KUNG FU: EPISODES 16-18 (1974)

PHENOMENALITY: (1) *naturalistic,* (2,3) *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *adventure*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *metaphysical, sociological*


The episode-title "In Uncertain Bondage" recalls Somerset Maugham's famous book-title, OF HUMAN BONDAGE. Maugham's idea of bondage, however, involved a form of romantic enthrallment, while the TV show is more concerned with the way people naturally bond with one another when social strictures are set aside.

Once again a stagecoach serves as a medium to link the wandering priest with the destinies of tormented people in the Old West. This stage contains a rich young Southern woman Dora Burnham and her entourage: Tait, a former Southern officer set to guard her on her way to see a doctor for her weak heart, and Jenny and Seth, both former slaves who grew up with Dora but who now work as paid servants. Dora has a heart episode when Caine is present, and he uses Eastern medicine to help her through it. The Shaolin 's good deed is rewarded with captivity, for Dora's three companions have conspired to hold her for a ransom from her wealthy father. (How any Southerner held to any wealth following the Civil War is any viewer's guess.) The kidnappers abduct Caine as well, since they want to keep Dora alive to write a ransom note.

However, Dora, full of Southern pride and scandalized that her own maid betrayed her, won't write the note. Tait has the solution, for their hideout happens to be adjacent to a dank, dry well. He drops both Dora and Caine into the well and waits for Dora to surrender, counting on Caine to keep her well enough to suffer in the cold well.

Once Dora is alone with Caine, it's clear that she expects him to be her servant, due to the difference in their social stations. Caine does serve her, but not for that reason. His flashbacks make clear that he once experienced a reversal of his usual expectations, when Master Kan volunteered to switch places with him and become servant to his student. This "teaching moment" brought Caine an understanding of the need to provide service not because of stations, but out of empathy. Dora then gets her own lesson in empathy when Caine falls ill. Dora must tend him simply because he's a human being in distress, and she writes the ransom note to save Caine was well. Caine doesn't become too sick to fulfill his role of hero, though. After Tait gets his ransom note, he plans to kill both Dora and Caine once he gets the money. In the tradition of an officer, he tries to slay Caine with a saber, and Caine naturally manages to outfight him with nothing more than a convenient stick.

Jenny and Seth are supporting characters, and as such are not explored in depth. However, it's refreshing that Jenny rejects categorically Dora's expectation that she owes the highborn woman any loyalty just because she's been obliged to serve Dora, both as slave and paid servant. When Jenny protests Tait's decision to kill Jenny's former mistress, Jenny protests not out of some jejune sentimentality toward her former mistress, but simply because Jenny has a distaste for killing.

The metaphors present in the title "Night of the Owls, Day of the Doves" prove more than a little strained. Once again Caine stumbles across a dead man who has left behind his will, and the priest dutifully delivers the document to its destination. The will assigns valuable property to a group of "soiled doves," as the script calls them, simply because the ladies ran the dead man's favorite cathouse. However, there's a local bigwig who wants to acquire the property without paying much for it, and he happens, for obscure reasons, to run a group of vigilantes who dress up in Klan-like robes, but with "owlish" motifs.

The script for "Owls," having offered the contrast between virtuous harlots and respectable gentlemen with secret vices, does almost nothing with it. The ladies are thrilled with their windfall, except for one Chinese girl, Cinnamon, who nurses some animosity toward Shaolin priests. Though Caine becomes unusually absorbed in the problems of almost everyone he encounters, he doesn't seem to want to help the prostitutes fight off the vigilantes. Then Cinnamon reveals that the reason she's a prostitute is that she was sold to a Chinese cathouse so that her brother could buy his way into a Shaolin temple. This is apparently enough for Caine to rouse himself and put paid to the Owls in short order.

"Crossties" is another political opus. Caine is stuck in the middle between a railroad company, policed by ruthless Pinkerton detectives, and a group of farmers displaced by the railroad, who have launched a series of destructive raids on the trains. The farmers, led by a man named Youngblood, are presented as entirely sympathetic, while the Pinkertons, led by the fanatical Edwards, have become so repressive that even the railroad professes doubts about their methods. (Harrison Ford has a small role as the railroad's representative, offering the possibility of amnesty for the farmers.) Edwards-- whom Youngblood tags as a man who "don't care about dyin'"-- seeks to destroy the farmers before this can happen, and that means destroying Caine as well. While Edwards is a lackluster villain, he does manage to force Caine to take a beating from his henchmen by threatening an innocent. The fight between Caine and the Pinkertons includes a scene in which Caine, after thrashing about six men, breaks through a barn door shut with a bar across it, another of his more superhuman feats.