#Cue that Utopia meme but it's 'Daniel learns a goddamn lesson ever'

[purplerakath]

Cobra Kai S1 - Undercutting Sam's Plot

This has been rattling around in my brain (sorry not sorry for all the CK S1 posts as I work on fic). So Sam has some really good set-up for a narrative in S1 but it gets undercut, twice, for two different male plots (the first time is for Miguel, the second time is for Johnny even if it looks like it's also for Miguel).

So, off the bat, Cobra Kai has a sorting algorithm for its primary cast, who gets priority over whom changes across seasons, but in Season one it is as follows:

Johnny

Miguel

Robby

Daniel

Sam

Hawk

Aisha

Demetri

Which means if you can do a satisfying thing for only one character, whoever is higher on the list wins out.

Kyler

So the first time Sam gets derailed is with the cafeteria fight. Sam has done a whole arc of 'being friends with the bitchy popular kids' followed by 'having morals' and 'deciding she doesn't want those kinds of friends.' Solid concept, no notes.

...except Sam isn't the one to beat the smug off Kyler's face, Miguel does. Because Miguel's arc is about gathering the confidence and skills to stand up to the people who made him suffer, especially when they make that girl he likes suffer. So a moment that could very well be Sam's big moment of defining herself never happens.

And because of this Sam spends the next few episodes with no friends, and her entire life caught up in two dopey karate boys, and her dad. Which... is probably best saved for another post (Daniel outplaces Sam on that sorting list, but he also is immune to recognizing his mistakes).

Miguel

So where Kyler was taken from Sam so Miguel could move along his journey, Sam broke up with Miguel to move Johnny along his... a few steps removed.

Alright so the arc between Cafeteria Fight and Yaz's birthday party is a lot of Sam being torn between 'really liking Miguel' and 'knowing her dad will never approve for various bullshit Daniel reasons.' So Sam lies about it, and Sam's otherwise so isolated thanks to the previous botched plot her social circle is two boys destined to hate each other.

Without the Sam bit... Robby would still go out of his way to mess with Miguel's head because Robby is jealous that Johnny is being a father to Miguel. Also Robby has a chip on his shoulder the size of Wyoming, he's just vaguely an asshole sometimes.

Now what should be a moment for Sam to get caught in a lie hiding Miguel, or getting in trouble coming clean about Miguel, is a complex Rube Goldberg machine of failed communication so that Robby and Miguel have more reason to hate each other, all for the benefit of Johnny's narrative.

See, the best part of Season One is the pyrrhic victory of Miguel winning the All-Valley. Johnny watching Miguel, Hawk, and Aisha be so overtly unsporting and violent in ways he knows Kreese would love is meant to sour the taste of this win. Johnny's next character beat is how much he disliked Miguel winning.

He didn't get the vicarious joy of winning he wanted. Because Kreese would be happy, and Robby got hurt. (Aside: they could have sold it better by having Miguel's excess aggression on non-Robby fighters cause Johnny flashbacks to Karate Kid). And all of this needs to be cemented in something easy to understand as to why a sweet kid like Miguel would turn into an absolute jackass.

Cue sad angsty boy times over a girl here. So he has to break up with Sam. Which I get, it helps feed the narrative but honestly? They could have done this without Sam being convolutedly taken off the grid to get there. Robby was primed to make Miguel angry, Miguel already disliked Robby.

More Asides: Daniel not being there for Sam's grounding robbed us of him getting to see Johnny wasn't lying. Daniel only finding out after the break-up gave us his smug unhelpful to narrative 'I told you so' which sucked because a lot of Sam's inner conflict was from pressure out of Daniel he never has to face. I swear, I swear, I'll stop on the Daniel stuff (for now).

The only arc of Sam's that gets completely worked through is the Aisha one, which has its own problem (but that's a Season 2 thing not a Season 1 thing). Which is honestly the most toothless of the three? What Sam did to Aisha sucked, don't get me wrong. But so much of that was tied into her other two 'where I belong' plots (with the popular assholes, and with her dad's expectations) had so much more meat to them. But the show didn't work them to a satisfying end.