The younger cast seems to have gotten much better at acting.
Cons:
They are still introducing major plot developments and then resolving them in 5 minutes just as they have done for every single season since 3. In fact it's literally 5 minutes at this point.
Gay interpersonal drama that really serves no purpose except padding out the runtime and has no real consequences because, as explained above, everything gets resolved in about 5 minutes or less anyway.
Fight scenes are somehow worse than ever except when Miguel and Robby are fighting because they actually know how to do stunt work. They absolutely need to stop forcing the older cast to do fight scenes, it's just painful to watch at this point.
Tory predictably goes to Cobra Kai again and I expect Kenny will too in order to resolve the "Devon cheated by slipping Mitch's laxatives into Kenny's water" plot point, I am assuming in the lamest and most unexciting way possible.
Also how the fuck is Kreese not dead, I know that characters in this show have survived ridiculous levels of harm before but dude literally got bit by a fucking cobra and just walked it off after a few minutes of hallucinating.
I'll admit I extend Cobra Kai some more suspension of disbelief than I ordinarily would. It hearkens back to an era where Martial Arts was this esoteric thing and people actually half-believed a lot of the mystic elements. Master Kim is at a conservative estimate around 105-110 years old. In the Eighties kung-fu era the audience would probably go along with the whole reclusive monk is still active at extraordinary age conceit. Cobra Kai treads a fine line between the era it comes from and modern sensibilities. It's aware of it - we hear the surprise in Kreese's "Master Kim!" when he learns he's still alive. We see Danny's nervousness when Chozen breaks the beam of wood. Don't read too much into what I say - I'm not saying Cobra Kai is mystic chi-master stuff nor that I grant it licence to be so as its audience. But I have to accept we're in a world where there can be secret techniques and healthy ancient living can get a man to 110 and still have a sharp mind. Frankly, if someone spent his entire life without an American diet, maybe he would live to 110!
As to the older members of the cast, yes - it's fairly obvious. William Zabka can still plausibly pull off the fights which ain't bad for a guy pushing sixty. Ralph Macchio is sixty and yes, they have to dance around that. Martin Kove (Kreese) is nearly 80 and of course we can tell that it cuts away or uses camera angles for his fights. Again though, they do try to balance it - his fights are usually just quick take-downs and sucker-punches. Cobra Kai is a fun show, imo. I just have to give it a little leeway for its origins. It comes from the same era as Remo: Unarmed and Dangerous. It's on the less mystic end but it's still on the 80's Martial Arts spectrum.
I understand suspension of disbelief and I have no problem doing it with Cobra Kai provided that it is internally consistent. The problem is that Kreese surviving the cobra bite because "willpowah, son" is breaking this internal consistency. They didn't introduce some mystical woo-woo shit about overcoming snake venom via meditation or say that it is some kind of mutated cobra whose venom only kills you if you fail the hallucination test. For all intents and purposes it's depicted as a regular cobra and thus Kreese should be fucking dead. This is the equivalent of Johnny spontaneously shooting fireballs out of his ass.
Also I have no clue why the website is shitting itself again and I'm unable to reply to your post properly.
Oh yeah, there was a new season that came out this year (or rather half of it came out). I thought it was pretty good but i hope they wont drag it on for too long. When is part 2 coming out?
Oh yeah, there was a new season that came out this year (or rather half of it came out). I thought it was pretty good but i hope they wont drag it on for too long. When is part 2 coming out?
I hope to finish them by the end of the weekend. So excited!
Update: Watched the first two episodes/episodes 6 & 7 already (was able to watch them while my kid was napping haha). A lot of my favorite episodes of Cobra Kai have been tournament-centric episodes (the 2-part season 4 finale in particular are my personal favorite episodes of the entire show thus far, in fact). So the karate-centric stuff and the drama surrounding it had my full investment in these two episodes.
Episode 2 ends on such a bitch of a cliffhanger. I might actually sacrifice some of my sleep tonight to finish the following three episodes. This show knows how to dial the drama/melodrama and the excitement to an 11 to keep you fully invested and hooked.
