A lot of 80s Hollywood movies and shows came to India a little bit later, it’s no surprise then that despite being a 90s kid, ‘The Karate Kid’ (originally released in ’84) is a franchise that I grew up with. The story had everything, the martial arts topic, the cool and badass villains and the ultimate crane kick that ruled them all.
… an international competition where stereotypes run amock and all sense has gone out the door. Sorry, not gone. Crane kicked.
This meant that when Cobra Kai was announced, I was ecstatic, the Netflix show, originally starting life as a YouTube series, was just the perfect mix of nostalgia and ‘dramedy’ to get me hooked. The show repeated “Cobra Kai. Never Dies.” and I started to believe it. It was back from the 80s and unlike most revival pieces, it didn’t suck.
It was good.
I was naive or had too big a pair of nostalgia goggles to look at what it may (and sadly has) become. With every passing season, the show kept getting ‘bigger’, and in this case, bigger isn’t better, not by a longshot.
The high school teen drama that had a Greese-like standoff in Season 3, has now become an international competition where stereotypes run amock and all sense has gone out the door. Sorry, not gone. Crane kicked.
I won’t even discuss the extremely predictable writing or recycled teen drama that seems to have infected the show, but there is one thing that stuck out too much to be ignored.
The recently released part ends in an absolute brawl that breaks out randomly between all the dojos participating in the ‘Most Prestigious Karate Tournament’ in the world. Yes, bunch of Dojos and Sensei that train in the art of discipline and mental strength above all, decide to randomly wail at each other and hope for the best.
I’ll be honest, I’ve never set foot in a dojo, aside from some practice crane kicks on top of my bed when I was a kid, I have absolutely nothing to do with the martial world, Karate or otherwise, but even for a martial-arts illiterate, the brawl was an insult to Karate.
The show has had brawls before and it always ends the same way, someone gets hurt. *cue gasp* but at least you could say it was kids being idiots – This was something else.
The ‘broadcast’ of the fight goes on till the very end when an eventuality happens (I won’t spoil it for you), leading to them realizing ‘Oh hot damn this is being broadcast around the world, we should cut the feed.’ was just pure icing on top of this nonsensical cake.
And there ends the current run, there’s another part scheduled for release, which as I understand is the final part, and in all honestly, thank god. It’s time for Cobra Kai to die because I don’t think it even knows what it is anymore.
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