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Season 1 episode: The Soul is the Warrior


Did anyone else hate the dialogue in this? Part of it may have been the delivery by the actors, but the dialoge was full of weird aphorisms, cliches, "rustic" speech, and anything else the writer could throw in there... I'm sure some of it sounded grand on paper, but it is really jarring to hear.

The writer is evidently best known for writing 15 episodes of Gunsmoke (most of the 2nd season, I think), and I read something on his IMDB page that praised him for "authentic dialogue" for Gunsmoke. Even if his dialogue worked on Gunsmoke, it really fell flat in Kung Fu, at least to my ears. He only wrote one episode of Kung Fu, so at least I only have to listen to this one...

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KUNG FU was heavy on philosophy, and this episode had more than most. I thought John Doucette and Jim Davis came off best. The soul must be the warrior, thus Caine walks through the snake pit without fear (it was the last entry in which he wore shoes). David Carradine himself preferred going around without shoes. My main objection was that the somewhat shiftless backstory on Danny Caine was ignored by the time the character finally appeared in the last four shows. In my opinion, the only episodes I couldn't recommend are "The Cenotaph" and "One Step to Darkness."

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I agree that the dialogue was not the best. Too many silly phrases that made no sense to me.

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