Cobra Kai

So according to the subreddit since they seem to keep up with a lot of the bts. They had filmed scenes of him for s3 but they cut them all out. On one hand that sucks but on the other they did give a good (and funny) reason for his absence and since this season in particular is about the aftermath with the kids it would've definitely not fit. Here's to season 4!??.
God, I hope so. The season's already shaping up to be one hell of a ride but he'd make it even better.
 
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Just binged all of season 3 with the wife...

Holy fuck, I don't even know where to begin. It blows the first two seasons out of the goddamn park, and the way it ends and that cover of In The Air Tonight by The Protomen. I've had the album that cover is on since it came out but actually hearing it while watching that last scene was fucking amazing.
 
I'm a freakin' CK addict and binged S3 this week. Just so good for "streaming TV".

eta the fucking fight scenes, like....yes!!
 
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Was only planning to watch a couple of episodes tonight, but my husband and I ended up breezing through the rest of the season, lol.

Fucking amazing. This series is one of the best damn sequels ever.
 
So Season 3
Hoooooly shit, this one was insane. Everything from the post-fight fallout school meeting to Miguel having a karate dream fight against his coma was done in such ways I thought impossible. There were legit fucking street fights veering on actual turf war minus guns. I mean, Bert got thrown through a fucking window! That was hardcore! Kreese got some much needed development through his flashbacks, though he's still a complete ass. Crazy Nugirl is still omega crazy but Sam's bitchiness keeps both of them on the same level. I like how papa LaRusso called his baby girl out on the constant back and forth between men. Speaking of the old protag, his trip to Japan and reunion with motherfucking I GET Chozen was nothing short of amazing. That Miyagi letter almost had me in tears. Mrs. LaRusso really got to shine by slapping Kreese's shit and standing up when talked shit about her daughter. That is one hell of a fucking woman.

Miguel's arc this season was well done. I was cheering when he finally started getting his shit back together. It contrasted well with Robby, who just kept losing it and almost got BLACKED in Juvie. That black asshole is definitely going to be in next season. Would be a waste not to have him. Sooner or later, he's going to turn on Kreese: it's a natural conclusion to the old man's teachings. Hell, it got Hawk to flip right back on to the good side, which was done exceptionally well with the people he absolutely despised being allowed in Kobra Kai and Johnny calling him out on his shit.

Pretty much everyone was done well this season. Demitry, the guy I hated most of all for being a whiny pussy, even earned my respect by taking his armbreak like a man and putting things aside to team up with Hawk in the turf fight over the LaRusso residence. A shame about no Mantarraya El Fuerte but he was too cool for that school. Not sure what went on with What's-Her-Name's actor, but I hope things work out.

The ending couldn't have been done better. Johnny and Daniel, beating the shit out of Kreese and finally coming together to form Miyagi Kai/Miyagi-do Eagle/Whatever It's Gonna Be. The final flashback to Vietnam too with Kreese killing his CO and hugging it out with Silva right before he calls his old homie back on to the battlefield.

Season 4 can't come soon enough and I hope they don't fuck it up under Netflix's influence.
 
Wow! I worried that after Season 2's storming ending Season 3 would be a letdown. I was wrong - I enjoyed it from start to finish. I binge watched all but the last episode at which point I was tempted to finish but said to myself, it's 3am and I want to enjoy the finale as much as possible, so I made myself wait till the next day. It was worth it! This is my favourite show - it's low budget, it's imperfect and I love it. It has more heart and love in it than shows like Titans which I'm sure have twenty times the budget and higher-up involvement. If Netlix are smart (big ask, I know) they will stay as far away as possible from getting involved with the writing and direction of this show - just give the makers of it money and then put it on screen.

So, non-spoiler stuff first.

I love Johnny's occasional inept attempts to political correctness. E.g. Miguel: "I'm not sure chinaman is the right term." Johnny: "Fine, Chinaperson".

I like Danny's comment about "we've got an actual Cape Fear psychopath living in the Valley. You know, it sounds insane when you say it out loud". This show does a really good job of taking a slightly silly and out of date movie set-up and putting it in the real world. Ditto for when one of the Karate practitioners goes up against some real world tough guy. Like in Robbie's fight against the monolith from 2001 he uses the karate moves and you can see it working but they also don't present it as some Eighties Kung-Fu movie I win button, which is how it started off in the films.