Miguel was a badass in these episodes-- literally pumped my fist in the air when he single-handedly won the elimination challenge at the end of episode 2. While I wasn't upset when Robby won Team Captain in Part 1 of Season 6, I now wish that Robby would indeed just "man up" (like Miguel literally told him like a boss) or pass the title to Miguel himself since he's acting like the superior fighter right now.
I want Miguel to be able to come back to the tournament though. Episode 2 literally ends on Johnny and Miguel needing to leave because of an emergency with Carmen. I have a prediction on how they can get Miguel back in ... But we'll see.
Also, Demetri is seriously pissing me off in the same ways he pissed me off in the first two seasons right now. If Hawk somehow managed to break his arm again, I wouldn't be mad this time.
Definitely the good kind of holy shit-- the specific kind of "Holy Shit" than only Cobra Kai can deliver.
There's a full-on brawl that breaks out during the tournament that many say has topped the famous school fight from season 2 based on the reactions I've been seeing, and somebody dies pretty brutally ... All of which is aired on live TV.
I already have the new episodes downloaded... I think... but I can't watch them right now yet. I've been introducing a friend to a different show, and I'm still watching some of them with her tonight. Cobra Kai would absolutely not be her thing, and even if it was, she's never seen the older episodes or even the original movies.
I already have the new episodes downloaded... I think... but I can't watch them right now yet. I've been introducing a friend to a different show, and I'm still watching some of them with her tonight. Cobra Kai would absolutely not be her thing, and even if it was, she's never seen the older episodes or even the original movies.
I get it. Cobra Kai is one of those things where if it's your thing, then you'll love it ... And if it's not, then it's not. Haha.
Season 1 is definitely the most crowd pleasing of the bunch, and it's easy to recommend to most people. I think that the Season 2 finale, though, determines whether one is "on board" with the show or not.
I know a handful of people who loved the first season, and then thought that the school brawl at the end of the second season made the show become "too much" for them. I also know a lot of people who loved the Season 2 finale, and have been enthusiastically on board with the show since.
I get it. Cobra Kai is one of those things where if it's your thing, then you'll love it ... And if it's not, then it's not. Haha.
Season 1 is definitely the most crowd pleasing of the bunch, and it's easy to recommend to most people. I think that the Season 2 finale, though, determines whether one is "on board" with the show or not.
I know a handful of people who loved the first season, and then thought that the school brawl at the end of the second season made the show become "too much" for them. I also know a lot of people who loved the Season 2 finale, and have been enthusiastically on board with the show since.
It is literally the only show still currently going on that I can still honestly say that I like these days. I'm just happy to know that they haven't fucked it up yet.
I actually liked the season. That said, this season is such a fever dream at points that it looks like they got David Lynch to ghost-write the script.
One of the reasons I call it a Lynchian fever dream is because of the small role, big impact characters, that lead the show into becoming surreal comedy:
>The sinister housekeeper at the hospital who darkly implied that Carmen was dead, just so the audience could have a dark moment.
>The “thank you for your service” police officer who congratulated Miguel on yet another violent assault.
>The spirit of the fucking Virgin Mary, who somehow transmuted to Daniel the ability to pick locks.
>The fag who was for some reason selling martial arts weapons.
>The Spaniard hottie from the bar who made her entire team colaborte with Miyagi-do due to her insatiable lust for Demetri. It's particularly bizarre because the club scene where they dance gave no indication that she was part of the tournament instead of some random Spanish girl & then there she is doing karate & beating up some mooks at the finale.
I'd put this in the character section, but there's more to talk about the story around him, then the character itself.
Kwon's death felt cool honestly (more like, Kwoff amirite). Firstly, the way the camera catches his maniacal laughter when he falls & finds the dagger. But the dagger is out of shot for the audience so they know he’s breaking down but not why. Secondly, his dying scream is so loud it somehow cuts through the other 50+ people who’ve spread out in a whole gymnasium for a no holds barred brawl? It also seems to teleport Kreese, Johnny, & Silver to him. They were off having a private fight back stage. How did they hear & get there so quickly?
