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Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today we learn that Cobra Kai will never die, that some characters plotlines will always be a reset, and that adults are never ever ever around when kids start fighting. Yes, it is we are back talking about Cobra Kai Season six, the final season, though there are movies coming out still,
the Cobra Kai universe apparently will go on forever. It is myself, Matthew Fox, Riki Hayashi, and our normal co host for Superherothics and returning guest original co host Grand High Pooba of Wrong Opinions, Paul Hoppy. Okay, so we're back in the Cobra Kai world. We have the first five episodes. What do we think?
Yeah, so season six, part one of three. That's how they're released.
The first third of season season.
Six, which is okay, like that's a that's the thing.
You can do now, right, that's just that what it is.
I So, if any show can be a guilty pleasure for me, this is a guilty pleasure for me in that enjoy this. I enjoy this show because I enjoyed The Karate Kid the original movie, and I feel a little guilty for enjoying it because gosh, there's so many like problematic things going on, like in the show universe, and like I guess we'll say production of the show. I'm not sure that it makes me like should I
be enjoying this? I don't know, but I do because like it was basically made for me and us, right, like people of our age generation. It's basically the target audience.
I feel like, Yeah, I mean, I think they're trying to hit a broad swath by having, you know, the protagonists be younger and have that the way to kind of I imagine in their mind try to attract a younger audience. But definitely, i'd say the heart of the show is as kind.
Of yeah, the nostalgia media, Like we get so much of it with reboots and stuff, and this is just a nostalgic TV series pining for the eighties of the karatey kid.
I mean, I think it's both of what you're talking about, because this is gonna be a weird thought because all three of us I know are very young at heart, but quite a lot of folks our age and of our generation even a little older, have kids who are about the age of the younger protagonists in this show,
or a little younger. And I think that what I'm seeing is that a lot of these nostalgia eighties shows, especially ones that are nostalgia for the teen shows of the eighties and movies, it's aimed at us who were kids then, and I was also aimed at, you know, the kids of our generation. The idea that you know, families can watch together and stuff like that. Yeah, I
kind of a similar feeling of it. I am. I don't know if I would have watched it if we weren't recording on it, but I wanted to watch it, so I kind of twisted your arms so that we could record on it because I feel like there's so much that I don't like about it and so much I'm frustrated about, but I'm still like glad that I'm watching it.
Yeah, I would say that I enjoy the show but I don't particularly like it.
That's fair, that's fair.
I like that. I like that, and and the term guilty pleasure popped into my head, and like, I don't feel guilty about watching it because I don't feel like a lot of people were harmed in the making of it. And for what I feel like, it's not like deeply trafficking and problematic stereotypes, but I feel like it's and we can certainly get into that. I'm sure we will, but like, at the same time, it's definitely it's definitely not doing a very good job in the other direction either, Yeah, right,
Like I feel like it. There's a lot to say there, and that's that's a whole thing. But like I think there's a lot of shows and movies that are or
have done a lot worse in those regards. As a martial artist, I find it fun to watch martial arts school related comment content, and not just as a martial artist, but as someone who ran a martial arts school for a couple of years and taught for you know, over a decade, Like I can relate to a lot of this stuff, But then also there's this like that's that's not right, Like, you know, like down to like small things like watching you know them practice tong sudo and
I don't even know where they were. I don't know. I like I thought they were in Korea, but like maybe they were in a forest in southern California. I'm not not sure.
No, I think that was all supposed to be in Korea.
Was supposed to be in Korea, Okay, because I was watching that, Yeah yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right, But like I also feel like that wasn't super clear because like how the heck did Grease get to Korea in back just like that when he's.
Yeah, there's a warrant out for his.
Own yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Military, so therefore he had contact.
