Let's hope I can find a Lone Ranger anything I actually like. (Hope I don't jinx the 2013 Disney movie.)

Not familiar with Branded beyond the theme song. I own one of those old albums of TV themes.

Episode 2... okay...?

"badly-wounded"

Quoted Text full Captain[']s dress

I love the setup and the use of the original theme. You tell us everything we need to know on the first page. Nice.

Is Enduro a proper name? Should it be capitalized?

Quoted Text The motorcycle meanders through the high desert as [a] towering saguaro cactus speeds by.

Currently, the language is within the limits of network TV. But one "fuck" and it's a cable show. Then again. this is the same FCC that took away net neutrality.

Seems you're referring to the Battle of Kamdesh (October 3, 2009). Very contemporary twist on an old TV Western.

Is Yazzi pronounced "Yozzy" or "Yahtzee"?

Girl: "That's the cutest Tonto since Johnny Depp."

Now that I think about it, you should have capitalized BLACK LAB PUPPY'S face.

A brute showing his softer side? LOL. Love it.

"Nonetheless" is one word.

Quoted Text Trafficking. All sorts. Guns, drugs, people...shit, you name it.

Toeing the line into cable territory.

You told us what the acronym MRE stands for. Smart. I wish every script had done this. I still don't know what the hell MCU is in one of the Knight Rider scripts.

Quoted Text The sky is full of stars and there's a moon on the rise.

A bad one?

Quoted Text McCord pulls an old flip phone from his pocket

This is definitely not a Western anymore.

Quoted Text Captain McCord puts himself in harm[']s way as he runs across the yard from nest to nest to check on his men. He has an ammo box in one hand and his pistol in the other.

Wow. Some "coward"!

El Jeffe just became EL Jefe.

Wow. This was a great script. This could totally work in present times. I'd definitely pick this up as a series. And if you could use the original theme recording, great. Excellent job.

I'd never seen Branded, but I liked this story, at least as much of it was here.

My recommendation would be to tone down the Lone Ranger homages a lot. Maybe he identifies himself at the checkpoint as "The Lone Ranger" as a joke... but Tonto and Silver is too much.

Nitpick: It's traditional, though not required, to put a / between lyric lines, since screenplay format will never let you get the line breaks right otherwise.

More than a nitpick: I concur with those above, there's no indication of desertion or cowardice (two separate offenses under the Uniform Code of Military Justice) in the dream sequence. If he was drummed out for a completely fabricated reason, that needs to be made more clear. Hard to fabricate around battlefield injuries.

Back to nitpick: Not sure every reader will know what a double-tap is, but it's easy enough to find out.

Maybe nitpick, maybe future plot point: The firing seven shots trick won't work if anyone checks the firing pin marks on the slugs in the badguys (which is standard in officer-involved shootings). She might still get the public praise anyway, but the Powers That Be will know something else happened.

A very good, well-written entry entry.

So this is a mashup. Okay, why not? It's high concept, giving The Lone Ranger a deeper backstory by making him Branded.

This needed the extra pages. 8 or 9 more pages would have set things up better to tell us what this show is going to be about. Presumably, McCord and Yazzi are going off the reservation (pun intended) to go after the corrupt general without knowing who it is yet. Okay, but what does that look like?

Fully a third of the script is set at the checkpoint introducing characters. Too long for this. Maybe you thought you were going to reach the full page limit but ran out of time, I don't know, but that was time wasted.

Otherwise, the writing is quite good. The dialogue could use another pass but the action is clear and descriptive, and the climax is well executed. Overall, good job, but not quite a TV show yet.