Also, another Lynchian moment is Kwon cryptically foretelling his own death. (just kill their heart). Admittedly, this one relies partly on the last batch of episodes.
The thing about the whole "Miyagi could actually be a violent motherfucker" storyline is that it doesn't conflict with the Miyagi-do philosophy at all; the entire point has always been "balance" & they even touched on it in the KK movies, especially when Daniel fought Chozen… sometimes it's perfectly acceptable to dish out extreme pain to someone who deserves it.
In fact, for all that shit about "Balance", he fed 2 guys starving wild dogs. It's amazing that in the Miyagi dream, of all the things that haunt him, feeding 2 men to starving wild dogs wasn’t one of them. That dog cage (an intentional parallel to the Vietnam POW cage, & the snake pit) did change him… yet this is played for laughs, with him giving Johnny a fist bump. Maybe this was the balance needed after all.
Imagine this as Danny's Miyagi dream:
Danny: How does one achive balance Miyagi sensei?
Mr. Miyagi: Simple Daniel-san. Either you leave cage yes, or you leave cage no. You leave cage “guess so”? Sooner or later. You make good soup.
Danny: What do you mean Mr. Miyagi?
Mr. Miyagi: Best way to avoid fight, trap man with murderdog, dog fight for you, balance Daniel-San.
Danny: Mr Miyagi, I don’t want to watch a man torn apart by dogs
No wonder Mr. Miyagi never showed Daniel his collection of trophies from his victims. Speaking of trophies, did Yoon keep that girl’s tooth? Will he make it into a necklace for Tory to wear when he confesses his love for her?
But seriously, I actually kind of thought the whole Miyagi thing followed by the kidnapping was going to lead up to Daniel accidentally causing MAJOR injury one of his kidnappers & him struggling with that, followed by season/part 2 ending with him finding out the guy died in hospital from his injury. The way the show handles actual gangsters is just bizarre, they're almost treated like segments from a different movie about a guy beating up hardened criminals. Later, we cut back to Miguel/Daniel escaping back to the fucking teenager's karate dojo instead of, say, filing a police report.
Also, Daniel & Johnny (combined with Demetri & Hawk) are being so bitchy at each other that the gay demographic probably feels seen & represented. Even though to a straight man it just looks like 2 teenagers in adult bodies arguing over whether Batman could beat Superman.
This guy is a fucking badass, & pretty much always based. He could defeat the Terminator if he tried. The more this season goes on, the more obvious it feels like Robbie being captain is a deliberate power-level limiter to prevent Miguel from solving everything. Like, Miguel is just fighting 1v2 in the background while Robbie is trying to get over whatever brain defect makes Tory instinctively trust villains.
Chozen suddenly appears & goes guerrilla garden mode on a bunch of flowers on display at the tournament.The exact same kind of flower he tried to gift Kumiko back in Okinawa was on display in a karate tournament set in Spain, literally making it look like the shower man was mocking Chozen telepathically across continents.
It makes sense for this misunderstanding to happen, he answers the door to a man holding flowers asking for his crush & a guy in a towel just goes "oh sure bro, she's still in the shower I'll go grab her", who won't think as such? I know he's gonna turn out to be some sort of brother or cousin of sorts, but I love to think that the shower man won a fight to the death for her while Chozen was watching his shows in California.
I joke, but I actually think that Kumiko's actress probably stood her ground & said she would accept her character forgiving Chozen. But she wasn’t gonna be his slampiece, & his reward for finally stopping being a psycho. I respect that. Honestly, it's easy to forget how hardcore the grudges in the original movies ran with how much goofy shit pads out the series. There are legitimate grievances at work.
Also, most importantly: >Turned a psycho bitch dom into QT 3.14 GF.
From simply hopeless, to never hoeless. How does he do it Chozen ones?
Hawk’s entire arc was basically completed in the season finale, & now the writers have no idea what to do with him, so he keeps jobbing, doing nothing & obsessing over pointless shit like Demetri & MIT.
