Cobra Kai Season 2 (Spoiler Version)

They absolutely slaughtered this season. By the end of the show, I didn’t even second guess staying up to binge it. I knew I made a good choice.

Tons of thoughts and I’ll preface this by saying I did not think there was a chance in hell I’d ever write a post this long about “Cobra Kai”. They’ve managed to do this whole reboot and nostalgia thing so well though by staying true to the characters and the tone of the original story in a modern setting. Who woulda thunk it?

- I absolute love the gray area everyone is in now. There’s no one person that is truly in the right or wrong. Even Kreese at the very end was proven right because Miguel is now fighting for his life for being merciful.

- Johnny and Miguel are the closest things to protagonists on the show, and they did it very subtly while making Daniel, Sam, and Robbie the villains. Though Cobra Kai does some pretty messed up shite, Johnny and Miguel had nothing to do with almost all of it (sorry upstaging the dude who’s trying to take food off your table just because he can is not really a villainous move).

* Johnny is the most virtuous of the instructors. He’s the only one of the three with the best interests of the kids at heart. He is a flawed character in that he made some very poor decisions like letting Kreese get close to the kids knowing first hand how manipulative he can be, but that mistake was out of pity and wanting to be better as a human than Kreese was.

* Miguel is easily the most grounded of the kids. It was nice to see the tournament version was just a quick phase. It didn’t feel natural to his character and they did the backslide back into being a good kid well. Even though he was technically on the evil team, he really did nothing overtly fricked up this season outside of getting hammered and kissing his ex and regretting it. It wasn’t malicious though. Even the end, what’s the dude gonna do when Robbie has his damn girlfriend pinned up against the lockers by her shoulders. 2-0 Miguel btw. I hope they don’t have him fighting much in the next season. That was a wicked fall and he’s currently fighting for his life. Having him recover in time to make All Valley would be a little too absurd, an area this show’s done a great job of so far of not going into. Of course it will be somewhat absurd, but it’s absurd within the framework of the Karate Kid Universe for lack of a better term.

* similar to the above, Robbie should be in some serious shite for what happened. Miguel clearly backed off, everyone knows it, and there’s 50 videos of evidence from the phones. I would not be surprised if his storyline in S3 revolves around him fighting for his life in juvi while his dad tries to keep him from turning to that darker side.

* man Sam is a fricking bitch. She started that whole thing with Tory by accusing her of stealing the wallet and tried to one up her at every chance she got. I don’t really blame Tory for seeking street justice. Sam acted like she was so above Tory while doing things that were even lower. That has to really piss someone like Tory off. It’s one of the most insulting things you could do to them.

* what Daniel is teaching is not Miyagi-Do Karate. It’s some warped arse version of it. Miyagi-Do is defensive. Daniel literally assembled an army by trying to recruit kids away from Cobra Kai just to fight Cobra Kai. This whole thing is really his fault, and he was a damn shitty husband to boot throughout this season. Not only did he incite a fricking war amongst high school kids, his ego caused him to put that war ahead of his wife and his family’s livelihood. I hope there’s some redemption for him as Daniel the character isn’t an evil person per se, he just is so damn oblivious. That said, it better not come at Johnny’s expense.

* even the Hawk/Dimitri dynamic got flipped on its head late. Hawk may have been a bully, and I’m not excusing bullying at all here, but what Dimitri did to Hawk was just straight up vicious. Bullies at least tend to be overcompensating for something as they show in Hawk’s character. Their motivations aren’t always evil, just warped. Dimitri just eviscerated Hawk, and the part they did so well was Hawk gave Dimitri a TON of leash on that microphone, and Dimitri wouldn’t settle for severely hurting Hawk, he had to destroy him. That’s bullshite he took Hawk down in a fight at the end btw. That was the only part of the season I was like “ok come on guys JFC no way”. The guy who can barely do the wax on wax off shite is going to beat up a kid who can go toe to toe for a time with the best fighter on the show (Miguel easily).

- the first 6-7 episodes were kind of slow, but man did they make the last 3-4 episodes pop by laying that foundation. I can’t express my dumbfoundedness at the writing enough. It was very good. Almost all of the actions fell in line with what you’d see from the characters. The kids are kids. Their reactions to actions mostly make sense. Daniel is so obsessed with Cobra Kai he will stop at nothing. Johnny is trying his damnedest to grow as a person and is trying to teach these kids the right values, especially Miguel.

- Dude that ending was jarring. I also thought that thing on the phone on the beach would be Robbie calling his dad to tease next season...was not expecting Ali, though it makes sense.

- I kind of hope they don’t overstay their welcome with this story. There’s only so much they can do. It would be really neat if they wrapped it up fairly nice and tidy without going 10 seasons but I’m not holding my breath.

- the acting all around was sooooo much better this season. It took me out of the show at times last season it was so bad, particularly Miguel. Really everyone stepped up their game and looked to be actively taking steps in between seasons to get better. It was very noticeable.

