Kung Fu The Television Show!

Kung Fu the television show was a cultural event of no small significance. It featured an Asian character as the focus of a story, albeit that character was played by a white actor David Carradine. It broke the mold, to some extent, of the worldviews which predominated the TV airwaves and allowed actual philosophy of nonviolence to seep into the broader culture, ableit that the lead character got into a fight every week. There are a number of contradictions which inform the show, a show which began with great glory in an exceedingly strong TV movie and shifted into a reasonably strong first season. Alas the show would continue to weaken throughout its three year run.

The first year of Kung Fu is truly amazing to watch. In the long tradition of TV, we have a peripatetic hero who finds folks in trouble and helps. He is motivated by his own need to find his brother as he roams the historical western landscape of the United States, a land rife with racism as it has always been. He encounters all manner of threats, some which follow him from China as his crime of murder creates trouble for him here. Kwai Chang Caine as played by Carradine in the first year is almost mute, talking rarely and in a whisper as he attempts to live his life, find his relatives, and help folks who come into his ken. He ends up in jail nearly every other episode, but as we learn is hardly ever confined by the people who constantly underestimate him. The characterization of the folks he meets in the first season is especially strong and memorable. Especially memorable (and key in my mind to the success of the show) are the characters of Master Kan (Phillip Ahn) and Master Po (Keye Luke). These old wise men make the show resonate with a quiet dignity which was and still is uncommon in television.

In the second year Caine loses of his reality, becoming more of a traditional hero and a wee bit more proactive in his choices. One affectation of the role was that Carradine allowed his hair to grow throughout his time as Caine and in the second season we see it hanging in his eyes with regularity as his costume is refined. Gone are the hat and shoes which grounded in reality to a greater degree and more prominent is the flute which proves often a bit annoying. His goals are left unmentioned and his flight as a fugitive gets little mention in the season, almost as if the creators want to move beyond the details of his origin.

The third year of Kung Fu is well and truly a rolling disaster. Carradine's control of the show's details grows and almost all of the choices he seems to make are ones which make the character more of a superhero and less of a real man. He adopts a costume which is remarkable in its lack of practicality and he travels across the western lands with only a single pouch, which like Batman's utility belt has just what is needed in any particular episode. His fugitive past comes into focus and he does find his brother at long last in a series of episodes which are peculiar and ultimately unsatisfying. Carradine also directs some episodes, some of which violate the long-standing structure of the show and are set in China before Caine's odyssey to the U.S. The amateurish nature of some of the production is stunning. The show seems to slowly but steadily running out of gas and in the final episode, contrary to all previous ones, Caine is not seen in the final scene. It's weird but so was this show, one which started with grand promise and ended with bizarre miscues.

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