TV Flash On air
Red carpet heat. Streaming secrets. The shows that made history. Tonight’s desk · Wed, Oct 14, 2026
Hot

Kung Fu

Season 1

15 listed hours · 1972–1975 · ABC

← All seasons · Show package

From the desk

How this season is filed

Filed by Tessa Quinn · Spoiler-Free (Mostly)

Kwai Chang Caine walks the American West with Shaolin flashbacks, slow-motion kicks, and grasshopper as spiritual catchphrase. David Carradine's casting still starts fights next to Bruce Lee origin lore. Frontier serial plus martial-arts mysticism, handsome and unsettled: a network western that bowed instead of drew.

TV Flash files Season 1 of Kung Fu (1972–1975) on ABC as the first listed season of 3 — 15 listed hours, 1972-10-14–1973-05-03 from “King of the Mountain” (S01E01) to “The Ancient Warrior” (S01E15). Titles, dates, and synopses on file — no invented recaps.

Desk essentials in this season

  1. S01E01 King of the Mountain

    King of the Mountain opens the walking West. Shaolin flashbacks, slow-motion kicks, grasshopper already spiritual catchphrase. Carradine's casting still starts fights next to Bruce Lee origin lore.

  2. S01E02 Dark Angel

    Dark Angel is early-run mysticism as a title. Frontier serial plus martial-arts parable: handsome, unsettled, a network hour that still photographs as a walk, not a punch-out.

  3. S01E06 The Soul is the Warrior

    The Soul is the Warrior is the thesis on the card. Grasshopper liturgy as craft: the West as a moral obstacle course, the flashbacks still the real action, the kicks the punctuation.

  1. S01E01

    King of the Mountain

    Kwai Chang Caine, the half-American Shaolin Monk, befriends a boy without housing, foils a bounty hunter and experiences the pain of love.

  2. S01E02

    Dark Angel

    Kwai Chang Caine helps to restore the faith of a preacher while he is searching for his grandfather to discover his United States heritage.

  3. S01E03

    Blood Brother

    Caine looks for a good friend from his Chinese temple who is missing from town, and there are people determined to stop his search at any cost.

  4. S01E04

    An Eye for an Eye

    A woman (Lane Bradbury) impregnated in a rape endures more tragedy when she and her father try to take revenge on her soldier-attacker.

  5. S01E05

    The Tide

    A pretty Asian woman saves Caine's life when he is badly wounded by a murdering sheriff, but conspires to use him as a pawn to possibly free her father from a Chinese prison.

  6. S01E06

    The Soul is the Warrior

    Caine offers to walk through a pit of snakes to save the life of a sheriff (Pat Hingle) who was forced to kill the son of a rancher. A powerful rancher demands justice for the death of his son, requiring Caine to reveal the man's greatest fear.

  7. S01E07

    Nine Lives

    Cats are scarce in the Old West, and Caine must replace one to appease the death of one killed by a gold seeking miner.

  8. S01E08

    Sun and Cloud Shadow

    A powerful landowner attempts to drive off Chinese miners from their legally owned mountain of gold, but complications arise from his son's love for the girl Cloud Shadow.

  9. S01E09

    Chains

    Shackled to a brute of a man thirsting for his enemies' blood, Caine probes the cause of his hatred and leaves him transformed in the wilderness.

  10. S01E10

    Alethea

    Seeing is believing. Or is it? A young girl's eyewitness testimony leads to a priest being tried for murder and sentenced to death by hanging.

  11. S01E11

    The Praying Mantis Kills

    A frightened boy, defending a jail against the bandits who killed his sheriff father, inspires courage in an adult coward. At the moment of truth, Caine teaches them both to temper justice with mercy.

  12. S01E12

    Superstition

    Caine is falsely arrested for stealing and is sent to a silver mine. After arriving, he teaches a fellow prisoner how to endure extreme heat, cold and how to survive in a serious cave-in.

  13. S01E13

    The Stone

    It's Kung Fu vs. Brazil's fighting technique of Capoeira as a man learns from Caine that to fight injustice anywhere is to fight it everywhere.

  14. S01E14

    The Third Man

    Caine challenges a killer to be his own judge and his victim's widow to accept the verdict.

  15. S01E15

    The Ancient Warrior

    Ancient Warrior, an aged Native American accompanied by Caine, seeks burial in his sacred, ancestral land. But the burial site is located dead center in a violent, Native American-hating town called Purgatory. Gary Busey guest stars.

More from the 1970s.