Meanwhile, Demetri continues to be an absolute raging cunt to every character he possibly can be, & pretty much Gaslighting, Gatekeeping, Girlbossing his way to whatever he wants. He will never be called out on this, Yas will probably beg for his big cock back. For all we know, Hawk will rightfully submit and apply to, & attend MIT, maybe Daniel will name him Miyagi-do successor & Robby can wait tables or something because fuck him, I guess.
Robby essentially feels like he has become the misery-porn, humiliation ritual character. For example: >Kreese shows up. >Oh the judge threw out my case just because. >Silver shows up. >Oh the judge threw out my case just because.
Hell, after in all his scenes they worry about Johnny getting in trouble with the law, Miguel punching a fat cunt immediately cuts to a police officer congratulating him for his bravery. Once again a character that’s not Robby is immediately completely forgiven for committing a violent assault. Not even that. It’s an "everybody clapped" moment.
Also, pretty much everyone feels like they have a redemption arc, like have a college party with the guy who nearly tried to force your girlfriend into public sex at a movie theatre. Assault around 15 people with him, & then everyone claps, cause everyone always claps. You can even square off with ninja turtle weapons, but just don’t be Robby. He’s not allowed to be violent OR have a loving relationship with his father. He has to just take everything.
One more thing, & probably the biggest pet peeve I had this season. The drinking scene is even more fucked because of his reasoning to not drinking, Robby never drinks because his mom is an alcoholic & his father was a deadbeat drunk. Now he's feeling so down that he decides to drink anyway, & neither his friends or his GF gives a fuck or tries to stop him, then he gets drunk as fuck & not only do they still not give a fuck, but they also abandon him. Then, he gets blackout drunk & taken advantage of by some insta-thot & no one cares, & Tory even makes him feel guilty about it.
He's practically date-raped by Zara. Robby even freezes up badly. Really badly. Tory is watching him leave the room & it’s not clear if he knows she sees him. The main thing he’s embarrassed about isn’t that she does see him, though, if he knows. It’s the sex acts that occurred the night before. He weakly tries to say he didn’t remember, & Zara pulls some creepy “it’s a good thing I do, I’ll remember for both of us” bullshit. After all this, when Robby runs in to help Tory as Zara is beating her senseless, Zara is shocked, & can’t believe Robby would choose Tory over her. She seems to legitimately believe coaxing his whiskey dick to an semi while he murmured about Toy & his dad was a loving act, & she’s genuinely hurt to be rejected.
Honestly, the true, objectively worst part about thing is GIWTWM.
Her character is even weirder than Sam, Tory consistently fails to learn from making the most retarded snap impulse decisions possible because she can't back down from picking a fight over "muh dying/dead mom" & can go from being a true homie to someone's arch-nemesis off-screen. Tory is less of a character & more of a plot device. That scene in the aquarium literally has her go:
"I didn't talk to you because you would've told me I was being retarded, &, I wanna be retarded."
Another thing to consider is how would the director make her beating Zara not funny. For those who have no idea, Zara's actress, Rayna Vallandingham, is an actual world level Martial Arts champion. Meanwhile Tory is just one level below Sam in terms of being barely able to throw a kick.
I'm actually questioning now why they waited 10 episodes to get Zara when:
(You gotta admit, these do help break the monotony a bit in middle of my bitching).
>Hotter than every other girl on the show.
>Better actor than most of the other girls on the show.
>Can actually do the fight scenes & make them look good.
Honestly, LaPussos deserve an entire section dedicated to them.
I'm actually tired & even sick of them as a whole except for the mother (aka MegaloMILF).
This is to break from my upcoming bitching:
That said, even she gets flandorized here a bit with the Antony bit. Seriously, at least try to listen, understand, & believe your son. Did you learn nothing from your daughter disliking you for giving preferential treatment to her rival & to an extent, bully?
I just have one thing bugging me. Kenny just immediately forgives Devon for something he was probably planning to kill LaPusso for as soon as he gets a chance. Just because he wants to fuck her. Meanwhile, LaPusso’s heroic moment is to self-induced diarrhoea, like some ass of fire ritual. Goddamn, at least show that there's a sense of healing to their animosity.
