Over the weekend, when I was having one of those nights where I didn’t feel like I had any real time to do anything, so I was instead just sitting around dicking around on my phone min-maxing my Duolingo XP as well as playing Fire Emblem Heroes, my au pair pokes her head into the media room and asks if I had started watching the final installment of Cobra Kai S6.
I looked at her perplexed and asked if it had dropped yet, and she said that it just released. I looked at the clock and immediately grabbed the remote, and I said, why the fuck are we not watching it right now then?
We ended up watching four episodes and then it was 1 am, and I said that I needed to stop so that I wouldn’t be butt-tired in the morning, and that I wanted to save the final episode for the following day, preferably in a scenario where mythical wife wasn’t aware that we were going to watch it in front of her, since she’s such a giant fan of the show like we are.
Mission accomplished, and with that, the saga that is Cobra Kai is finally completed.
Frankly, it’s a show that desperately needed finality, not just because it’s the worst show in existence that had no right to be good as it was, but as is the case with any show that features child actors, it’s been like 6-7 years since the show started, and all the youth talent was growing the fuck up faster than kudzu, and the show needed to wrap up ASAP, before Dimitri grew to 7 ft. tall and Kenny turned into Terry Crews.
[Obviously at this point, spoiler alert is on, because I’m probably going to say shit that would be construed as spoilers]
I would say that my ability to predict the general story of the show was probably around like 80% accurate. It was one of the most predictable plots in the history of television, and there was almost nothing that wasn’t surprising, other than the constant parade of throwbacks of characters from the films of the 80s and 90s that were brought back out, completely unrecognizable from their original appearances.
But good on Darryl Vidal, the actual martial artist who parlayed his talent into a spot in the original Karate Kid, for making his inevitable throwback appearance, and being able to get a paycheck for his participation. It was almost like a cherry on top of the long list of throwbacks utilized throughout the show.
The funny thing about the show is that between Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, the creators of Cobra Kai, one or more of them are massive professional wrestling fans, based on all the little easter eggs scattered throughout the show that outed themselves for their fandom, like WWE shirts, Stingray blasting Chris Jericho’s Judas song and of course, the casting of Dr. Britt Baker, DMD as the evil Russian women’s coach.
But also the fact that the show utilized a tremendous amount of wrestling logic as far as its storytelling went, with how often good guys turned bad, and how bad guys sometimes did good things, and the constant waffling of allegiances throughout the series. It’s textbook pro-wrestling good/bad alignment, and over the course of the series, characters dipped their toes in both ends of the pool, some more than others. Such is also why the show remained so painfully predictable as far as the viewing experience went for me, but still didn’t change the fact that almost every minute of the show basically feels like a guilty pleasure at how much I enjoyed the entire journey.
Just about every single storyline and arc was neatly tied up by the time the show ended, and I don’t really recall there being any genuine loose ends that weren’t addressed, or could even lead to seeds of doubt that the series is definitively over, because it most certainly definitely is over at this point, considering the news of the future Karate Kid project already in the works by Ralph Macchio and Jackie Chan that I won’t watch the previews to either, which is symbolic of the fact that I still have intention of seeing it in a serious capacity, but also the fact that the entire cast is basically ready or needs to move on, because nobody’s going to believe any of these grown-ass young adults remaining high schoolers or college freshmen.
[And here come the spoilers] Kreese’s redemption. Terry Silver’s demise. Carmen and Johnny’s kid being born. Mr. Miyagi wasn’t a murderer after all so much as he was pulling some vigilante justice. Even Chozen finds a happy ending going to Korea to reunited with Kim Da-eun after she murdered her grandfather to take over 코브라 카이.
Basically all of the main characters getting to win the Sekai Taikai, even to where even Johnny himself got himself a final boss and ended up being the main event in the process. There’s logic to everything that occurs throughout the final third of a season, neatly and efficiently tying off all the branches of the show’s timeline in the process.