Kreese is poison. Having only ever seen the first movie a long time ago and never really being a fan my recollection of him was just as Johnny's bastard sensei. When he showed up I thought it might be a bit silly to have someone that old as "the villain" (quote marks because the show is a lot more complex than that). But he's like Polonium in human form.

What happened to... Ayisha? Someone up thread alluded to it but I don't know the backstory. The Season didn't seem to miss her much even though she was a significant character in the first two seasons. I think I have her name right - the girl with short hair and glasses, quite chunky. I enjoyed her in Season 1.

Johnny remains the greatest character ever, but everyone in this show is great. And Danny's wife is awesome. I feel almost bad just calling out a few characters because there's no-one who isn't really fun to watch in this. I guess I better mention Hawk, too - he's such a key part of the theme of this show. Thematically, he's kind of taken over from Robbie as the battle ground between Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do which is really interesting. This show is very complex in its themes and I love that.

On the subject of Robbie, that brings something else to mind - are they using slightly higher camera angles this season or is it something else? Because the older kids in this season seem more like kids. In Season 1 and 2 Robbie looked pretty buff. But you see him in most scenes in this season and he just seems so young. Is it that he's just got a lot more interaction with adults or something?

Also, Tory is doing nothing at all to dissuade me from my belief that all women named Tory are crazy.

Okay, full season spoilers.
I really liked that they found a natural way to have both Johnny and Danny have their chance to kick the crap out of Kreese. Also, I enjoyed in a different way seeing Johnny fight his own son. I mean, it wasn't fun like seeing him go up against Kreese, but it was emotional and it was strangely satisfying seeing him dodge Robbie's blows and redirect him without hurting him (or trying to - I can't help but feel Danny would have done a better job of not hurting Robbie physically).

I've never seen the later movies so I don't know who Chosen is but the flashbacks were enough to get an idea. All I want to say is it's weird how that dorky little girl in Okinawa turned into such a beautiful woman. I mean how do you go from this to this.
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She's gorgeous!

The show continues to balance Johnny and Danny's approaches nicely. I like how in the car chase mid-season, Johnny automatically grabs the drivers seat and they would certainly have lost the guy if Danny "red light!" Larusso was driving but Johnny pulls it off.

I found it a little silly how Miguel learns to walk again after a broken back but it's not like they didn't have supporting reasons like the surgery which makes them get away with the recovery. And I didn't see the foot-tapping coming and it was emotional and good enough a moment that I forgave it. Again, this show manages to balance Eighties martial arts movie ideas with realistic and modern elements better than could ever be hoped for.

I almost didn't want to go into the final episode when the penultimate one ended with Johnny seeing Ali and Danny together. I thought they were going to start fighting over her again and I thought maybe she'd wreck Johnny and Carmen's new romance. Thankfully neither happened. What did happen was:

Johnny: "Nice suit. Is that velvet? You sleep in that?"
Danny: "Okay, Scarface!"
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Okay - last thing about this great show. Ali's laugh. You have this beautiful woman, immaculately presented and then this sound comes out like a hiccuping pig. It's great. Does she just do it for the contrast in the show or does Elizabeth Shoe laugh like that in real life? I must know!

Best show on TV. Great cast. Great writing. Great direction. Great finale,
 
What happened to... Ayisha? Someone up thread alluded to it but I don't know the backstory. The Season didn't seem to miss her much even though she was a significant character in the first two seasons. I think I have her name right - the girl with short hair and glasses, quite chunky. I enjoyed her in Season 1.
IIRC, the writers admitted they didn't know what to do with her for this season which I understand considering Sam's theme in this season is being alone/ conquering her fear. I think that was the same reason for removing Stingray even though *SUPPOSEDLY* the actor did film scenes from this season but were cut.

Hopefully they can comeback for the next season and the creators did kinda imply that they weren't gone forever so, fingers crossed.
 
