COBRA KAI: An In-Depth Analysis

Introduction

The best sporting movies are about more than the contest itself. Take Rocky (1976) – a million-to-one shot gets a chance to fight for the world heavyweight title. Rocky himself tells us, as he tells Adrian late in the movie, that it’s not about winning for him. It’s about mattering. It’s about a person who’s never had anything in his life finally finding his self-worth. The Karate Kid (1984), also directed by Rocky director John G. Avildsen, is a similar story. The tale of a character who doesn’t have much in life gets relentlessly bullied and struggles to maintain his self-respect.

When his sensei, Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita), challenges the antagonist dojo, Cobra Kai, at the All Valley Karate Tournament, it’s not about winning. It’s about showing that his protégé, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) deserves respect. Miyagi knows that in this situation, respect will only be won in a combative arena. The only language Cobra Kai understands. This is a template for a lot of sporting movies. An underdog gets a chance to contest for something important, and learn something about themselves.

In that journey and in that sense, we can relate to the protagonist. They are a reflection of our own often unsteady journey in life. We’re all battling to get somewhere. We all are facing obstacles. There are many times that the odds seem overwhelming and out of reach. Yet we continue to endure the struggle. We fight the good fight and we keep striving because we’re always reaching for something greater. This is something the television series Cobra Kai understood. Well, at least originally. 

The Series

When the series Cobra Kai was first announced, one might think that it sounded like just about the stupidest idea imaginable. Two rival dojos from a movie that’s thirty years old are at war with one another.? What happens after they fight? It seemed almost a desperate franchising grab in an industry that’s now predominantly about franchises and building off the marquee of properties with exploitable fanbases. Of course, until the goodwill runs out.

The promotional spots for the series were intriguing, however. They hinted at more than just a mindless fight. Some of the comedic moments captured The Karate Kid tonally. The characters, and the subject matter, were treated respectfully. The story was also principally told through the eyes of the original movie’s antagonist, Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). As far as sporting villains go, Johnny was typically one-dimensional in The Karate Kid. Although one must admire how he seizes the trophy at the end of the climactic fight and hands it to Daniel himself.

Throughout the first season of Cobra Kai, we learn that Johnny’s adolescence wasn’t as pampered as we had thought it to be. Further, we discover that in adulthood he’s estranged from his ex-wife and his son, Robby (Tanner Buchanan). To make ends meet, Johnny works as a handyman. Although his surly defiance sees him drifting from job to job.

When Johnny begrudgingly saves teenager Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) from a beating, Miguel then pesters Johnny to teach him karate. This setup and outcome are a nice reversal from the movie. Johnny and Miguel bond and Johnny becomes a father figure for Miguel. As a result, Miguel becomes a surrogate son. Throughout, Miguel, who’s dealing with being bullied in high school, struggles with his own identity. The lessons Cobra Kai initially teaches him, infuse him with confidence that then grows into arrogance.

On the other side of the valley, Daniel is the owner of a car dealership who’s lost touch with his roots. He’s married to a confident, successful woman, Amanda (Courtney Henggeler), and has a teenage daughter Samantha (Mary Mouser), and a spoiled adolescent son Anthony (Griffin Santopietro). Daniel develops a relationship with Johnny’s son, Robby, and begins teaching him life lessons through karate. Robby, who’s involved in petty crime and has a couple of nefarious friends, finds a role model and father figure in Daniel, and an opportunity to make a life for himself.

Character Growth

It’s always tricky picking up any property years later. Audiences have fond memories of characters forever immortalized in a certain timeframe. The problem is if the new property’s projection for these characters is awry, such as many have stated, Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy – or unjustified, you risk antagonizing a portion of the fan base, which means they will not invest in your product.

Daniel and Johnny did not fit preconceptions of where they would be today, but you could still easily accept their portrayal in Cobra Kai. This is because the storytelling did such a great job of extrapolating from their pasts and building credible presents. They also found motivation (and justification) in who they’d become.

Arguably, the first season of Cobra Kai retrospectively appreciates The Karate Kid because we learn that Johnny’s not just some spoiled rich brat who always gets his way. He’s an insecure kid who lives on a façade. He’s afraid of losing what he does have. When threatened, Johnny responds antagonistically because that’s what Cobra Kai and his mentor, John Kreese (Martin Kove) have taught him.

Could we possibly see Daniel owning a car dealership? Nope. But you can certainly understand it, and guess this vocation grew (conceptually) out of Mr. Miyagi’s yard full of cars. The use of bonsai trees is also a recurring theme throughout Daniel’s universe. This ranges from their appearance in The Karate Kid to Daniel’s ill-fated Mr. Miyagi’s Little Trees business venture in The Karate Kid III (1989).

