Ernie Reyes Jr. is fighting for his life

Veteran actor/martial artist is suffering from kidney failure and needs your help.



Ernie Reyes Jr. needs your help. I recently learned that the 43-year-old actor and martial artist, who you may remember as a kid in movies like The Last Dragon or the television show Sidekicks, or in more recent fare like The Rundown and NCIS: Los Angeles, is suffering from kidney failure and fighting for his life.

Ernie is currently undergoing dialysis treatment three times a week for four hours a day while waiting for a kidney transplant. As you can imagine, this has been challenging for him and his family. His sister Destiny Reyes has started a GoFundMe campaign for his kidney transplant fund.

Throwback Thursday: Sidekicks starring Ernie Reyes Jr.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the movies and TV shows of my youth, and it has led me down a deep, dark hole of fuzzy lo-res YouTube videos. You know how that goes. I thought it be fun to start sharing some of the fun vintage stuff I've remembered and re-discovered...

Sidekicks was an ABC series that starred a young Ernie Reyes Jr. as Ernie, a skilled martial artist and the last of his people, who is left in the care of Sergeant Jake Rizzo when his grandfather passes away. It was a spinoff of a one-time Walt Disney TV movie, The Last Electric Knight, and lasted one season, 1986-87. I loved it.

I had a blast going back and watching old episodes -- someone graciously uploaded them to YouTube -- and Sidekicks is as fun as I remember. I'm also struck by how incredibly goofy the show was. Hey, it was the eighties. A crotchedy cop, a little Filipino kid, some faux Asian mysticism, a bad synthesizer soundtrack, and a lot of ridiculous excuses to show Ernie deliver an asskicking every week.

Here's the pilot episode, divided up into multiple parts. You might recognize a young Don Cheadle as a menacing thug in the opening fight scene. Enjoy.