#sorry for the essay but you did ask and activated my special interest trap card

[philcoulsonismyhero]

Yeah, no, that’s pretty much it and it is Highly entertaining. There’s also about a dozen incredibly ridiculous teenagers getting into nonsense karate antics thanks to the influence of those maladjusted middle aged men. The whole thing is deeply silly and knows it, but it’s also really surprisingly earnest about that. Like, the events are ridiculous but the character arcs and the relationships are all very genuine. It really takes that 80s movie earnestness and runs with it.

The main thing I find appealing about it is that the entire Central Theme is ‘what makes a good mentor vs a bad mentor’. There’s a lot of very sweet relationships between the main two guys and the kids that end up in their lives, and a lot of really interesting stuff being unpacked re: their own mentors and the influences they had for both good and bad. Plus, there’s the whole rivalry which turns into a really delightful rivals to reluctant allies to friends arc that takes 4+ seasons to actually reach the ‘friends’ point because every time they get anywhere one of them does something stupid and ruins everything. The whole show is basically ‘watch these trainwreck losers slowly and reluctantly figure out their own and each other’s shit until they reach a point of genuine friendship’ and it’s very sweet and deeply compelling.

There’s also a whole thing with basically all of the kids at one point or another falling under the influence of Johnny’s shitty mentor (and later said bastard’s villain bestie from the third movie) and becoming angry bullying little shits until they eventually get some positive adult influences in their life and start to change for the better and reject the toxic shit they’ve been taught. The show has a really nice attitude of ‘sometimes teens are shitty, that’s usually not their fault’ and seems determined to eventually drag all of them to a more positive and healthy place even if it takes multiple seasons of character arc. It’s just very well-meaning overall? 

But also yes, it is fundamentally ridiculous and Johnny and Daniel’s bullshit is So entertaining to watch, as well as all the unhinged shit the teens get up to. The only character who lives in the real world is Daniel’s wife Amanda, and she’s an icon and a delight and blessedly free of ‘nagging wife’ tropes. And even she eventually realises that the only way to solve this mess her husband’s ridiculous karate enemies are making is to play along with the karate movie tropes.

It’s also just a really good sequel to the Karate Kid movies? I’d only seen the first one when I watched the whole show and it gave more than enough context and flashbacks for everything to make perfect sense. Then I actually watched the rest of the trilogy and ended up appreciating everything even more. The show takes all the stuff that happened to Daniel in those movies and is like ‘hey, that was Fucked Up’ and extrapolates where he’d be as a adult who didn’t really deal with any of it properly at the time, and then brings it all back to torment him to force him to actually deal with it. And to his credit, he does! Takes him five seasons (at least), but still. Same with Johnny. They may start out as maladjusted middle aged men, but they grow and I’m very proud of them both.

It’s a fun ride, and the nonsense going on between the adults is so deeply enjoyable that even I, a notorious Teen Romance Drama Hater, was willing to put up with the obnoxious teenage love square that they spent far too much time on in s2. (And seemed to realise was a bit excessive, so they dialled that drama back a bit from there.) A fun time, fun characters, and an Extremely good soundtrack, frankly, there is No reason for the music to go that hard. I didn’t expect to enjoy it nearly as much as I have.

okay I'm biting what is the allure of this cobra kai show. from the gifsets it seems to be about two maladjusted middle aged men starting karate fights all over california, which is objectively one of the saddest things you could be doing as a maladjusted middle aged man