Earlier today, I watched the pilot for Kung Fu.

This new CW series stars Olivia Liang as Nicky Shen, a college student who is sent to China by her mother to find a husband and who ends up basically freaking out and running off to a monastery, where she spends a few years learning martial arts and also the Shaolin philosophy. However. when her mentor is murdered and a sword is stolen, Nicky returns home to San Francisco to reunite with her family and search for some answers.

Or something like that. To be honest, I kind of had a hard time following the plot. That's probably due to the fact that this was a pilot and it had to introduce a lot of characters and a lot of plot lines all in an hour. (Pilot episodes sometimes seem like they're specifically designed to remind me that I have ADD.) Though I doubt I'll be regularly watching this show, I think all of the various elements will probably come together as the show progresses. Right now, the show still seems to be unsure if it wants to focus on Nicky fighting crime in San Francisco or Nicky bonding with her family. The show needs to decide on what it wants to focus because the mix of family drama and choreographed action occasionally felt a bit awkward in the pilot.

On the plus side, Olivia Liang seems like she has potential in the lead role. She's likable and she managed to remain credible even while she was having to talk to the ghost of her teacher. And the fight scenes were generally well-done, if perhaps a bit too dependent on slow motion. On the negative side, it felt like every other CW show that I've recently seen, right down to Nicky's tech savvy sister and her snarky brother. Again, that's understandable when you consider that last night's episode was a pilot. It's job was to set up the characters and suggest that Nicky might have some interesting adventures ahead of her. The trust test will be whether or not the show can establish its own individual identity or whether it's just going to be another Greg Berlanti-developed super hero show.