went stereo.  The only extras are 98 minutes worth of interviews with Cannell and the cast, taped recently, split into six sections.  They are informative, though they do not often realize just exactly how this show worked, but they are happy they had a hit.  Fans will be happy enough.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo