That 70s Flashback...

[sinanju]

or, Black Sash.  I watched the first episode of the WB's newest series tonight.  It's about a kung fu school, the guy who runs it, and the students he has.  They only had an hour so they could only paint in broad strokes.  The instructor is an ex-cop in San Francisco, who was framed for drug smuggling by the bad guys and did "five years hard time" in the far east.  Now he's back in San Francisco.  He's an ex-cop now.  And his wife has remarried (to a complete ass, of course) and they won't let him see his daughter.

He has students.  One motorcycle-riding anger-filled not-really-a-goth chick.  One popular black high school student and the bookish blonde who pants after him, to his utter disdain.  (I find it interesting how things have changed.  Kirk kissed Uhura c. 1970 and it was an amazing scene on network television.  Now the blonde girl chasing the black fellow student is nothing more or less than "bookish girl pursues cool guy to no avail".)  One teenage boy whose father beats him.  Various others.  No doubt they will each get A Very Special Episode sooner or later.

Oh yeah--the ex-cop martial arts instructor needs cash to pay a lawyer to fight for access to his kid, so he hires out to a...guy offering a bounty for the capture of a wanted felon (who, not coincidentally, is the dirty, low-down SOB who killed anger-girl's daddy).  I say "a...guy" because I thought he was a bail bondsman--but the wanted guy hasn't jumped bail.  He hasn't been _arrested_ yet, so what exactly is the bondsman's interest in paying $5,000 for his capture?  Beats the hell out of me.

Also, this show has a very 1970s Kung Fu Fighting feel to it.  The hero is shown in flashbacks doing combat with eight other guys (they're mostly wielding staves and such).  He clobbers them all, and gains the coveted blash sash of mastery (I guess--they never really explain) from his master, who ran the school til he retired and left it to Our Hero (tm).  A student asks, "Is it true that we'll be able to fight eight guys at once?"  Hero responds, "Theoretically."  What he didn't say, was "...if they come at you one at a time in a carefully choreographed fight sequence."

So Our Hero clobbers bad guys with ease.  His master can punch 300 lb. bruisers in the chest and send them windmilling backward 15 feet to crash against a table.  Our Hero beats up the abusive dad, thereby wowwing the kid.  Subsequently the father is arrested, the kids testifies to his brutality, abusive dad is kept in jail and abused kid moves into living quarters in the school, where he pays his share of the rent by painting and doing other fun things.  Martial Arts Mastery solves all problems!  Martial Artists possess Powers and Abilities!  All that was missing was the "wacka-chicka wacka-chicka" soundtrack I remember from countless bad 70s tv shows when martial arts were all the rage.

I watched it because the WB ads for the show over the last few weeks made it look like it might interesting.  That I can't tell you exactly how the bounty-hunting storyline was resolved should clue you in to how well it held my attention.

And...the show is set in San Francisco.  And it follows Charmed on the WB, which is also set in San Francisco.  I read way too much fanfic, especially crossover fanfic.  I started wondering how long it would take for the Halliwell family to run into these people....

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Comments

[snippy]

Yay! Maybe once your workload has lifted, when I can get back to pulling my fair share of the housework and so forth, your creativity will unlock again. This reminds me of when I was doing it all, and was so sure I didn't have a creative spark of any kind in me--really it was just being completely used up in terms of emotional energy and thought processes by the work I had to do all the time.