PLUMBING THE DEPTHS
KITMAN, MARVIN
On Television PLUMBING THE DEPTHS BY MARVIN KITMAN The deepest new TV show of the '73 season was Kung Fu (ABC, Thursday, 9:00 p.m.) It introduced philosophy as entertainment. Of course, there is...
...Or is it Nick Kenny...
...He is a cyborg...
...It's fu for thought...
...is a...
...Q. Has this show had any influence on our culture, comparable to that of Kung Fu...
...Q. Where do they get all those terrific stories every week...
...A. The Six Million Dollar Man has led TV viewers to speculate on who else might be a secret, or closet, cyborg...
...Is this true...
...Short for Seymour Borg...
...Of course, Caine hasn't looked for his brother since, and serious students of the program wonder if this is a sign of philosophical corruption, a loss of goals...
...If Colonel Austin breaks down, they'll have to get a Congressional budget appropriation to keep him going...
...5. An...
...Besides, what do you imagine Nietzsche or Kant would sound like on TV...
...Everyone enjoys trying to make up his own Kung-Fu-isms...
...True, he has 20-20 vision up to 2,000 yards away and an infrared attachment allowing him to see in the dark...
...Q. Is anyone complaining that Austin has to fight the enemies of our government with only one bionic arm...
...Q. Isn't a cyborg a Jewish robot...
...Q. Still, is there any truth to the rumor that the second TV cyborg is going to be called an Irving Borg...
...And what the hell is he doing in California, anyway...
...A cyborg is a bionic man who is reconstructed in such a way as to b not only sheet rock, which any child today can do, but solid plaster...
...A. I don't think that's any of our business...
...A. No, Hong Kong...
...You are told by the flashbacks to the monastery in China where Caine studied philosophy and kung fu under Master Po...
...8. Take with a grain of...
...Admittedly, Kung Fu may not contain the greatest thoughts of Eastern civilization, but the dialogue can be engrossing, even to someone like me, with my 14-year-old mind...
...Master Po says things on the order of: "Well, grasshopper (which is TV-Chinese for 'David Carradine'), if a man pulls a gun on you, pretend you are the sea...
...Kung Fu, starring David Carra-dine, is a kind of thinking man's Bronson...
...Q. Seriously, do you as a critic like this show...
...Only those viewers who saw the first episode (September 12, 1972) know why this inscrutable Chinese-American is always wandering around in the California desert...
...The Six Million Dollar Man is not even a robot...
...3. A rose is a...
...6. Under 16, not admitted without...
...A. Not if he uses the Sears Diehard, say many authorities...
...for an eye, a tooth for a...
...And McKuen is America's greatest poet since Edgar Guest...
...Among those mentioned most often is Nancy Kissinger...
...Kung Fu has been very successful the last two years because it strikes something elementary in the American viewer's unconscious...
...and Hawaii Five-O (CBS, Tuesday, 8:30 p.m...
...For the last five years the philosophical message in these shows has been: crime does not pay, a principle fairly well discredited elsewhere in American society...
...Q. Is it true that the Six Million Dollar Man was made in Japan...
...A. It beats me...
...With Kwai Chang Caine in Kung Fu, on the other hand, you always know what's going on in his mind...
...Q. Is the show better than the book...
...With Bronson you never knew what was going on in his mind...
...He's my man...
...Lee Majors acts very much like a robot...
...ABC calls it "a science-fact series...
...The deepest new show on the air this season is The Six Million Dollar Man (ABC, Fridays, 8:30 p.m...
...Is Kwai Chang Caine a TV symbol for a Communist spy who has absconded with Nixon's missing tapes...
...Q. Is the Six Million Dollar Man perfect...
...With inflation, he would now cost $10 million...
...Q. Is this what the networks call a science-fiction series...
...However, Colonel Austin also has a built-in sniper-scope that squeaks when he uses it...
...A. No...
...A. No...
...There is talk already that Secretariat will star in a syndicated series called The Six Million Dollar Horse, with Steve Austin as the jockey...
...To test your abilities in this direction, you might try this brief philosophy test: (Fill in the missing words) 1. The weed of crime bears...
...A. Many of the plots were left over from Mission: Impossible after that series was canceled suddenly in 1972...
...A. The latest reports I've had on this is that he cost $6 million...
...The worst charge I've heard against Kung Fu is that its intellectual content is overrated...
...The poetry in the show is usually presented during the flashbacks...
...A. No, though NBC is reportedly building one called a Sol Borg...
...government's intelligence establishment...
...That series, about a young man wandering out West on a motorcycle, was the deepest show of the 1970 season, but it ran into a wall of resistance...
...I am also expecting the success of this show to inspire many spinoffs...
...It has a stage name, "The Thing," and used to star on The Addams Family...
...But it is easy to see why many TV viewers might make this mistake...
...A. The Six Million Dollar Man...
...It's a show written by college graduates who like Rod McKuen," explained poetry nwven Martin Solow of Ros-lyn Heights, New York...
...Q. Is there any truth to the rumor that the Six Million Dollar Man was once arrested for doing 60 miles per hour in a 50 mile zone on foot...
...An automatic oiling duct should be added or the colonel will give his position away some day...
...That really makes you think, compared to what you normally hear on the airwaves...
...Q. Is it true that the Six Million Dollar Man needs his battery checked every 10,000 miles...
...A. I have received a few letters on this, but let me make one thing clear: The colonel's one bionic arm is not the result of an economy wave...
...A. No...
...Q. Does he have sexual relations...
...One flaw is his eyesight...
...Q. How much did it cost to make the Six Million Dollar Man...
...If he had any philosophy it was probably handed down by his father, something like, "The bastards will get you every time if you let them...
...2. Cherchez la...
...In that opening installment it was explained that he was looking for his brother...
...Q. It has been said that the Six Million Dollar Man is made up of spare parts from Get Smart's Hymie and the Lost in Space robots, left over after those shows were scrapped...
...But if he does, it takes place during the commercials...
...A. Well, I know some people who have fallen asleep four times reading the book...
...It stars Lee Majors as Lieutenant Colonel Steve Austin, the Kissinger of the U.S...
...Yet if Kung Fu is a show for philosophers, it is certainly not a show for transients...
...People weren't watching it...
...7. Don't cry over spilt...
...You know how much body work costs these days...
...It's based on a book-Cyborgby by Martin Caidin...
...This is one heavy series, and I have received so many inquiries about the show that I would like to deal with it by using the Socratic (question-and-answer) method...
...He was an inarticulate counterculture fellow, from the same mold as Peter Fonda in Easy Rider...
...But that was back in 1971...
...4. Money is the root of...
...Of course, there is philosophy implicit in all TV series, even the most mindless law-and-order shows such as Mannix (CBS, Sunday, 8:30 p.m...
...A. No...
Vol. 57 • July 1974 • No. 14
