Kung Fu - The Complete Third Season

I was extremely pleased. The product arrived quickly, and it was exactly what I had hoped for. I never realized that I had missed so many of the original episodes until I watched the DVD's.

I am a big fan of this show and when I started watching the DVD's of the series, I remembered every episode in season 1 like I saw them yesterday. When I watched season 2, I did not remember too many of the episodes, but thought the second season evolved from the first. The third season brings even more change and for the better, because in order to keep the show fresh it had to. A very rare kind of show that didn't keep doing the same thing over and over again. The episodes look very good and there are some extras to check out. If you are a fan of the series buy it.

i wish they would put the episodes on seperate discs instead of using front and back format.
other then that its great .
glad to have this available ,why dont they make great shows like this any more ? not a curse word in the whole show.

I don't know of anything like this series that was ever shown on tv before or since. Some might find the lessons trite, but if I, my son, and my wife find them very good, very appropriate. My son is 15 right now, the same age I was when the show was first on. It's not only good to see them again, but they provide opportunities to talk about principles to live by. Sorry if this sounds preachy, but there is meaning in these shows if you watch and listen.
Be well.

The quality of "Kung Fu's" third season does not match the excellence of the first two. To me, the show's writers appeared to be stumped for fresh ideas. And in trying to revitalize the series, its creators regrettably settled for an easy solution.

Among the many things that I like about "Kung Fu's" first two seasons, one was their refusal to fall back on the shopworn idea of Asia as a magical place, an other-worldly realm where Western physical realities need not apply. To me, this clichéd idea of "magical and incomprehensible Asia" implies that Asian people are inherently different from the rest of the human species. Examples of this stereotype include "The Shadow's" Lamont Cranston learning his powers of invisibility from "the mysterious East" and "Freaky Friday's" mother and daughter switching bodies over a Chinese fortune cookie. In fact, "Kung Fu's" second-season episode "The Brujo" seems like an explicit debunking of magic and superstition.

However, the first episode of the third season introduces the character of a Tibetan mystic (Clyde Kusatsu) sent by the Chinese authorities to capture Caine. The episode, "Blood of the Dragon," is replete with such physical impossibilities as a magically appearing tent and a magically conjured doppelganger of Caine, supernatural story elements previously uncharacteristic of the series. Other paranormal third-season storylines include Caine confronting a demon with magical powers ("One Step to Darkness") and Grasshopper's poison-induced "flash-forward" to his adulthood in the U.S. and his battle with a Native American deity ("The Demon God").

Although the third season also inaugurated the more agreeable idea of setting a few episodes in China before Caine left, the writing wasn't as crisp as it had been before, and some contrived storylines made the erstwhile pacifist Caine easier to goad into a fight.

As much as I mourned "Kung Fu's" cancellation in 1975, perhaps the show had run out of steam by then. Also, I have trouble putting into words just how appalling I thought the updated series "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues" (1992-98) was. This cheesy and uninspired knock-off about a descendant of Kwai-Chang Caine (also played by David Carradine) in 20th-century urban America was utterly unworthy of its predecessor, suggesting to me the depths to which the original show might have sunk if it hadn't been cancelled when it was.

I was sad to see the original "Kung Fu" wander off into the sunset. But I'm glad the show left me with fond memories.

(Note: I have also written reviews for the first and second seasons of "Kung Fu.")