Cobra Kai has been a great fun series that took the increasingly terrible Karate Kid movies and turned it into a compelling series that fleshed out all the characters in ways we could not have believed. And the call backs! So many call backs! Just about everyone except for Hillary Swank has made some kind of appearance in this series.
And while it gets more and more ridiculous as it goes on (Karate has way too much importance in this world) you can’t help but be entertained by it. The giant karate war at the end of season 5 was as awesome as it was ludicrous.
The reason why it worked so well was the ever evolving relationship between Johnny and Daniel at its core. In a weird way, this series is much like the MCU, with their relationship being the core like Tony Stark and Steve Rogers. The rest of the relationships and drama with all the other characters also work because they all revolve around that core. The best part was humanizing Daniel and Johnny, with Johnny becoming a lot more sympathetic and Daniel becoming a little less so.
That’s what happened with Cobra Kai as well. The drama between Daniel and Johnny informed all the other relationships that spun out of that. Miguel and Robbie. Sam and Tory. Miguel and Sam, Tory and Robbie. Then the other kids that were their friends as well like Hawk and Dimitri. Finally all the unresolved drama from the movies topped by Johnny and Kreese. Terry and Kreese, Choson and Kumiko, and on and on and on.
All these were nicely resolved by the end of season 5. All the kids that were enemies as well as Johnny and Daniel had finally come together in one dojo, one team. And that’s the big problem with season 6.
The characters are all really adverse to starting any new drama and any lingering issues are worked out immediately. The only drama comes in the form of the Kreese, with a big showdown in the Sekai Taikai, the World Series of Karate. What it amounts to is a 5 episode training montage. Yes Tory loses her mom and this is painful and compelling. But while the entire group tries to be supportive, she simply rebuffs them all and joins Kreese’s team? WTF?
She knows what he is, she knows what Terry was. I know this is a series that trades on misunderstandings more than Three’s Company but it really rang hollow. The writers knew they needed some drama again but it doesn’t feel authentic at all.
In the meantime Daniel has found a hidden box that implies Miyagi was a thief with a different name or something. Honestly after all this history, the revelation doesn’t really come across convincingly. So Daniel acts out because emotions and stuff. The rest of it is little stuff, like who will be team captain, who will be able to go to the big tournament since they only accept 6 team members, etc. It’s just not the drama we had in the previous seasons, it all feels a bit of a pullback.
The kids are all noticeably older, particular Mary Mouser who has packed on the Freshman 15 and then some. I don’t want to be too hard on her as she apparently has diabetes. She’s been a good actress for this series, hate to see the physical changes overshadow that. They are doing their best but they just don’t have nearly enough to work with. Zabka is still awesome as Johnny but like The Avengers, he has a karate fight with Mike Barnes for reasons mostly to satisfy fans who wonder who would win in that fight, not for any compelling plot reasons.
It’s really what I was afraid of, it’s overstaying its welcome. Still, it’s not unwatchable in the slightest. I just wish it didn’t feel like trying to squeeze blood from a turnip. There’s only five episodes so far, the next five come out November 15, and the last five in 2025, whatever that means. Jeez, these kids will be on social security by the time it finally wraps. I didn’t hate it, it was fine. I just think it should’ve ended after season 5.
