Purple
(She/Her)
So I've seen people talking about how this show Cobra Kai is surprisingly good, and having watched about a season and a half, I agree, but I was under the impression that it was like, a good compelling drama. And I mean, you can kinda make a case for that too, but MOSTLY it's a good black comedy taking the whole premise of The Karate Kid and calling out how absurd it is that anyone would actually be that emotionally invested in a regional children's karate tournament, and how there's no way anyone could remain interested in such as an adult without being some sort of totally lost in the past loser. Which would make it a mean-spirited parody if it weren't... also an actual direct continuation with basically every remaining living actor coming back to play the same characters.
So, the general all around '80s teen movie bully/star pupil of the Evil Karate School from yon 1984 sports movie is our protagonist, and we are straight up stating that losing that particular annual regional karate tournament for children is the defining moment of his life from which he has never recovered, and never will. And aside from having a kid he never sees at some point in there he never really tried to do anything else with his life, to the extent of never owning a computer, listening to any new music, or watching any new movies or TV, just assuming human culture peaked in the mid-80s and shutting out the world to the point where he basically just Rip Van Winkled into a 55 year-old while still being a mid-80s high school bully.
And he's just great. Like every line out of his mouth is a solid joke where the punchline is that he really is that dumb/naive/sexist/convinced he is a cool badass.
Who also manages to be a likable, generally morally righteous protagonist, in that special way that's really only possible if you are a ridiculous cartoon character.
Meanwhile the protagonist of The Karate Kid who ruined his whole life path by beating him once in a small annual regional karate competition for children has grown up to be... a fairly successful used car salesman who heavily leans on how he's locally known for winning that karate tournament as a teenager and putting karate based puns in his ads and giving out bonsai trees to customers and everyone kinda low key thinks the whole gimmick is kinda weird and sad and culturally appropriative.
Anyway, this intially pretty convoluted and eventually just increasingly convoluted series of events involving an ever-growing group of teenage kids and repeated damage to various bits of property gets our protagonist into a mindset that the best thing he can do with his life is to mentor some random kid he bumped into in the only way he knows how- Reestablishing the local Evil Karate Dojo with him as the only student and also not being particularly actually evil this time, but definitely being stylistically evil because like black gi with snakes on the back are just cool lookin' and the evil motto makes sense as life advice when you are a huge loser who peaked in high school as a villainous karate rival.
And then The Karate No Longer A Kid sees the name and is all NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I must drop everything I'm doing and ignore my pretty successful career and family to do everything in my power to stop the terror that is The Evil Karate Dojo from spreading its dark influence across the land once more! Typically rationalizing this Quixotic crusade by reminding everyone that when he was a teenager like 4 kids once pushed him down a hill and that's definitely the sort of thing that must be being taught in there. To this one pretty good-hearted harmless kid.
And from there the whole thing is basically just these two tumbling towards mutually assured destruction while everyone else in the world is still just baffled at all the energy and financial resources they're devoting to a conflict that has so little actual motive behind it for either of them that they pretty regularly start to bury the hatchet and become friends but then the ridiculous teen drama ball bounces over to make a fresh compelling case to each of them that no the other secretly IS totally evil and plotting against them and they must continue their convoluted plot for revenge that must involve teenage karate rivals fighting in a tournament to represent their opposed ideologies that they both sheepishly kind of admit they're mostly just winging form fuzzy childhood memories.
But yeah the whole show is super self-aware about it and just reveling in how pathetic they both are.
Also the ever-growing cast of teens is pretty consistently likeable and they manage to keep throwing a ton of fuel on the drama fire without the entirely too typical problem in shows that keep throwing drama at people to stop them from being friends of arbitrary secret keeping, instead going for the much more fun absurdly ridiculous coincidences. Like "I genuinely had no idea that my child destroyed your car and then I also accidentally adopted your child, these things just happen sometimes!"
Oh and also the teen swarm just kinda naturally turn into just like... straight up beat'em up enemies having ninja fights in the street as a natural byproduct of the arbitrary conflict and that's also just really fun.
So, the general all around '80s teen movie bully/star pupil of the Evil Karate School from yon 1984 sports movie is our protagonist, and we are straight up stating that losing that particular annual regional karate tournament for children is the defining moment of his life from which he has never recovered, and never will. And aside from having a kid he never sees at some point in there he never really tried to do anything else with his life, to the extent of never owning a computer, listening to any new music, or watching any new movies or TV, just assuming human culture peaked in the mid-80s and shutting out the world to the point where he basically just Rip Van Winkled into a 55 year-old while still being a mid-80s high school bully.
And he's just great. Like every line out of his mouth is a solid joke where the punchline is that he really is that dumb/naive/sexist/convinced he is a cool badass.
Who also manages to be a likable, generally morally righteous protagonist, in that special way that's really only possible if you are a ridiculous cartoon character.
Meanwhile the protagonist of The Karate Kid who ruined his whole life path by beating him once in a small annual regional karate competition for children has grown up to be... a fairly successful used car salesman who heavily leans on how he's locally known for winning that karate tournament as a teenager and putting karate based puns in his ads and giving out bonsai trees to customers and everyone kinda low key thinks the whole gimmick is kinda weird and sad and culturally appropriative.
Anyway, this intially pretty convoluted and eventually just increasingly convoluted series of events involving an ever-growing group of teenage kids and repeated damage to various bits of property gets our protagonist into a mindset that the best thing he can do with his life is to mentor some random kid he bumped into in the only way he knows how- Reestablishing the local Evil Karate Dojo with him as the only student and also not being particularly actually evil this time, but definitely being stylistically evil because like black gi with snakes on the back are just cool lookin' and the evil motto makes sense as life advice when you are a huge loser who peaked in high school as a villainous karate rival.
And then The Karate No Longer A Kid sees the name and is all NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I must drop everything I'm doing and ignore my pretty successful career and family to do everything in my power to stop the terror that is The Evil Karate Dojo from spreading its dark influence across the land once more! Typically rationalizing this Quixotic crusade by reminding everyone that when he was a teenager like 4 kids once pushed him down a hill and that's definitely the sort of thing that must be being taught in there. To this one pretty good-hearted harmless kid.
And from there the whole thing is basically just these two tumbling towards mutually assured destruction while everyone else in the world is still just baffled at all the energy and financial resources they're devoting to a conflict that has so little actual motive behind it for either of them that they pretty regularly start to bury the hatchet and become friends but then the ridiculous teen drama ball bounces over to make a fresh compelling case to each of them that no the other secretly IS totally evil and plotting against them and they must continue their convoluted plot for revenge that must involve teenage karate rivals fighting in a tournament to represent their opposed ideologies that they both sheepishly kind of admit they're mostly just winging form fuzzy childhood memories.
But yeah the whole show is super self-aware about it and just reveling in how pathetic they both are.
Also the ever-growing cast of teens is pretty consistently likeable and they manage to keep throwing a ton of fuel on the drama fire without the entirely too typical problem in shows that keep throwing drama at people to stop them from being friends of arbitrary secret keeping, instead going for the much more fun absurdly ridiculous coincidences. Like "I genuinely had no idea that my child destroyed your car and then I also accidentally adopted your child, these things just happen sometimes!"
Oh and also the teen swarm just kinda naturally turn into just like... straight up beat'em up enemies having ninja fights in the street as a natural byproduct of the arbitrary conflict and that's also just really fun.
