Kung Fu

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Anyone else seen this old 70s show with David Carradine? A cross between a Western and Shaolin philosophy? I love it so much I bought it having sold it a few months back when needing money, lol.

I was just thinking about this show earlier today. Sometimes, I think about random things in a Wikipedia-article style (YKYLWTMW*), and Kung Fu came into my head: the overall premise, the "snatch the pebble from my hand" thing, and the scene at the end of every episode, where Caine would grab the cauldron of hot coals using his forearms. I haven't seen the show in decades, but there was an updated version of it in the 90s. Set in the present day, Carradine plays the great-grandson of the original Caine. In this show, Caine has a son who is a big-city cop (it was made in Canada, so the city is Toronto pretending to be an unnamed U.S. city). The shows does the same flashback thing as the original, but this time Caine is trying to instruct his son, Peter, about the Shaolin way. They get separated for some twenty years, but are reunited and fight crime together. Of course, this show suffers from the same problem most updated shows have: it sucked. I don't know if it was on TV where you're from, but the reruns can still be seen on cable here in Canada.


(*-You Know You Like Wikipedia Too Much When...)

Yes I used to absolutely love Kung Fu when I was little. And we are not alone I know alot of people like it. Liking it is considered very 'cool' and 'in' now.

In addition to its nostalgic value, Kung Fu is historically significant as the first American television show to present non-western traditional values in a positive light. To some degree, the Cain character, in his radical independence and individualism, can be seen as an extension of the tradtional American cowboy archetype. This perspective also aligns nicely with the show's wild-west setting, duh.

Still, this is the first show that I know of where the main charcter was openly non-christian, and each episode offered life lessons (in the flashbacks) from the priests at a heathen temple.

Hooray for Kung Fu!!

I'm old enough to remember the series when it was being originally broadcast. It's a classic!

Best show ever.

I will be sticking some on youtube possibly... I bought the second season yesterday. IT is classic, and I had a great interest in shaolin warriors when I first came across it... it always seems to be the way with me. I get an interest in something, then stumble across something connected to that interest in a store. So far, only seen seasons 1 and 2 here... forget how many were made.

Your avatar looks like a...grasshopper....

(Kidding, I know it's from Space Ghost. XD It was just an excuse to say the word "grasshopper" in this thread before anyone else did.)

I took a Kung Fu class last semester. It's hard stuff.