When we first meet Daniel in The Karate Kid, he’s a smarmy brat bragging about his karate expertise. He’s at his most earnest when threatened. So, in a life where it seems he’s regularly succeeded, we can reconcile that he becomes this smug yuppy who’s grown complacent as he’s moved further away from his roots.

For the most part, Cobra Kai does a wonderful job with all the legacy characters. One major query, however, would be with regards to Ali (Elisabeth Shue), whose cameo retcons her respective relationships with Johnny and Daniel. Moreover, she acts as some moral arbiter over their animosity and the decisions they’ve made. This is one appearance that did feel gratuitous.

Still, the rest of the legacy characters are all fantastic, ranging from Johnny’s former Cobra Kai teammates to Kumiko, Chozen, and Mike Barnes. We learn more about each and find they’ve all grown in different ways. What was particularly well done is that Chozen and Mike Barnes weren’t just one-dimensional (adult) reincarnations of their movie portrayals. Those experiences provided valuable life lessons for each of them. They’d grown and evolved.

Kreese and Silver are different matters. Cobra Kai does a brilliant job building their pasts through flashbacks. As a result, this helps motivate who they’ve become. Yet they still really haven’t changed much from the characters we knew in the movies.

The Antagonists

Johnny reopens Cobra Kai because karate’s the one thing in his life that gave him structure and purpose. Ironically, his students aren’t the popular alpha teens from The Karate Kid. Instead, they are different. The sort of kids that Johnny would’ve picked on once upon a time. Given Johnny needs a job and being the sensei behind Cobra Kai gives him the identity he’s sorely lacking in the present, one can fully appreciate Johnny’s actions. He’s just a guy trying to pay the bills in a world where he’s struggling. He reverts to what he’s good at.

When Kreese returns, he has a similar motivation to Johnny. His life has been lacking since the glory days. Cobra Kai offers Kreese the purpose he’s struggled to find. Kreese also nurtures his grudge against Daniel LaRusso and Miyagi-Do. To portray one person holding onto an obsession this way so that it clouds their judgment shows that Kreese was never the most temperate guy.

Soon Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) is roped into the fray. At this point, we’re now being asked to believe that this incredibly wealthy shark is so lacking in his life (and has been for thirty years), that he’s going to cling to this obscure karate dojo and petty rivalry for validation to the extent he’ll frame Kreese and take over as the dojo’s sensei.

Silver’s so wealthy he could buy (and rebrand) any dojo. He could probably buy the LaRusso Auto Group or even set up a rival next door. He could employ the best ringers in karate (as he did with Mike Barnes). He’s about as dishonorable as you get, but ultimately he’s going to revert to settling this all on the mat with one crooked official?

The Escalation of Violence

In The Karate Kid, Daniel is bullied relentlessly. To this very day, a lot of bullying in schools goes undetected. So one can appreciate that bullying unfortunately won’t necessarily draw the attention of parents or school faculty.

As a story device, we can accept that Daniel goes to Mr. Miyagi, or that Miguel goes to Johnny. We can accept that these battles are then fought and resolved at school, or through karate tournaments, and the bullied wins the respect of his bully. However, as Cobra Kai has gone on, the level of violence has escalated into felonies. How exactly do these crimes go unnoticed or unchallenged? They are not small nor dismissible crimes. Among the crimes are:

• • • Cobra Kai beat up Bert (Owen Moran) and steal the car wash money

    • Hawk (Jacob Bertrand) breaks Dimitri’s arm

    • Bert is thrown through a window at the LaRusso household

    • Cobra Kai invades the LaRusso household and attacks the inhabitants

    • Robby steals a snake from the zoo.

Given Daniel’s whole motivation is shutting down Cobra Kai, why wouldn’t he take Demetri (Gianni DeCenzo) to the police and file charges against Cobra Kai? Amanda’s narrative for the entire series is shutting down this conflict between Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai. Why wouldn’t she file charges against Cobra Kai for the home invasion and deadly assault?

We can’t keep accepting that either these incidents are flying under the radar, or that the people involved wouldn’t take action and would instead rely on solving these problems themselves. The acts themselves are typical of the one-upping that occurs in sequels. They are bigger action sequences that often lose any sense of grounding. They become so disproportionate that they’re no longer realistic, and it’s unbelievable there are no ramifications.

