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”.

Great assessment. I have read that Mike Barnes will be returning in S3. I wonder if he is going to. be Tory’s dad. He was the “Bad Boy of Karate”. She would fit.

Hawk after begging of eposide 5 is no longer a villain or tool to me

I love how Johnny seems to be completely oblivious at how our culture has changed since the 80s. The phone call in episode 2 and someone asking him about if he accepts all genders (you can’t hear the question), then the person says something else and his response is “gender what?! Is this a prank call??!” I love it. Because that’s exactly how he should react.

Badass jet fighter trapper keeper bro

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

Chewed through the whole season last night on CyberFlix.

Saw the Ali connection coming from a mile away, and figured Kreese would stage some sort of coup.

The big question now is will Johnny join Daniel at Miyagi or pull some students and make another school? ( think that's probably obvious, but I'd love the dynamic of a 3rd dojo).

Daniel letting his marriage and his business slide to resurrect Miyagi-Do is bullshite (especially when he's married to someone so fine as Sheldon Cooper's sister Missy). I love the scenes when Johnny and Daniel drop all of the dick measuring and actually connect as friends.

Most pleasant surprise was them keeping Daniel's fat frick of a son limited to 2 cameos. Thank you, summer camp!

quote:

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What are the chances Johnny replaces anush as a salesman?

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Oh, that'd be cool if Daniel's redemption came by helping Johnny's redemption in a life sustaining/changing way.

It's wild seeing anyone defend Dimitri or Sam. Dimitri's stunt at the party is literally something that a kid could find himself debating suicide over. Sam escalated her feud with Tory at every possible opportunity by continuously one upping her, and she's the one that should know better.

This was a theory I had regarding Robbie and Tory.

Robbie is the yin to Tori's yang

The principle of Yin and Yang is that all things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites, for example, female-male, dark-light and old-young.

Let's start by saying both come from very similar backgrounds. Broken homes. Petty crime. Etc.

- Robbie is trying to become a better person. We see him as a criminal in the very beginning of season 1. He makes major strides towards becoming a balanced individual that protects others. Tory is content with the status quo of her personality and even willing to sink to lower depths. We see her go from a knucklehead hooligan stealing some booze to becoming one of Kreese' prize students and a criminal.

- Where Tory is more "what you see is what you get" in her interactions with Sam, Robbie is the one who is dishonest with Sam and making moves from the shadows.

- Tory's rival Sam is disrespectful towards her and willing to go the extra mile and do whatever it takes to humiliate her in public. Robbie's rival is entirely respectful towards him this entire season, up to the point he gives the medal to him and trusts him to relay the message to Sam.

- Tory shows Sam the spiked knucks before she starts trying to use them on her. This is important as she's showing her character is still honorable enough to need to beat her 1v1 straight up any means necessary and lets her know the stakes. Robbie completely throws honor out the window after attacking Miguel from behind after Miguel clearly let up on purpose.

- Where Tory was trying to intentionally maim or even kill Sam, she fails. Robbie was not trying to maim or kill Miguel, but does so anyways.

Where you see one character hitting stumbling blocks on their way to maturity throughout the show, you still see the upward trajectory of Robbie's character as a good person. The contrast is that Tory is given those same stumbling blocks and instead of persevering, she let's those stumbling blocks take her even further into the depths of being a bad person.