I vaguely remember KUNG FU freaking me out as a child. All those hushed tones, bald heads, and candles. I had nightmares about blind Master Po and his bleached out eyeballs.  And I could never follow a single storyline with all the seesawing between past and present.

Decades later, I'm still freaked out by KUNG FU – by its surface idealism and behind-the-scenes hypocrisy. From the DVD case: “He is a man of peace in a violent land. He is Kwai Chang Caine, schooled in the spirit-mind-body ways of the Shaolin priesthood by the blind, avuncular Master Po and the stern yet loving Master Kan. Caine speaks softly but hits hard. He lives humbly yet knows great contentment. He is the Old West's most unusual hero. But hero is not a word Caine would use. He would simply say, ‘I am a man.'”

To be fair, I started viewing this set with the pilot TV movie. I hate to admit it, but I loved all the temple scenes. Philip Ahn and Keye Luke are the two redeeming elements of this sorry ass show. Ahn spews typical fortune cookie-isms left and right, but he's just so gosh darned good at it, he's hard to resist. And Radames Pera as Young Caine (aka Grasshopper) is no Haley Joel Osment, but his wooden acting is all that the role calls for, and he's hard to dislike, too. Even David Carradine, with his mopey demeanor, looks like he fits in here. He's lucky he looks good without hair. Someone should remind him now.

When the story shifts to the “present,” though, the show loses anything it might have going for it. That's because Carradine can't carry it off himself. The guy can't move, so forget fight scenes. And he's so stoned mellow, you just want to grab him and shake him out of his stupor. As the opening credits roll by, the tone is set as we see Caine trudging through the desert. Problem is, he doesn't have to be in the sand. He moves like a snail ALL THE TIME!

Now I wouldn't pick on Carradine if he'd only admit that he's not a doctor and just plays one on TV. I'd even sympathize with a guy totally unprepared to fill Bruce Lee's shoes.  The problem with Carradine, though, is that he believes his own hype – or at the very least, he's certainly cashed in on it, going so far as to say, “When Bruce died, his spirit went into me. I'm possessed.” (From Jeff Yang's Eastern Standard Time)

I'm sure Bruce is turning over in his grave. Not only did Carradine swipe two roles from him, but to say that he is possessed! This is a man who trains in Tai Chi – hardly a fighting art – and only, as he told the LA Times earlier this year, “when the mood strikes.”  I can tell you Bruce trained a lot more than that, and we also know what Bruce said about Tai Chi being “for the elderly.” I won't even get into the particulars of Carradine's off screen shenanigans.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. Watch Bruce move. Watch Carradine at the end of the pilot episode in what has got to be the ugliest fight scene I've seen all year. Buffy is more convincing!

So let's talk about this role that Bruce helped to develop and was originally intended for him. The show itself isn't nearly as offensive as the documentary, Tao of Kwai Chang Caine: Production and Beyond, included with this set. It would've been better if they'd simply ignored the whole issue of Bruce Lee and why he was jettisoned from KUNG FU. 

Instead we get director John Badham who at least flat out says, “They didn't think an Asian guy could do an Asian guy.” But then he tries to cover up with the comment, “Nobody knew who Bruce Lee was.” Huh?! Anyone hear of the friggin' GREEN HORNET? How do they think Bruce came to their attention in the first place?

Even worse is the patronizing former VP of Warner Bros TV, Tom Kuhn, who relates his story of how “Little Bruce Lee” walked into his office. His excuse? “I had trouble understanding him, so we moved on.” You gotta love it. He digs himself into an even deeper politically incorrect hole and doesn't even know it.

Kuhn complains that they screen tested every Asian American actor in town and “none of them measured up. There wasn't one we could say ‘this guy can carry the series.'”  Let's face it, Bruce could run charisma circles around Carradine. Well, God bless Bruce for not giving up, for packing his bags and doing things himself in Hong Kong and returning to the States to show the world a thing or two about star power. 

I wouldn't even be writing about any of this if these morons would simply admit that in 1972, they didn't think people would accept an actor because of the color of his skin.  Not the lame excuse of acting ability. The color of his skin.

Bruce addressed this in his famous Pierre Berton interview. He said he understood why producers were reluctant to spend a lot of money on an Asian-actor-driven show. Fine.  That's all I want to hear from these guys. Not these wussy excuses. Again, it would've better if they'd just ignored the issue.

The irony, of course, is that the interviews in the documentary are a stinging contrast to the ideals preached throughout the series – tolerance, equality, humility, self-discipline.  In the pilot, an old Chinese man says to Cain, “Because we are not white, they consider us worthless.” Tell me about it. And that is why Kung Fu still freaks me out.