I don’t watch all that much television.  Sometimes it really does remind me of a line from a song from a while back—100 channels and nothing’s on!—except I’ve got more than 100 channels.  I used to watch the news, but now I get my news, mostly, from the internet, scanning a half-dozen or so regular outlets that cater to my tastes.  And I used to watch “Hill Street Blues” and “The X-files” and all sorts of I don’t know what, but just name dropping those shows tells you how long its been.

If I’m neutral leaning towards dismissive of television in general, I’m generally even less enthusiastic about reality television.  To the best of my information and belief after reasonable inquiry, I’ve never seen a single episode of Real  Housewives (of any place), or Flava Flav or Bret Michaels’ shows.  (I am, in fact, pretty much amazed that I was able to pluck the name Bret Michaels out of the air.)  Jon and Kate plus Eight?  Minus me.  All of these shows evoke a reaction in me similar to fingernails on a chalkboard.  I shake my head sadly and then, like a character in a Lovecraft story, flee shrieking from the room while my brain dribbles out my ears.

With all of that as prologue, however, I occasionally find a show I like.  I found one, and thanks to streaming video, watched the complete run, and now I’m writing about it.  The show is Fight Quest.

Fight Quest was a show on the Discovery channel. It ran for one season, and after cancellation extra episodes were released, thirteen episodes in total.  I really quite liked it.  The set-up was simple: two American martial artists travel the world, studying martial arts, and then applying their arts in matches.  The show’s hosts, Jimmy Smith and Doug Anderson, traveled to Japan, China, Hong Kong, India, Brazil, Los Angeles and six other centers of martial arts to train in various and diverse styles.

Jimmy Smith is a former match teacher from Los Angeles who became a MMA fighter, and Doug Anderson was a New Jersey boy who served in the US Army in Iraq, and then also became a MMA fighter.  Each episode of Fight Quest adopts a bifurcated narrative: Smith and Anderson arrive and meet the masters of various arts, train separately, and then reunite at the end of the show for a closing fight to demonstrate what they’ve learned.  The bifurcated narrative is enhanced because there is generally a breakdown between traditional and “street” training, reflected in a pastoral setting for the one and an urban setting for the other.

Here are the things I like about Fight Quest.  First off, I like the fact that Smith and Anderson are fit.  You might even say that they’re in fighting trim (which is where I think we all should be).  You can see their muscles and their bones when they move.  I don’t know what regime they use for fitness–maybe they’re on a bad diet and compensate with cardio, lots of cardio.  I’d prefer that they were paleo . . . but as long as they’re fit, I’m happy.

I like the fact that they visit with martial arts masters from various cultures and countries, and everyone is respectful.  For me this is a powerful affirmation of my core conviction that strength reduces conflict.  Yeah, they’re training in fighting, and they fight in the end, but these are essentially exhibitions—the guys Smith and Anderson train with work hard, share their knowledge, help correct errors in form, and get along with our two gringos.  (It helps, of course, that our two gringos also work hard and are polite and respectful.)  I watched all thirteen episodes, and in every one I saw a genuine desire to teach and a genuine desire to learn, in every one I saw guys who were at the top of their sphere who were calm, kind, considerate . . . and made our two gringos punch walls, and other such stunts.

I liked the spiritual dimension.  As I think back, the only episode that didn’t incorporate a spiritual dimension to training was the episode set in America, dealing with KaJuKenBo.  Maybe that says more about America than about martial arts in general?  Remember, I think health is a three legged stool, with a healthy body, a healthy mind, and a healthy spirit combining for support.  From watching the Fight Quest episodes, it seems that I’m not alone in that thought.

I liked the bifurcated approach.  Every art grows, adapts, evolves, to meet its current situation.  That’s just how things are.  The country/city divide used in Fight Quest demonstrates that evolutionary process.  Plus, it doubles the number of masters for each art, and allows us to see not just one man’s approach (or one woman’s!) but two approaches.  (Yes yes, the statistical sampling of two kali masters isn’t large enough to be determinative.)  Plus, the fighting style, level of experience, and general approach of Smith and Anderson differed, which made the experience more informative and entertaining.

Without down, however, there is no up.  There were things I didn’t like about the show, and I’ll try and run through them here.  First off, I have to invoke Howard Cosell.   Particularly, I’ll adopt the “I never played the game” defense, cribbed from the title of one of Cosell’s books.  When I criticize things about MMA, or Fight Quest, or parkour, I am explicitly criticizing them from the sidelines, or even more accurately, from a La-Z-Boy in my den.  I’m an outsider, and my criticisms are an outsider’s criticisms, and should not be taken as dispositive or authoritative.

First off, particularly early in the show’s run, there seemed to be more than a touch of American exceptionalism.  Maybe it was just a fighter’s natural confidence, verging on arrogance, but I was flabbergasted at the thought that someone could study a martial art for five days and then have any expectation of beating someone, at that art, who had been studying that art for years and years.  As the show’s run went along, this attitude seemed to get beaten out of the hosts.

One thing that kind of irked me was the “sport” mentality Anderson and Smith displayed.  When they’d encounter a particularly brutal style, they’d express shock: this is for fighting, you would hear them say, not for fun, not for sport.  Well, dobroe utro, as the Russians say (”good morning!”).  Sport grows out of day to day activities, and for a lot of human existence, if fighting wasn’t a day to day activity, it was something that could come up on any given day.  That we rarely, today, have to engage in a hand-to-hand struggle to survive is a very new thing in human existence.  I’m glad we don’t have to do things like that, but I know, deep down, that we might have to.  This is a minor quibble, but I wanted to mention it.

Another thing I noticed was weak American legs, and slow American arms.  The focus of the show seemed to be on arts that emphasized rapid strikes, lateral movement and lots of flexibility.  Both Smith and Anderson, to differing degrees, seemed more comfortable with a boxing based style: slower but heavier punches, and a more back-and-forth movement style.  The leaping kicks in kalarippayattu were well, well beyond Smith and Anderson’s capabilities, and Smith mentioned in several episodes that flexibility wasn’t his bag, baby.  Once more, this is a comparative judgment, and both Smith and Anderson are stronger, faster and more flexible than I am, by far.  It was simply eye-opening to see that there were other cultures where flexibility was so much higher than it is in America.  I’m reminded of this every time I think about the Central Asian squat.

Hey, I call it the Central Asian squat, because it was everywhere when I was in Central Asia.

One last small complaint.  From some of the reading I’ve done about the show, part of the appeal was in the exoticism.  They wanted to go to Indonesia, to the Philippines, to China, to Japan—they wanted to play up the exotic, and there’s nothing wrong with that!  I, for one, quite enjoy learning about other cultures.  I just wished that, in the fullness of time, more traditional Western arts would have been explored.  However, I can’t complain too much.  Although I’d love to have seen some Russian sambo, some Cornish wrestling, even some Mongolian wrestling.  (And then again, I’m just a sucker for Mongolia, so maybe that’s coloring my opinions.)

In sum, then, I quite liked Fight Quest.  I liked the fitness displayed by the hosts and all the martial artists they studied with.  I liked the camaraderie and warmth the fighters showed each other.  I liked the reminder that a healthy spirit is important just as a healthy body and a healthy mind are.  I liked being reminded that every culture throughout history has had to fight to defend itself (and/or oppress others, but that’s neither here nor there, ni tut i ne tam as the Russians say).  I liked being reminded, in short, that there are still wolves among the dogs, all over the world.

I’m not ordinarily a big fan of television, but I really enjoyed this show.