Good thing he can grow a beard, because Jared Padalecki is the new Walker, Texas Ranger

Jared Padalecki counted to infinity… twice. Also, Jared Padalecki can win a game of chess in only one move: a roundhouse kick to the face. Oh, and there’s no chin behind Jared Padalecki’s beard… just another fist. Alright, this is going to take some getting used to, but Deadline is reporting that Jared Padalecki from Supernatural and The Gilmore Girls has been tapped to star in a new reboot of Walker, Texas Ranger (taking over for former meme superstar Chuck Norris). The project is being developed by Valor’s Anna Fricke with Lethal Weapon’s Dan Lin and the aforementioned Padalecki as executive producers, and it’s being shopped around by CBS TV Studios. Deadline expects that it could land on The CW, Padalecki’s home for the past few decades, but it could also get picked up by CBS itself.

If it does get picked up by The CW, this could be a much younger-skewing, sexier version of the show than the original—which might be best known to modern TV viewers for the stupid, out-of-context clips that Conan O’Brien used to put on his show, but even that reference is pretty old at this point. Either way, the show will be about Padalecki as a man returning to his life as a super-cop in the Texas Rangers who always does what’s right. Also, the show is expected to be a total reboot of the original series, not a sequel with some direct connection to the original, so there’s no reason Chuck Norris has to be involved in this at all.

Assuming The CW gets this, how many episodes will they be able to do before giving Jensen Ackles some kind of self-referential cameo? Three?