The Assassin

This episode marks the first appearance of Cain’s bamboo flute! It opens with him playing it.

“The Assassin” is about violence and love, and the Shaolin approach to both. Cain wanders into the middle of two feuding families. On one side is Alan Swan (William Glover), an Englishman with a Japanese wife and daughter that runs a trading post. On the other is Noah Jones (Dana Elcar), who, with his son Abe (James Keach), runs a transportation convoy. What began as some kind of business dispute has become an ongoing war between the two that’s threatening to pass on to the next generation, Abe and Swan’s daughter “Aggie” (Akiko, Beverly Kushida).

A ninja (Robert Ito) is involved, and it soon becomes clear to Cain that he must discover who he is and confront him. It also becomes clear to Cain that he loves Akiko. The flashbacks in this episode focus on these two poles – martial arts and the fighting ways on the one, love of women on the other.

Po instructs Cain in fighting, in how to balance the Shaolin’s destructive ability with its respect for human life. “Learn first how to live. Learn second how not to kill. Learn third how to live with death. Learn fourth how to die.” That’d be an apt epigraph for the philosophical views of the series! For love, Po tells him to risk it – make himself vulnerable and it’ll all come back to you. “Empty yourself and yet be filled.”

There’s a great flashback of Master Kan also instructing Cain. Kan demonstrates to the disciples how to maim or kill someone with a blow to the neck. When Cain is troubled, Kan demonstrates how the ability to perform evil acts while still retaining a good moral compass is necessary in life – as the sun uses shadow on a sun dial to tell time. “Choose between goods. Choose between evils.” In this episode, Kan’s instruction ties Po’s together and it’s the adult Cain that must realize it.



Sex and violence, the “Kung Fu” way. Great episode, although I found the Akiko sub plot distracting. Three out of four yin yangs. IMDB here. Very notable for its use of a ninja, ten years at least before the ninja fad in martial arts movies of the 1980s.

The Well

Season Two starts off with a great episode, this one tackling the heavy subject of blacks in the Old West. In “The Well,” Cain is passing through an area affected by drought when he gets hold of some bad water and becomes ill. He’s rescued by Daniel Brown (George Spell) and taken to the Brown family homestead, where he is sheltered and nursed. There he meets Caleb Brown (Hal Williams), the head of the house, a former slave who has become bitter and isolated as a result of his upbringing in captivity.

While he heals, Cain befriends Daniel, who is hopeful where his father is mistrustful, eager to extend himself into the lives of the nearby townsfolk where Caleb is walled off. It’s a difference between two generations; the son has not known the pain of the father. Daniel wants to contribute to the humanity around him, Caleb is reluctant.

So the story is of Cain, as usual more catalyst than protagonist, showing the Shaolin way to the Brown family. Naturally, there are some nasty characters around to complicate things, especially the town deputy, Mitch (Tim McIntire).

What’s wonderful about this episode is its use of symbolism and structure. It uses as its visual theme seeing and clarity. Cain is on the outside, looking into the Browns’ situation and trying to understand. The Browns are on the inside, looking out and refusing to get involved. Deputy Mitch sees a black man that needs to keep his place and a “Chinaman” guilty of a crime he did not commit (a sub plot I pass over here). What results is avoidance, pursuit, deceit, violence – until Cain can liberate everyone from their visual inability.

Reinforcing the theme are great visual film cues (I tried to find some on YouTube and have not yet succeeded). In the episode’s beginning, when Cain takes in the bad water, the camera shows us his warped, hallucinatory landscape. When he befriends Daniel, one of the gifts he proffers is a magnifying glass. The flashback is of young Cain in the temple trying to figure out why, when he dips a stick into the water, it appears to bend. It takes a blind master, Po, to point him to the right direction. “What you see are reflections. Look closer.” Another flashback finds Cain puzzled at a fly caught in a spider web – he does not know who to feel sympathy for, spider or fly, the latter a doomed prisoner, the former a prisoner of his own web spinning. In the present, Cain wonders – which is Caleb Brown, spider or fly? He wonders, am I seeing the Browns for what they are, or some kind of reflection they give off?

“Kung Fu” was quite capable of being literary at times, as this episode demonstrates. Look also for Jim Davis as Sheriff Grogan, Mitch’s boss, a great western lawman character. Hal Williams is a veteran actor you might recognize as, among other things, Officer Smitty from "Sanford and Son!" (Image courtesy of Hal Williams' web site.) IMDB is here. Four out of four yin yangs.