Just putting this out there:

It took my husband and I two days to finish Wonder Woman 1984-- a movie. On the first night, we got so burnt out by it that we had to take a break from it. In contrast to that, we almost watched 5-6 hours worth of TV all in one sitting like it was nothing (it would have totally been one sitting had we not had obligations to attend to over the weekend, lol).

Wonder Woman 1984 cost well over $200 million to make ... And the movie looks like shit, and the action scenes are fucking terrible. Cobra Kai, on the other hand, is significantly low budget in comparison, and yet the action scenes are infinitely cooler, more exciting, and more engaging than the vast majority of things I see in big budget Hollywood movies these days. It's not even a contest at this point.

The brawl at the LaRusso House was awesome. It was a pitch-perfect Electric Boogaloo to the "Hallway Hellscape" scene at the end of Season 2. I can easily see some people preferring this fight to the school brawl, since there's nobody who is going to question "why are bystanders not doing anything?!" and "where are the teachers?!" with it. lol.

And Hawk getting his redemption arc is just ... *chef's kiss* Been waiting for that moment for forever, and when it finally came, I cheered like mad. It was so satisfying to see Hawk and Demetri fighting together, too.

Tory (to Hawk): "Traitor. You watch your back!"

Demetri: "He doesn't have to-- he has friends who will watch it for him!"


FUCK YEAH, DEMETRI! Someone becoming a better and stronger person ... We love to see it!
 
so no one gonna question why they didnt just call the cops at the end of the season cause im pretty sure there's a case for that fight
 
so no one gonna question why they didnt just call the cops at the end of the season cause im pretty sure there's a case for that fight
When they went to file a restraining order against Kreese, he beat them to the punch. On paper, Kreese is an exemplary senior citizen in contrast to reality. They're lucky he isn't the type to resort to others outside his circle to do his dirty work.
 
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so no one gonna question why they didnt just call the cops at the end of the season cause im pretty sure there's a case for that fight

The story makes a great case for Kreese, Johnny, and Daniel being the type of people who handle their problems themselves. Aka that old school self starter self reliant personality trait from back in the day, as opposed to relying on the nanny state to fix everything for you like Amanda would prefer. Not that she isn't a great character in her own right but Cobra Kai doesn't go into her background at all and we already know that Kreese, Johnny, Daniel had to fight for everything they have so it makes sense they wouldn't resort to outsiders or the police. Kreese filing a restraining order against Amanda is just a sneaky fuck you to her since he isn't going to outright attack a woman like that.
 
The story makes a great case for Kreese, Johnny, and Daniel being the type of people who handle their problems themselves. Aka that old school self starter self reliant personality trait from back in the day, as opposed to relying on the nanny state to fix everything for you like Amanda would prefer. Not that she isn't a great character in her own right but Cobra Kai doesn't go into her background at all and we already know that Kreese, Johnny, Daniel had to fight for everything they have so it makes sense they wouldn't resort to outsiders or the police. Kreese filing a restraining order against Amanda is just a sneaky fuck you to her since he isn't going to outright attack a woman like that.
That, and the kids/new characters in the show are reluctant to have the police involved as well. Most of these kids were trained under the motivation to take care of themselves against bullies without relying on anyone else to do it for them. Of course they have the mindsets that they have, given their senseis.

To put it simply, all of these fights are personal. So personal, in fact, that nobody's hands are clean in the situation either. "It was self-defense!" when everybody is fighting would be a really difficult thing to defend in court.

Also, to be quite frank: "Let's compete in this final tournament to settle the score once and for all!" sounds a helluva lot more exciting and fun than "I'm calling the police and pressing charges. See you in court!" It's the most 80's finale concept ever, and I'm fucking here for it.
 
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so no one gonna question why they didnt just call the cops at the end of the season cause im pretty sure there's a case for that fight
God Of Nothing, White Devil and StarkRavingMad already covered the main reasons but the actual season itself does offer some logical reasons too which may get mentioned in the fourth season.

The actions of the teens up until late on in the season included numerous conflicts between most of those who were the targets in that fight. They had been physically fighting in and out of school with the teachers well aware of it. Which means that the assumptions that would be made if the police were called is that all of them are probably at fault. To say nothing of the fact that to identify the presence of those who came to the house looking for a fight would require on the testimony of those same dubious witness, evidence to that end (and the police are not rolling out a forensic team to prove that by blood splatters in the house) and proof that they came looking to start a fight rather than those already in the house starting something after luring them over since they kind of already did lure over most of the people there under false pretenses. We the omniscient viewer know all. The police do not and will follow what evidence they can access.