His zealotry towards Miyagi is actually reaching a point where you have to question the logic which didn't matter before, until this tournament. Why can't there be 2 different karate dojos? When they go to tournaments there are dozens of other dojos, why isn't Daniel seething over those?
His zealotry is at a point that Daniel now looks like that he actually doesn’t give a flying fuck about Karate. You could approach him & ask him about katas, or lineage, & He’d stare at you blankly. You’d dumb it down. What style do you do? He would just keep saying “Miyagi”, & You could tell him that’s just the last name of a single man, & that it's not a style. But he’d keep nonsensically repeating
“Miyagi. I do Miyagi way karate. Best way. No be there.”
At the end of the day, it’s been a decade since Miyagi died, minimum, before the series started, & Daniel didn’t try to teach anyone anything except dishonest sales tactics in that time. But the second he sees Kreese & Johnny teaching kids karate he starts shaking with rage because they feuded with Miyagi back in the 80’s (over 30 real time years ago).
That makes him dust off his gi & to start autistically mimicking Miyagi. Broken English & all. Daniel is completely mind broken by Miyagi. He doesn’t disagree with Cobra Kai’s Tang Soo Do philosophy. Hell, he can’t even remember the name Tang Soo Do (he'll probably confuse it with the juice if asked), despite Chozen explaining it to him. All he knows is Miyagi good, not Miyagi bad, & snake karate evil for ever daring to fight Miyagi.
Imagine being another coach of a team at the Sekai Takai. You hear this guy is a two time valley champ trained in a direct line of descent by Chojun Miyagi. So you’re excited to geek out with him. But 5 minutes in, you realise the only techniques he can name are wheel, crane, & drum. He absolutely doesn’t care about Chojun. He’s an empty shell of a man who only cares about one Miyagi, & you’re beginning to suspect he’ll honor kill you then & there if you say one thing out of line about his idol, even in passing.
Before even getting into anything else, I wanna address the elephant in the room, Sam. Honestly, I don't wanna rag on her too much for this cause I've heard that She has the Diabetes-1, so her body basically produces no insulin. Please correct me if she doesn't so I can shit on her more relentlessly.
This bitch is fat, really fat by fighter standards. The camera crew deserves something akin to Oscars & Golden Globes in how they managed to "miss" (ignore) every shot where she starts jiggling (not the good type) from moving quickly. Mary Mouser lost a little for the most recent episodes but that latch batch where she won the captain position & was super fat & obviously unable to do any moves was distractingly bad. I hated that it went unacknowledged how fat she was. Early CK would've acknowledged it like it did with Aisha.
I wonder what Xolo (Miguel) goes through honestly. I mean really. Imagine being Xolo in that scene & having to be all like "damn, Mouser (Sam), you fuckin' fine, all sexy with your competitive eaters physique all dressed up like a girl a decade younger than you. I would totally have sex with you, both my character & the real me." when all he really wants to do is mating press the actress who plays Zara in his dressing room. Like seriously, imagine having to be Xolo & not only sit in that chair while Mary flounders her way through another kata, the oversized pink hoodie barely concealing the fact that the overhanging fat from her gunt is severely limiting her mobility & keeping those kicks low, & just sit there, take after take, hour after hour, while she “perfected” that dance. Not only having to tolerate her monstrous fucking visage but her haughty attitude as everyone on set tells her she's STILL GOT IT & DAMN, MARY MOUSER CAN MOVE LIKE THAT?? because they're not the ones who have to sit there & watch her big blue eyes water up as her face contorts into types of temper tantrums you didn't even know existed before that day, because In-N-Out wasn’t being catered that day.
