f13.net

Is there really not a thread for this?

If you've been living under a rock: this started as a show on YouTube Red, and was probably the only good thing ever on YouTube Red.  It's a Karate Kid sequel/reboot that features most of the original cast and initially focuses on Johnny (the main bad guy of the original movie) as a middle-aged alcoholic trying to start his own karate dojo so he can pass his wisdom on to the next generation.  It's much better than it has any right to be, and it got picked up by Netflix so now you don't have to deal with YouTube to watch it.

Anyway, S4 is out now and I just finished binging it.  I was worried the show might be on a slow downhill slide, but I liked this season better than the last one.

I'm looking forward to Season 5. This really is a fun show and I've been enjoying. I will say, Impulse was pretty good too as was a sci-fi show they had whose name I forget but neither survived Youtube Red sadly.

It's still a lot of fun. As I mentioned in Discord though, it really needs to wrap up some of their go-to drama story beats though. The Miguel/Robbie/Sam/Tory love... square I guess you could call it, Johnny having to choose between being a father to Robbie or Miguel, all the times Johnny and Daniel almost reach an understanding or grudging respect only to backslide.

Miguel's status for next season almost looks like something they would do if they were expecting him to not have much availability for the season, but they've already wrapped up filming season 5, and Blue Beetle is still in pre-production so if there's a schedule conflict it wouldn't be until season 6, so... I don't know.

There's were small bits this season where Robbie wasn't just absolutely bland to watch which was kind of a first for me. Meanwhile Miguel just seemed a little off. Like after 3 season of being the main focus of the kids, they maybe didn't really know what to do with him.

There are so many things wrong with this show, including:


And yet, it still totally works for me.  Maybe it is Zabka.  I squeal like a school girl every time he yells QUIET!! at someone.

In the season finale, everyone's wearing a black belt, including the noobs.

I'm not sure if this is true, but I was told by one of my martial arts teachers once upon a time that before the colored belt system (which is a relatively recent invention), the standard belt color was white, and the longer you used it, the grimier it got, so you could tell roughly how long somebody had been training by how dark their belt was.  Hence "black belt" for an advanced student, but it was something that happened naturally rather than something you were awarded.  It would fit for Miyagi Do to ignore the concept of ranks entirely in favor of an "everyone is on their own journey" hippy-dippy philosophy.

That said, it absolutely doesn't make sense for Cobra Kai to not have a strict pecking order.  In the original Karate Kid movie you can see that the Cobra Kais do have different belt colors.


What I got from the end of this season was that they'd both done some introspection and actually grown up enough to not keep repeating that same pattern, which is why I liked it so much.  Maybe they'll prove me wrong and just reset at the start of the next season.  We'll see.

They only had the black belts during the tournament.  In any case, it was just something I thought was a bit funny, no big deal.

And yes, the dude that plays Johnny is carrying the shit out of this. Well, him and Stingray.

As far as the complaint by Cyrexx about the actors not knowing Karate, I mean, they know enough to fake it and make a non-martial artist like me enjoy the show. Sure, sometimes a kick looks clumsy or whatever but it can usually be excused by they're really still beginners or in the case of the older men, they're, well, older now. I mean, if you're going to comment about anything Karate Kid related revealing the actor doesn't know Karate then why did you start Cobra Kai in the first place? You have watched the movies correct?

I'm thoroughly enjoying the series - the one thing I took from the last episode of S4 is that

I have to say I love Cobra Kai. But it also feels like it spent like 4 seasons trying to find a villain we actually want to see get taken down (sorta). And dear god are these characters moody! It's one thing for the kids to make drastic shifts in mood and attitude episode to episode but the adults can't regulate their emotions either. Almost as if the show is trying to say "learning how to beat people up is a form of arrested development." Which is a  :why_so_serious: but meh, a perfect show can't give me everything.

This continues to be fantastic. Easily my favorite reboot/sequel/reimagining from back in the day. My only concern is that the kids are rapidly starting to look older. Miguel in particular does not look like a high school junior anymore.

Season Five trailer up. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrmx6gc0a8I)

The really escalate the action in the finale every time and this season is no exception.

Just finished watching the current season. Cheesy, cliche, call it what you want, but it's still good fun.