screenrant described it as "...an authentic, modern-day reboot of the 1972 series starring David Carradine."
indiewire called it "CW's update of a classic..."
cbr.com claimed "The classic martial arts television series Kung Fu gets updated for a new generation on The CW."
They're all wrong. The CW's show has nothing in common with the 70's series except the title. Justified or not, CW takes a lot of flak for transforming what should be familiar properties into something...less recognizable. But at least Riverdale, Nancy Drew and the various superhero shows have recognizable roots. Not so with Kung Fu.
Kwai Chang Caine was the orphaned son of an American man and a Chinese woman, raised in a Shaolin monastery from a young age. He was forced to flee China after killing the Emperor's nephew in a rage when the nephew shot and killed blind Master Po during an altercation with royal guards. He wandered the American West alone searching for his half-brother Daniel, evading bounty hunters and helping people along the way.
Nicky Shen is a Chinese-American pre-law student on her way to Harvard. She has a white boyfriend, something he mother doesn't approve of. Mom sends Nicky on a "cultural tour" of China, which turns out to be part of a plot to get her a Chinese husband. As soon as Nicky realizes this, she runs out of a speed date, hides in the back of a random pickup truck loaded with produce, and gets taken to a Shaolin monastery run and populated entirely by women. She more or less ghosts her entire family and boyfriend and studies at the monastery for the next three years. This brings us up to the beginning of the series.
The monastery is attacked by raiders, the shifu (head of the monastery, Nicky's mentor and the person who had been driving the pickup truck three years earlier) is killed and an ancient magical sword is stolen from the monastery, which is burned down in the attack. The raiders are led by a woman named Zhilan. Nicky engages Zhilan but is wounded and Zhilan escapes with the sword. Nicky feels it's her duty to find Zhilan and recover the sword but has no idea where to begin, so she returns home to San Francisco's Chinatown.
Her parents run a restaurant in Chinatown , and they are having money troubles with a Chinese gang lord who totally controls Chinatown and the cops in the district By the end of the pilot episode, gang lord Tony Kang is no longer anyone's problem, thanks entirely to Nicky and her awesome support team:
Her sister Althea is for some reason an incredible hacker of all things.
Her brother Ryan is a doctor/intern/medical student working at a Chinatown clinic, who sees a lot of Tony Kang's victims.
Her old boyfriend is now an ADA.
And pretty much the day she gets back from China Ryan introduces her to Henry Yan, the cute Chinese guy who teaches Cantonese down the hall from the clinic, and happens to be working on his Masters in ancient Chinese art, so he's super instrumental in finding out what the sword is, why Zhilan likely wants it, why it would be terrible if she were to be able to collect all eight ancient magic swords, long protected by eight different Chinese families including the shifu's, etc. etc. Oh, and he also knows kung fu, so he's able to help her once when she got outnumbered in a street fight.
If the accrual of allies and resources had been a little more spread out and organic, I'd say I could probably enjoy the show on its own, I just wouldn't credit it with any connection to the David Carradine series. As it is, it felt both rushed and maybe a bit heavy on stereotypes.
I mean I just think of it as "This is update on Kung Fu tropes to some degree...but not much."