You've been eating nothing but a healthy diet of taquitos & sopapillas & later horchata for your ENTIRE CAREER coming straight out of the Hills in LA. You've never even seen anything as fucking disgusting as her lunch tray before, & now you swear you can taste the sweat that's breaking out on her bulging gut as she sucks it in to writhe it suggestively at you, smugly assured that you are enjoying the opportunity to get paid to sit there & revel in her "petite (for that is what she calls herself)" beauty, the beauty 3 of her personal trainers had nervous breakdowns to barely maintain in the previous months. And then the director calls for another take, & you know you could kill every single person in this room with precisely placed Nukite strikes before the studio security could put you down, because you actually TRAINED for this karate based role, but you sit there & endure, because you're fucking Xolo. You’re the next Karate Kid! (Probably not really, cause of the auditions for the confirmed Jackie Chan remake film is still going on) You're not going to lose your future DCU career over this. Just bear it. Hide your face & bear it.
As for the character itself, I can't exactly tell what exactly her "friendship" with Tory is. For example, the aquarium mopping with Robby & later Devon, She just constantly teleports to Tory's vicinity to judge & torment her whenever it would be narratively dramatic like some kind of fucking tulpa. Also, am I having schizo moment, or there's some whale shark in the background always watching the drama?
Also, her concern feels like borderline trolling at times. Her talks with Tory legitimately feel like "I know your mom died tory, but what about me?!" moment.
The entire Axel thing with Sam is just confusing. How does Sam walk down an empty, well-lit beach & doesn't see the giant 1/2 topless man doing katas until she's almost run into him? Why does she bites her lip the second she sees him? (Maybe eating herself due to the lack of hourly In-&-Out-take). Later, they speak deeply of their lives, their dreams, he fights to protect her, & later as soon as he almost gives her the kiss she wants, she tells him she has a BF.
It looks like Sam led him on then, lied to Miguel about it? First, she said nothing happened, then she made it seem like Axel was stalking her. Just because she was pissed she didn’t have her Miggy to take a romantic walk through Barcelona with her. Because he had dared to leave her to check on his DYING MOTHER! Mind you, if his Mum died, his baby sister would too, & Johnny wouldn’t be authentically his dad anymore, just a father figure.
In fact, speaking of the Miguel thing, Sam was also cozying up to Robby at the bar & trying to push him away from Tory. He didn't take her shit so she sulked & walked off the bar. Maybe it's just me, but there was an edge to it. She laments that Miguel is gone, highlights that she wants someone to “explore” the city with, & then goes off at Tory.
She’s been defending Tory to everyone else. As soon as Tory turns up she slinks off like a fat cat who was found with the cream. She’d be supportive to Tory whenever she wasn’t actively trying to undercut her.
She might as well say to Tory:
"Don’t I deserve a Harem? Give up Robby, & also I want that big, buff, & clearly mentally abused, retarded sped. I deserve all their adoration. Stand aside Tory. Let them kill each other over me”.
Also, Sam just fatly lectures Johnny about how he is a bad teacher that made Daniel run away. Not even noticing her father is a borderline zealoted schizo.
I binged the whole season segment and holy shit, that was a wild ride. I really enjoyed this season, it has a nice mix of twists and laughs and big moments while maintaining the fun the series has had since the start. There isn't much if any wokeshit, characters do find develop at a quick pace but that's to be expected with the season divided up like it is.
I don't think this is really spoilers to say but I'm glad they didn't really have Miguel or Robby overshadow each other, they both brought some very strong action to the show and seem to be far and above the best of the American bunch of kids.
That fuckin German kid with the Iron Dragons was insane though, he was just wiping the floor with everyone. I didn't really expect Kwon to be the biggest threat there and was correct, that tall motherfucker just picks Kwon up and plants him on the ground with his foot multiple times.
I figured it would either be Miguel or Robby to take out Kwon, didn't see them going so far as to have the batshit Korean kill himself accidentally, but I felt that Robby maintained dominance over him in their fight and Miguel was doing well against Axel considering no one else was able to last fighting him 1v1 that long.
They even managed to help Kenny not be an unbearable shithead. Overall just a damn good season to close with so far.
I'll be shocked if Mr. Miyagi participating in a tournament where his opponent died is played off as anything other than a crazy accident like Kwon. In fact I'm legitimately doubtful that Kwon will even remain dead.
