Cobra Kai

Fast forwarding 30 years after the original Karate Kid movie, Mister Miyagi is dead, Daniel is a car salesman and Johnny is a deadbeat who doesn’t know how to communicate with his teenage boy.

The following is a spoiler filled review for Cobra Kai.

“There are no bad students, only bad teachers” is the underlying theme of Cobra Kai. It takes time to build this theme. It’s told completely straight-faced from the point of view of Johnny. He brings Cobra Kai back as a new dojo. Gets new pupils. Joins the karate tournament once again. Not until the final episode Johnny learns what he has done. He realises he is the bad teacher…

The problem of Cobra Kai’s philosophy is it’s too black and white. Strike first, strike hard, no mercy. The whole series is built on showing how this black and white look to the world creates nothing but misery for everyone but especially the one who accepts this view. Sure it makes everything simple. But as you can see from how they depict all the characters, nothing is really simple.

From it’s exploration of it’s themes to it’s charming amateurish acting, Cobra Kai manages to become the best show I’ve seen this year. While it doesn’t do everything right, especially on the technical side, the characters and the story are just too good to pass this one up.

If you are going to start watching Cobra Kai, it’s a really good idea to watch the original Karate Kid film first.