Fighting Back
Co-showrunners Christina M. Kim and Robert Berens take on issues of inclusion, representation, and racism in their reboot of the ’70s hit series
Kung Fu.
Kung Fu.
Dashboard
Robert Berens
For the majority of my career I ve been in many [writers’] rooms that right now people would be canceled for. In every room I was in that was inappropriate, that was not a positive work environment, all I could think about was,
One day, I hope that I m a showrunner, and I m not going to do this. – Christina Kim
Last year, when co-showrunners Christina M. Kim and Robert Berens were staffing the room for Kim’s reimagining of the ’70s ABC cult series,
Kung Fu re-imagining following a Chinese-American woman returning to her hometown of San Francisco after a journey to China is only the latest to fall prey to the BLM message, even after almost criticizing it.
The May 5 episode “Sanctuary” involves our protagonist Nicky (Olivia Liang) learning about a recent officer-involved shooting of a black teenager in Chinatown. This plot follows the usual beats of insisting the victim was innocent and unarmed (unlike most police shooting victims), claiming this is happening too often (it isn’t), and starting a protest to criticize the racist police (in San Francisco, of all places).
By Philiana Ng Bettina Strauss/The CW
Taking on a topical subject matter is no small task. On its most recent episode, The CW s
Kung Fu seamlessly weaves together an episode highlighting the current state of the country amid the Black Lives Matter movement and growing anti-Asian sentiment, and explores how two communities come together for a common fight in the face of adversity and tragedy. The episode was borne out of conversations with CW executives, who asked its showrunners to address the social calls for justice and change following last summer s Black Lives Matter protests.
In the hour, Sanctuary, Nicky (Olivia Liang) and Henry (Eddie Liu) learn that a young unarmed Black man whom they had a fleeting chance encounter in Chinatown was shot by police after they presumed him to be a suspect-at-large for an ongoing crime at a local Chinese-owned store. Later in the episode, it s revealed that he died from his injuries. His d
TV by the Bay: You watched the shows – now get out and go
Chuck Barney, The Mercury News, (TNS)
SAN JOSE, Calif. In the early days of the pandemic, most of us probably couldn’t have predicted what a reliable quarantine companion TV would become.
But as the lockdowns wore on, there we were: Safely welded to the couch, binging and streaming to our hearts’ content as TV took us to places where we could find reprieve – including some places in the Bay Area.
Now that things are reopening, it’s a good time to get off the couch, get outside and rediscover some of the fun activities where shows like “Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist,” “Silicon Valley,” “Big Little Lies” and others were filmed.
The CW renews Stargirl and Kung Fu
Stargirl for a third season and the
Kung Fu reboot for a second.
The move to renew
Kung Fu comes just under a month since its premiere on the network.
Kung Fu is a reboot of the 1970s series and stars Olivia Liang as Nicky Shen, a college drop out who goes “on a life-changing journey to an isolated monastery in China. But when she returns to San Francisco, she finds her hometown is overrun with crime and corruption and her own parents Jin (Tzi Ma) and Mei-Li (Kheng Hua Tan) are at the mercy of a powerful Triad. Nicky will rely on her tech-savvy sister Althea (Shannon Dang) and Althea’s fiancé Dennis (Tony Chung), pre-med brother Ryan (Jon Prasida), Assistant District Attorney and ex-boyfriend Evan (Gavin Stenhouse), and new love interest Henry (Eddie Liu) as well as her martial arts skills and Shaolin values to protect her community and bring criminals to justice, all while searching for the ruthless assassin who killed her Shaolin