Frankly, I had Robby winning the boy’s Sekai Taikai, considering he was the runner-up in all previous show tournaments, and I thought he was a shoe-in to be the final winner so he could get his moment in the sun. Subsequently, I felt the same for Sam, seeing as how she was the runner up to a controversial loss to Tory in the second All-Valley, and assumed she was going to be the final girl’s winner to cap off the show. But it was almost like the creators knew that all the viewers were predicting that, and in typical wrestling writer logic, they tweaked the script to swerve all the viewers, and gave the final W’s to Miguel and Tory, which honestly I’m okay with.
But I loved the Sekai Taikai logic of having senseis battle it out for the tie-breaker, and it was just so convenient that it was two able-bodied men available to do such, in Johnny and Wolf, whom I fucking hated his gross-ass pube-y facial hair. But beside the point, imagine if it were the Korean 코브라 카이 that were in a tie breaker, would they have sent the Pai Mei-looking grandpa with the terrible Korean diction all the way from deepest darkest Pyeongyang to go fight in the Sekai Taikai against Wolf? Or what if it were like a dojo that had a female sensei, would they have had her have to fight against a sociopathic narcissist fighter like Wolf?
Whatever though, it was so neatly arranged so that Johnny could have a final boss, because of course he had to have a final boss, because the show is called fucking Cobra Kai, and was always meant to be the story of Johnny Lawrence, no matter how many characters showed up to his stratosphere over six and 3/3 seasons.
But if there was ever a singular moment where I had to stand up and scream fuck you! to the television screen, it was the moment where Daniel was having a hallucination of fighting against all the skeleton-suit clad Cobra Kais of 1984, alongside a CGI Mr. Miyagi, that had my jaw on the ground screaming what the fuck, fuck you that they would commit such a travesty of putting a horribly CG’d Mr. Miyagi onto the screen, with his fake ass and soulless eyes that were worse than the CG in The Polar Express.
Sure, I get that such an extreme dream was the reason that effectively killed off the whole arc of Miyagi-do, but I don’t think I’ve felt so visually scarred by something since like Black Mirror or Justice League Dark. Seeing CGI Miyagi was absolutely horrid and something I hope to never see again in my lifetime. Just seeing those lifeless, beady fake CG eyes, completely incapable of accurately looking directly at Daniel-san.. yeah no, fuck that shit. Worst part of the series for me, bar none.
However, if there was one prediction that I made that completely fell flat on its face, was the lack of appearances by either Hilary Swank, Jackie Chan or even Will or Jaden Smith. The Sekai Taikai would have made it extremely easy for any one of these guys to have made their cameos and basically clear the board of callbacks, but I suppose in the grand spectrum of Johnny Lawrence’s universe, none of them really have any business appearing, but by that logic then Chozen or any sort of travels to Suwanee Okinawa and the High Museum of Art Doyona really had no place being in this show either.
Whatever though, I figured at least one of the four could have realistically made a quick cameo, but it’s not really a big deal that they didn’t. Purely an, I would be right want for me to have seen them at all, not that they would really have accomplished anything particularly positive to the show as a whole.
Either way, as much as I clowned on, dreaded and bemoaned the development and arrival of a Cobra Kai series, I’ll be the very first to admit just how much I enjoyed the show, from start to finish. Billy Zabka lit the world on fire with her performance, and he honestly ratchets it up in the final third of the final season. His last moment with Kreese really illustrates how good of an actor he really is capable of being.
As I’ve said numerous times, it’s a show that has no right to be as good as it is, and the real charm of the entire show is the fact that it’s very much self-aware of such a thing, and the whole show has basically operated at a level of looseness and freedom that parties with absolutely no pressure to succeed are capable of enjoying, and it really showed.
I know shows that wrap up so neatly and cleanly often get criticized for doing such, but at the same time, television is really for a degree of escapism, and not everything we watch has to be full of plot holes, loose ends, and ambiguity over if this is really the end or not. Sometimes, the best endings really are knowing that it’s truly the end, and that short of spin-offs, or in this case, a spin-off of a spin-off, the story is over, and we can go to bed comfortably knowing that the book is closed, and put in the shelf to be fondly remembered, and not into the pile of donations later.
Fare thee well, Cobra Kai. Vaya con dios. /bow with honor
