Cobra Kai: The High Stakes of Karate

I had heard a lot about Cobra Kai when it was initially streaming on YouTube Red. Then Netflix acquired it in June, which meant it got that sweet pandemic boost, and when the third season premiered in January, my Twitter timeline was filled with even more people squealing about the show. Well, I finally binged my way through 30 episodes over the past few months and it was quite the adventure.

The show picks up 30 years after the events of the 1984 movie, The Karate Kid. In that film, it was very clear that our hero was the scrappy Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), who was trained in karate by the wise Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita, who is sadly deceased so can't show up on this show except in flashback) while the villain was the rich high school bully, Johnny Laurence (William Zabka), who was trained at the Cobra Kai dojo by the aggressive John Kreese (Martin Kove, who ends up playing a major role in this show and is about as psychopathic as it is possible to get). But as this show unfolds, we get the story from Johnny’s point of view, and turns out our villain may have been a tad bit misunderstood. Let’s not kid ourselves, he’s still an alpha male douchebag, but he is reluctantly dragged into the 21st century, and as his rough edges get softened up a bit, you’ll find yourself rooting for Johnny as he tries to re-establish Cobra Kai and become a functioning member of society.

In the meantime, Daniel has been living a charmed life. He is happily married, has two kids and runs a successful auto dealership with his wife. But when Johnny comes back into his life, the old rivalry resurfaces, and this time their kids are dragged into the maelstrom. This show is one TV trope after another, with the sins of the fathers revisiting the children, and there are frequent flashbacks to the events of the original movie that help us draw parallels to the current events. It’s delightfully executed and so much fun, and this show is about as meta as it is possible to get.

I wasn’t a massive fan of The Karate Kid and barely remember the movie, so don’t worry if you haven’t seen it. This show will easily catch you up on the salient points, and the rival styles of Cobra Kai vs. Mr. Miyagi’s much more zen-like approach to karate. As the show progresses, however, the karate ceases to be very peaceful and the violence escalates to an insane amount. By the time we got to the third season, I didn’t understand why every high schooler on this show wasn’t dead because none of their fights looked survivable. This show has the best stunt choreography and you will have to massively suspend your disbelief, but it’s certainly fun to watch it all unfold onscreen. In particular, I do enjoy that the teenage girls on this show do not pull their punches and get as bloodied up as the boys. I am not advocating for violence, but I'm all about equal opportunity mayhem.

Cobra Kai is a solid piece of popcorn entertainment. It’s a witty nostalgia watch that both reveres and mocks the original movie and builds on its characters in interesting ways to reflect the changes wrought in the past thirty years. These men are still stuck in their 80s rivalry, and the soundtrack is certainly chock-full of reminders of where this all began, but it is also brimming with modern humor and self-referential teasing. It definitely has a tendency to go off the rails and the storylines are getting increasingly melodramatic, especially when the focus shifts to all the teenage drama among the students in the competing dojos. But at its core, this is a funny show about two men who still have some growing up to do and how they need to rewrite the stories they told themselves about their past in order to properly embrace their futures. So settle in on your couches and get ready for a kick-ass time. No mercy!