Along with the already mentioned desire by most of the kids involved to solve their own problems the recent confirmation that the All Valley competition was going ahead plays to Cobra Kai's advantage in this case. A home invasion and mass brawl with those darn karate kids again? Well time to cancel the tournament! So those looking to see that go ahead will be unwilling to report stuff like this since it provides another excuse to shut it down. I suspect this will come up next season since it'll be the gift that keeps on giving for Cobra Kai. If sweep the leg seemed foul play imagine what you can do if you're willing to hit the other side before the tournament too when you're fairly sure the kids won't report it and the adults have managed by series end to put themselves in a bad place to do so too.

I was actually kind of impressed the series did set up plot reasons for why the police would not be involved alongside the far more plot important "because that's not as good an ending." I was prepared to be a bit leery of the finale since it became clear next season would be taking inspiration from the third movie fairly early on but all in all I would say the series continues to be pretty good. Cheesy, often predictable and unquestionable unrealistic a lot of the time but the clear effort being put in on almost all fronts make this feel like a real labour of love.
 
half way through and loving it so far. i honestly thought they could not do better than season 2 but im really enjoying myself. Kreese is an absolute madman stealing the show and i love they giving him some humanity with his backstory. i will write a full review once im done.

"edit" finished the season and here is my take

i admit, i was worried when i saw the netflix logo but those worries disappeared rather quickly. i loved how much shutout the second movie got with denial returning to Okinawa and reunite with his past flame and rival of the second movie. when zhokan was about to pull off his "killing move" i knew what was about to happen and l still laught my ass off when he pulled Daniels nose. waited three decades to pull that off and you could see the happiness on his face! miguel getting the Bruce lee treatment and learning how to walk again was great. i was afraid he was going to remain a cripple for the hole season but im glad our boy pulled through. hawk was by far the best charecter in this season, from being a badass, feeling guilt over breaking dimitri arm(speaking of dimitri him getting with the Stacy felt very rushed and akward), getting revenge on his old bully and finally deciding to join the good guys again saving the day! im surprised how the old bully (the asian one) did sport. was that a thing in season one or was it something they added? Kreese getting character building up was great and helped humanize him a little instead of him being a cartoon villian of the show. he had a pretty rough life and i belived he wanted to do good teaching kids how to fend for themselves but him being a boomer and suffering from PTSD is a recipe for disaster and just turned kids into violent assholes as you can see Johnny and his old crew. forgive me for asking but the third guy who was in vitname, is he the bad guy who was in karate kid 3? been so long since i watched that movie so i cant remember. Sam and Robby is by far the worst characters of the show. sam is a spoiled rich kid that gets mad whenever something dont go her way and acts like a god damn slut jumping between three guys in around four months of time. i laughed when even Danial lowkey told her she was "dirty" and should maybe stop thoting around a bit. Robby was such a cry baby and a asshole throughout the entire season. you think he would have learned something by the end of season 2 but nope, he dosent even have the decency to apologize to the guy he broke his back and almost made a cripple. both johnny and Danial spent almost every waking moment saying they support him and will gladly help him if he just say it (pretty much getting two dads lol) but no, just gonna stick with the crazy boomer instead even after trashing larossos home. cant wait for the next season, hope netfix dosent fuck it up.
 
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This season kinda jumped the shark for me a little even though I enjoyed it in spots a fair bit.

There's just too much silliness and not enough weightiness to the story, it's just tonally a mess and impossible to take serious. The great thing about the original movie is that it felt like real people in real situations. Sometimes the people in Cobra Kai feel like real people but increasingly these don't feel like real situations. The stuff that's played for drama just falls flat, like Kreese in vietnam, it's just too heady for the way the material is presented. The stuff that's played for cheap laughs is too self aware, like Eagle Fang dojo. Johnny's son in prison is the only thing that hits the right note in my opinion.

Cobra Kai is too "TV" now, it needs to be more 3 dimensional.
 
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