In 1984, a film that would go on to become a classic cinematic staple was released. You might have heard of it. It's a little movie called The Karate Kid. Now, I've discussed before how 1984 was a nexus of cinematic excellence, and I've put countless exhaustive hours into trying to figure out exactly why this phenomenon occurred. I'm still empty on that front. At any rate, The Karate Kid crane kicked its way into theaters, and the hearts of millions that year, and like any successful film, it received a deluge of sequels, spin-offs, and reboots. Some were okay, most were pretty terrible. That's just the nature of the beast I suppose. Fast forward eight years since the awful reboot attempt starring Jaden Smith trying to learn Kung Fu from Jackie Chan, and about a month ago, I heard that YouTube Red would be launching a show that would act as a sequel to the first film called Cobra Kai after the dojo where Johnny Lawrence trained in the first film. We're going to take a look at that today and see if it's a worthwhile addition to the franchise. Also, spoilers.
When I saw the trailer for this show, it appeared to me to be the story of a has been Johnny Lawrence trying to relive his glory days by reopening the Cobra Kai dojo. Then as I got further into the trailer, that premise took a bit of a twist as you see Johnny instructing the misfit outcasts who get bullied on a regular basis. The trailer was succinct, but informative, and most importantly, it made the show look like it was going to be fun. I can appreciate succinctness. Fast forward just a few weeks, and a bit of talking up to the wife about it, and my wife and I took the plunge on a Sunday. We finished the Monday immediately after. It's not necessarily just that it was a good show, it's just that it's only ten 30 minute episodes, so it's a quick watch. But there is quite a bit going on so let's get a bit deeper into things.
The first thing that needs to be said as a jumping off point is that the crane kick that Daniel uses at the end of the original movie is, from my research, definitely an illegal move in all but the most extreme forms of competitive karate so LaRusso should certainly have been disqualified for his shenanigans. Why is that important? In terms of the show, that one event was a turning point in Johnny's life that began a vehement downward spiral in his life. It acted in much the same way in Daniel's life, as we'll see in a bit. Johnny has spent the last 30 years or so just kind of coasting through life, and living in the past. He's become resentful and depressed, and his lifestyle reflects that. He has a job as a handyman for hire that he loses due to a dispute with a client. He lives in a pretty dumpy apartment where he spends his free time drinking, and he wears his demons on his shirt sleeve like a badge of honor. However, as my favorite Vulcan is fond of saying, "Life is replete with turning points." And Johnny gets to experience quite a few just in the opening act of the first season.
First, he goes to a convenience store to get more beer, and in the process, finds some bullies beating on a new kid that has moved into Johnny's apartment complex. Johnny appears impassive until the bullies ding his car. Then Johnny brings back '84, and gives the entire group an embarrassing butt kicking, old school style! It's an impressive bit of fight choreography as a man in his early 50s just destroys a group of high school boys. It's not an entirely lopsided encounter, but it must have been pretty humiliating to the boys all the same. The boy being bullied, Miguel, is certainly impressed, and begins pestering Johnny to teach him (Miguel) how to do all that stuff, but Johnny doesn't think the kid is ready. However, watching, I'm pretty sure, Iron Eagle, Johnny has an introspective epiphany moment, or at least the start of one, and he takes off to the place where his life began to spiral out of control to start confronting his demons. That's about the time that some teen girls in a swanky SUV wreck Johnny's car. The thing is a sweet Firebird, probably from around '84, and it needs to be towed and repaired because it's undriveable.
The shop that's going to be doing the repairs just happens to be owned by Daniel LaRusso. LaRusso in the intervening years, has taken all of the confidence that he gained through training with his sensei, Mr. Myagi, and channeled that into creating a pretty cushy existence for himself. He's also kind of become a smug ass. He's taken aspects of what made his character endearing in the film, and morphed them into annoying tropes. It opens up a great segue to discuss context as this entire show really hinges on that philosophical debate. The takeaway for now is that the whole idea of Daniel fixing his car turns Johnny way off, and an encounter ensues when Johnny goes in to ask to have his car taken elsewhere. Ultimately, Daniel offers to do the repairs free of charge, but only after joking with his bro friends about how he kicked Johnny's butt, or sorry, more specifically, Johnny's face. The show gets a really strong start, and it only gets better as you progress through.
You find out that Daniel's daughter was in the car that hit Johnny's car that night. That's a little twist that just serves to draw these two nemeses back together. It's during the start of Johnny's life changing epiphany that he decides to reopen his old dojo and take back the thing that brought him so much satisfaction in his youth. He has to dig through his trash can to retrieve two halves of a check that his step father had given him in order to deposit that and use the funds to make the initial investment, but at least he has one student for sure to teach and bring in a little income, right? Yeah Miguel is his one student who has just rubbed the bullies the wrong way because he's attracted to Daniel's daughter, Samantha, who runs with that crowd. Also, Miguel sat at the loser table the first day of school. On the bright side, he makes a couple of entertaining friends in the form of Eli and Demetri. The two serve mostly as comic relief, but their character arcs are pretty substantial throughout the first season.