Part-Time Karate Champs

In The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi fast-tracks Daniel’s education in karate so that he can compete at the All-Valley Tournament. Miyagi tells Daniel it’s not about the “quantity” of karate but the “quality”. We should also remember that prior to Miyagi’s instruction, Daniel is teaching himself karate out of a book – we don’t know how long he’s been doing this (or if he got an education before he moved), but he would seem to have a strong base to build upon.

Daniel getting through to the final of the All-Valley Tournament is a stretch. Even Miyagi admits he never expected Daniel to get so far, but we can buy in given the circumstances. Cobra Kai emulates this journey originally with Miguel, and then Robby, then Hawk, and then Tory (Peyton List), etc. Right up to Kenny (Dallas Dupree Young) – all these latecomers to karate are suddenly experts who hold their own against tournament participants who’ve presumably been learning karate quite a bit longer.

Silver even proposes that Kenny be Cobra Kai’s champion at the prestigious Sekai Taikai Tournament – a kid who’s been learning karate for all of one season is going to represent a dojo against the best the world has to offer. This is on par with taking tennis lessons over the summer and then challenging Novak Djokovic.

As unlikely as it is that Daniel wins the original All-Valley Tournament, at least the story offers enough justification to suggest that this outcome, however improbable, is possible. The only one from Cobra Kai’s ensemble who legitimately could be believed as proficient is Sam, as it’s established karate is something she did when she was young. When she returns to it, she has muscle memory and is building on old skills that are well-developed.

Cobra Kai has taken this conceit of the apprentice-cum-master and begun using it as an excuse to fast-track characters into the fray. To compensate, each sensei has some super secret move to teach their students. This worked as a conceit in The Karate Kid (with the Crane Kick), but even writer Robert Mark Kamen didn’t keep pushing it on the viewer as a fallback.

Some might suggest the drum technique in The Karate Kid II is a special move. Let’s not forget, though, that everybody present at the climactic fight began twisting their drums in order to urge Daniel to use the technique. Obviously, it’s no secret.

In the climax of The Karate Kid III, Miyagi urges Daniel to focus. Daniel begins an exercise of kata (commonly seen throughout the franchise) as a means of centering himself, mastering his fear, and finding balance. However, in Cobra Kai, every season there is some gimmick move to give a combatant an advantage.

Karate Philosophies

One of the more aggravating aspects of season four is portraying Cobra Kai, and Johnny’s bastard offspring, Eagle Fang, as offense-based karates, whereas Miyagi-Do is defense-based karate. We even see this in the All Valley – Sam is unsure how to fight because Cobra Kai now (through Robby) has Miyagi-Do intel. She then has to rely on Johnny’s advice. This was one of the stranger interpretations.

In The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi chops the heads off of four beer bottles; Daniel wins the All Valley Tournament with the Crane Kick (for which, we’re told, there can be no defense); Daniel breaks six slabs of ice; Daniel roundhouses Chozen into submission; Mr. Miyagi single-handedly beats up Mike Barnes, Kreese, and Silver; Chozen teaches Daniel a move that’s purely about incapacitating an opponent. There is enough evidence to debunk Miyagi-Do being only for defense.

The foundation of Mr. Miyagi’s instruction was defense (taught through the chores) because he understood this was the foundation Daniel needed, but these weren’t the sole instructions. As we saw later, Mr. Miyagi was also teaching Daniel to punch. But it’s like Cobra Kai has taken Mr. Miyagi’s philosophy that Daniel learn karate so he wouldn’t have to fight and made Miyagi-Do a practice entirely about defending and evading.

Apparently, the logic of Cobra Kai would suggest that for every attack there is a singular defense that in turn nullifies it, thus rendering the attack impotent. This rationale excludes that a fighter might simply be too quick for an opponent, wear down an opponent through repeated attacks, strategize a combination, attack laterally, etc.

The Fifth Season

After framing Kreese and bribing Stingray (Paul Walter Hauser), Terry Silver’s plan is to populate the globe with Cobra Kai dojos. This plays out like a plot from an Austin Powers movie. To achieve this, Silver hires some villainous senseis. One of them even has an eye patch. They scowl and glower and when they fail to do the job, Silver recruits Kim Da-Eun (Alicia Hannah-Kim), the granddaughter of Kim Sun-Yung (the sensei who taught Kreese and Silver) to be his head sensei.

While Daniel, Johnny, and Chozen scheme about how they’re going to expose Terry Silver, their salvo comes entirely down to Mike Barnes randomly showing up and deciding to storm Silver’s house – that’s it. Daniel, Johnny, and Chozen have no agency in this happening. Johnny and Chozen may agree to go along, but a season’s worth of plotting did not motivate this to occur. It wasn’t the culmination of their planning.