- one other minor thing I’ll gripe about. They shouldn’t have burned that slow rendition of “Cruel Summer” in one of the trailers. That thing hit hard in the trailer and got you pumped. It hit hard at the very end of the season anyways, but if they dropped that out of nowhere at the end of the season, it could have added even more and been more impactful. Was just my first thought hearing it like “damn this remix is very appropriate right now, I wish I didn’t associate it with the trailer”.

Just binged the season. Really good. Johnny is definitely still my favorite character

I still kind of wonder if Tory is Ali’s daughter. Ali could be living a facebook lie not to sound bad and etc. I also kind of feel that Daniel could lose everything in the next season. His wife leave him and he goes bankrupt.

So I was trying to figure out just why the hell i thought this season was so good and why I enjoy talking about it so damn much compared to other shows. I think I’ve found a good way to illustrate it by using both a bad and a good example of the story they’re trying to tell.

Warning: this post is long as hell and will hopefully be my last text wall on the matter...I started with the bad example first and not being particularly excited about rehashing it, the more coherent thoughts focus on the good example halfway through (message boards are after all meant for discussion and entertainment)



Season 2 is very similar to The Last Jedi except it nails all of the characters instead of having them do absurd crap that makes no sense. If Johnny and Daniel were doing crazy things like say Daniel trying to beat up his prize pupil because he’s going to potentially join Cobra Kai, people would be like WTF, this is dumb.

The Last Jedi is ESB except flipped. Cobra Kai is the exact same way, except flipped. There’s almost literally a polar opposite for everything that happened originally if one looks for it. Cobra Kai does something that very few reboots and adaptations do...tell a good, coherent, FRESH story while staying true to the characters. See, the Last Jedi isn’t a stupid idea, and it was almost fairly innovative really, but it’s execution was so...freaking...bad... It literally had moments that were so jarring it took you out of the movie completely. Luke’s initial throwing of the lightsaber over his head was an eye roll. Leia’s force flying around in actual outer space was absurd. Luke freaking Skywalker TRYING TO KILL HIS NEPHEW IN HIS SLEEP? F*** you SW I don’t care anymore. There’s obviously so much more wrong but those man, ugh.

Last Jedi seems to do the opposite of ESB to no purpose. What would happen if the rebels lost the whole movie but won a minor battle in the end vs the rebels winning the whole movie only to lose in the end? I surely don’t know cause nothing really happened to demonstrate the impact of those changes. All of the rebels are flying away and they’re probably down a major player (Luke in TLJ vs Han in ESB). We didn’t go anywhere.

I was looking at the cast and crew page outside of the actors/actresses. Almost everyone has very little previous filmography. It seems like Cobra Kai dared to do something very few projects get to...they hired very intelligent people who were heavily invested in the source material and didn’t micromanage them.

What makes Cobra Kai’s story so superior is their focus on telling a story with that “parallel opposite” idea. Their focus is to show the good and bad in most people with most wanting to not be bad while some are just past the point of saving (Kreese), have human flaws (Demetri), have never known anything other than the negative (Tory), or have problems that society itself corners them with (Hawk). In fact, most people aren’t perfect and are going to have some very murky good and bad ideas which result in varying consequences that are entirely random in magnitude. Something as simple as trying to teach your student restraint, honor, and mercy can land someone in a serious situation. Those seem like obvious virtues to live life by, but even virtues don’t come without consequences. Something as small as not hammering home those virtues even though you lead by example in that person’s presence can result in serious consequences. The whole thing is very detail oriented. The part that I think has me so emotionally invested in this particular story is how logical and well thought out it is while using a very popular and emotionally investing source material to STRENGTHEN the story. It’s quite remarkable, and the fact that a kid could watch this show and actually learn something from it only makes it all the more endearing. It somehow manages to both be new and stay old.

This show seems to be based on showing you a different narrative while holding to the basic premise of Newton’s Third Law:

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

This basic premise makes the show easily debatable. You can see reactions that each particular action or inaction causes, exposing such ideas as character motivations and character flaws/assets very openly. There is no chaos. Everything is happening because of the choices the individuals in the show make.

To cover so much ground with such simplicity in so little time is a pretty remarkable feat. To do it using The Karate Kid on a platform that is not known for quality original content is honestly downright friggin shocking. Good things can come from the most unlikely or misjudged places. The show itself preaches to the viewers what it preaches within its creative world by telling such a concise story.

Excellent season...I loved seeing Kreese return. The new guy Stingray is hilarious. I still can’t stand Robbie. Seeing the old CK crew together was awesome. I really wish they would bring back Terry Silver in season 3–that is if he isn’t in prison from dumping toxic sludge.

They basically turned Daniel into another Terry Silver...

After Cobra Kai (Johnny / Miguel) won the last tournament, Daniel takes time off as a successful businessman in order to focus on teaching karate for free. His motivation for this is driven by a grudge held against Johnny and past humiliation he faced at the hands of the crew as he tries to put the dojo out of business. On top of that, he takes Johnny's son under his wing and into his family with good intentions, but ultimately his teachings lead to more harm than good at the end.

Damn, this show is great.