Kung Fu: The Legend Continues

Last year, I began a journey of watching Kung Fu, the 70's television show starring David Carradine. I'm not a huge fan of binge watching, especially a show like this that is so slow, but I'm working my way towards the end of the series and it's left me wanting more.

Naturally, I began digging into what else is out there. I found a copy of two books that were highly regarded, a TV movie/sequel co-starring Brandon Lee that is not so highly regarded, and then of course, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, an interesting 90's take on the series once again starring David Carradine. I remember watching the commercials for Kung Fu: The Legend Continues as a kid (it aired on the Prime Time Entertainment Network which was sort of the precursor to The WB), but I had never seen an episode. So, I began digging... where can I find this show?

My research uncovered that the show's first two seasons were released on DVD, but later seasons were not. I found a guy online who got his hands on a German blu-ray and he'd sell me bootlegs of seasons three and four for $80... which is $60 too much.

I found some episodes on DailyMotion but these were VHS rips that were awful looking. So, I decided against trying to download those. Archive.org also came up empty.

So, I set my eyes on a long shot. A private tracker had an upscaled copy of seasons one and two along with seasons three and four from the German release. The bad news was the file was over a decade old and had only one seeder. Also my ratio was not exactly great. I've been part of this group for over twenty years, and I let those first five or six years really damage my ratio.

I went into research mode on how to fix this. I invested in a seedbox, and began selectively downloading stuff I knew would like being in demand and over the past three months, I finally managed to improve my ratio. I added the show to my seedbox and within a day, I had downloaded the entire series in the best available quality out there. I was so happy I even told my wife, who looked at me like I was insane to go through so much trouble for a low-budget 90s TV show that I probably wouldn't even like. And well... she isn't wrong. :)

Anyway, why am I sharing all this trouble I've gone through to watch Kung Fu: The Legend Continues... well yesterday I was on Fandango At Home browsing their deals and this popped up.

I wanted to punch something.

All that work... and between my VPN and seedbox I've spent that much money and there the show is... in HDX finally available for the streaming world (It was added a few weeks ago). Considering this is a low-budget 90s show, I have a feeling it'll pop up on Tubi or Plex or somewhere in the next few weeks. Ugh.

As much as I'm glad its out there for fans, I know if I buy it digitally it's not going to be nearly as good because I didn't have to put a bunch of effort into tracking this down. Then again, the few clips I've watched haven't exactly been outstanding, lol, and I still have a dozen episodes of the original series to finish first.

So, I guess I'll add this to my wishlist and if it drops under $20 I'll pick it up, otherwise I'll just wait and see what I think of the first few episodes once I finish the original series.