Remember when I said that Daniel had become kind of an ass, and that perspective and context were super important? It's right around episode two that this all becomes pretty evident. Johnny succeeds in getting his dojo opened, and things are kind of status quo, but then Daniel finds out about it. He confronts Johnny about it, pointing out that what Cobra Kai stood for engenders everything that's wrong with people and all but declares war on the entire endeavor. Interestingly, from Daniel's perspective, he's acting heroically here. He believes that Cobra Kai was a dojo that taught hate, and merciless persecution of the weak. His experiences with Johnny and Johnny's friends scarred him. However, despite his frequent declarations to the contrary, it becomes evident pretty quickly that Daniel also has not completely moved on from those times. His attitude towards the situation seems to be that Johnny can have a comfortable life so long as Cobra Kai isn't involved in any way whatsoever. But then as the show progresses, you see Daniel essentially demonstrate that he just wants Johnny to be miserable for the rest of his life.
On the flip side of things, we get a pretty thorough delve into what led Johnny to be the way he was as a teen. We see a home life with a mostly indifferent mom, an emotionally vacant and abusive step dad, and a sensei whose twisted views of the world just happened to fit what Johnny was looking for at the time. We see Johnny training and getting attention from his sensei. Then we see epic beating that Johnny endures after losing the tournament to Daniel. From Daniel's perspective, Johnny was just a spoiled rotten rich teen from Encino where Daniel was a teen in a struggling family that lived in Roseda and worked hard for whatever they had. Daniel's contempt makes sense because from his perspective, Johnny lived a charmed life and had everything handed to him on a silver platter. Daniel never saw the abuse emotional and otherwise that Johnny had to endure as a repercussion of his seemingly charmed life. Similarly, Johnny didn't really see that the mentor that Daniel found in Myagi was the life saving grace that Daniel needed at that time in his life. From Johnny's perspective, Daniel was just a twerp who moved in on the girl that Johnny was dating at the time, who threw the first punch, and Myagi was the old man who kicked Johnny's butt for no real reason. Half of those things might be true, but you should definitely watch the movie to verify which are what.
As the story progresses, and the plot thickens, Daniel does everything that he can to thwart Johnny. First, Daniel expresses interest in buying the strip mall where the dojo is in a bid to get the rent raised, which works. Then, when Johnny applies to participate in the All-Valley Karate Championship, Daniel attempts to block him from doing so, which does not work. Daniel has a cousin who's just a dunce, and who makes a lot of trouble, and the cousin and some goons torch Johnny's car. The actions weren't sanctioned by Daniel, but Daniel also doesn't feel a need to offer compensation either. See, Daniel gets really bent out of shape when the Cobra Kai dojo opens, and from his perspective, he owes Johnny nothing no matter who does what to Johnny on Daniel's behalf. Daniel's life has become strained in every conceivable way since Johnny opened the dojo, and in Daniel's mind, the only way to excise all of the grief that life has been giving him is to shut down the dojo.
A show that focused only on the two characters would not be nearly as satisfying as what we actually got, and so layered plots are introduced to keep everything interesting. For example, Daniel's daughter starts dating Johnny's student. We find out that Johnny has a son, Robby, whom he attempts to approach to create a relationship with. The son, never having gotten anything from Johnny except a child support check, sees the relationship that Johnny has with Miguel and starts working for Daniel at the car dealership, and taking Karate lessons from Daniel. Miguel trains hard and gets stronger, and confronts his bullies, essentially shutting them all down. The entire school's worth of misfits start taking lessons from Johnny. Some stick around and other leave, and over a few episodes, the crowd is whittled down to a core group. Interestingly, we see how Johnny's jadedness rubs off on the students and jades them as well, turning them into bullies.
Of course, the entire season culminates in the final showdown at the karate tournament. It's an intense event as Johnny and his students compete for greatness, and Robby fights to thwart them. There's a lot of dramatic and emotional conflict resolution along the way, and a ton of character development. This really is an addictive, and well crafted show! I had my misgivings going in. Nope, I can't do that with a straight face! I figured this would, at the very least, be a really fun ride, and boy was I in for a surprise! Not only was it a tremendously fun ride right from the start, it delivered way more than it initially promised. The characters are all well developed from the start, but get massive development throughout the show. The drama is brilliantly dramatic, the humor is hilarious, and the plot is exceptionally well developed. The acting is also great. But what really drives it home for me is the music. See, Johnny lives in the 80s, and the licensed music reflects that in the most poignant and entertaining way possible. I love the music they chose episode to episode on this show! It's a thoroughly satisfying trip down nostalgia lane for me, but it also reflects the moments in the show well, too. The producers, one of whom is Will Smith by the way, could have just phoned things in and tried to coast off of that nostalgia, but you can really tell that everyone involved went way above and beyond the call to craft something truly special here. It's currently got a 98% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the whole season is available to watch with YouTube Red. If you can take advantage of the free trial, you can binge the whole thing in a couple of days,and I believe that first two episodes are free to watch. Give it a look! I swear you won't be disappointed! Stick around for next week to see what we're cooking up for then!
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