While they’re doing that, the kids have learned through Tory that Silver bribed a referee at the All Valley Tournament and that Silver bribed Stingray to perjure himself and frame Kreese. Stingray doesn’t want to be open about his perjury, and then explains it all in the most detailed and straightforward way possible.

Yet, despite this wealth of evidence, despite having two witnesses, instead of going to the police, the kids decide to storm the Cobra Kai dojo to find some CCTV footage of Silver and Tory talking. Despite the two being about thirty feet from the camera, the CCTV footage has somehow miraculously captured their voices loud and clear.

As the series has gone on, there has been more and more accidental plotting, i.e. characters bumping into one another randomly at just the right time (or wrong time) to propel the narrative. Moreover, everything happens as if the writers were told halfway through the season they might not get a season six, so it was best to wrap everything up.

While Cobra Kai has been so good at incorporating the movie franchise’s canon, there are also now some questionable stretches. For instance, Chozen appears at the end of season four, with the implication that he will teach Miyagi-Do since Daniel (as a result of losing the tournament) is meant to be prohibited from doing so. While the first few episodes treat Chosen reverently (although somewhat farfetched, i.e. turning him into an undercover spy), he goes from a formidable opponent to comic relief.

Worst of all, Kreese regrets losing Johnny Lawrence as a surrogate son. This would be the same Johnny Lawrence who Kreese almost choked to death in The Karate Kid II? The same Johnny Lawrence who Kreese hadn’t seen in over thirty years? The same Johnny Lawrence who Kreese betrayed and usurped as the sensei of Cobra Kai? This all feels like an attempt to give Kreese relevance in a season he’s not needed.

In one of the final scenes of the season, Daniel remarks that, hopefully, Silver will get to share a cell with Kreese. Why would this occur given Kreese was framed? He should be exonerated and released – potentially with a healthy payout for wrongful imprisonment. He’d be fully entitled to sue Silver. Of course, this wouldn’t allow for the improbable jailbreak scene that follows. Will John Kreese go underground and train disenfranchised teenagers to become the Foot Clan should Cobra Kai go on to season six?

Conclusion

Initially, Cobra Kai was about character growth – about flawed people dealing with problems and finding a way forward. Sure, there’s karate, but that’s a backdrop, a complement to what’s going on. It now feels like that dynamic has been polarized and that Cobra Kai is about karate, conniving, and action sequences.

Characters are shoehorned into unlikely decisions to propagate the animosity, e.g. Silver goads Daniel at the charity auction, and Daniel snaps; Amanda still doesn’t believe Daniel, leaves him, but accepts Jessica (Robyn Lively – another gratuitous cameo) telling her exactly the same thing.

The problem is a lot of the characters have reached their zenith. Daniel, like Kreese and Silver, is simply a man with an obsession. Amanda is only there to voice her displeasure; strangely, despite Daniel warning her about Cobra Kai every season, she still never takes him at his word when he expresses his reservations.

Chozen exists simply because he’s been in this universe. Miguel’s desire to find his roots lasted all of a couple of episodes; now he, Robby (once he and Miguel make peace), Amanda, Hawk, Demetri, and various supporting characters are paddling on the spot. Whereas season one had a singular teen protagonist, there now seem so many that the excess has become an exercise in redundancy.

Whether Tory grew is questionable. She changed her stance, but so many of the teen characters have done this throughout the series. It felt like this was just a flip. Given how well Peyton List plays the character, I’d argue it was worth having her embrace her villainy and push her to be the chief (teen) antagonist.

There is uncertainty about domesticating Johnny as a subplot, but one can understand and appreciate the choice – he gets a chance to make amends for all his poor decisions. Although this didn’t have any significant impact on who he is (just yet), at least it gives the character a direction to go that we haven’t seen before.

It was also great to see Johnny reconcile that it wasn’t the Crane Kick that derailed his life, but the choices he made subsequently. That’s genuine growth right there. While there remain some nice character moments and awesome narrative flourishes (Daniel handing Kreese the number for a lawyer the absolute highlight), Cobra Kai season five seems more about mustache-twirling villains, megalomaniacal plans for global domination, and feuds that have become caricatures of themselves.

It is appreciated that long-standing feuds can evolve from a single (and often) small incident, but with the teens constantly flipping sides and the key adults remaining hellbent on vengeance, the verisimilitude from the early seasons is now sadly verging on parody. If Cobra Kai is renewed for a season six, it’ll be interesting to see if the writers can rediscover the very balance that Mr. Miyagi himself used to esteem.

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