Yeah exactly. Like they're speaking in you know, in Korean, they're you know, huge hug, like come on, like you know, Hanna Du said, like there, it's like, ah, this is like a taekwondo class. Well it's not taekwondo, it's it's tongue, which is another martial art. But then they're like sense since I'm like, ah oh, And to be fair, I've
never practiced tongue sudo, so I can't say authoritatively. You don't call someone sense in tongue sudo, but like in taekwondo and any other Korean martial arts, as far as I'm aware, like that's not that's that's the Japanese word, like you say some of him or kuan jan him is like the grandmaster and and so it's like it felt like they were like, yes, we're gonna at these seats, but not this one.
That seems like a big detail to not get right because yes, sense literally is just the word teacher, like if you're in school, you have your sense is as well. So it's not like a deeply rooted in martial arts word, right, and it would need to be used in this context exactly.
And the very first I just wanted this last bit the very first episode of Cobra Kai, which I rewatched, and I was like this show was a little better in the beginning, but like yeah, okay, it's like yes, yes, sir, it's like sense, yes, sense, And Johnny's so insistent on using the word sense, you know, and it's like, well what do you be, Like what is that? But anyway, I digress. Let's let's regress or something.
I think for many people, like it could be a guilty pleasure, could be just family watching whatever it is. For some folks, this podcast is a guilty pleasure.
Uh.
And so there are many folks you probably are listening along with us who haven't actually seen the show. M m. And many times I would say, go hit stop, make your life better by watching the show. Oh I can't say that now. I think you'll enjoy it. I think you'll maybe throw some things at the screen. But some people enjoy that kind of thing too. But for anyone who hasn't, let me get a quick plot summary, and you guys fill in anything that I miss. That's like vital.
So we start with peace in the valley. The antagonists from last season have all been arrested or been otherwise taken care of. All the romantic pairings have settled down among the teens, all the family situations and dojo verse dojo stuff has settled down. Everyone's happy under Miagi Doo Ego Fang. We just don't have a name yet. And there's peace. And when Danny says that in the first epening scenes of the episode, of course you know that
that won't last. Turns out that everybody's been invited to this World Fighting Tournament, a world martial arts tournament that is maybe a world Karate tournament, but has not really said that that is maybe an under eighteen tournament, but that's not actually said. That is you have to be like some of the best in the world. But three of the teams from a regional part of one state of one nation have all gotten invites to That's interesting,
but the point is that's happening. So everyone's trying to train, and there's tension between Danny and Johnny as always about what's gonna be the name of the dojo and who's gonna be the focus and what's gonna be the focus. Johnny is kind of back to a lot of his same old ways, which I don't love. We'll talk about that in a bit. But also he's gonna become a parent, so there's just this kind of like everyone's there's tension.
They kind of settle on that will do a kind of Miagi do but have a little bit of eagle thing in it. There's a fang now over the tree and the logo. Johnny tries to like embrace Miyagi do, but also to put a little the aggression into it, and there's some ridiculous sexism involved in that. And a bachelor in a slumber party scene. But moving on, there's a lot of little like high jinks that feel like they're fun but are also just kind of like killing time.
There's a plot line about what college some of the kids are going to go to. There's a plot line about Johnny trying to find a new apartment. But all this time, we've also found that Chris has gone to Korea, back to the school of Matt sense Kim, uncle Kim, grandfather Kim. I guess he's referred to here for those who watched the last season, the woman who came in to be a co leader with Crease of cobra Kai who was absolutely not a sexy Asian dragon lady stereotype,
not in the slightest I said, with some sarcasm. We find out that she only got trained by her grandfather
because Chris like fought to help that happen. He has to come back and prove himself to the same grandfather, and when he does by having hallucinogenic situation by being bitten by a cobra, realizing that he has to stop trying to save Johnny and kill the cobra, kill Johnny and basically become a Sith lord, because then he then tells everybody that, like the way to the way you to feed people with heart is to be heartless and
to embrace your anger. The words he says are actually pretty similar to the Sith code in a way that I found kind of amusing. And so all of this is building to a number of things. Tori is still having problems. She doesn't feel quite accepted by the group, and we find out that her mother winds up dying. Her mother had always had serious medical problems, some of
them were drug related. Her mother dies, she doesn't tell anyone, and because the next day is supposed to be the big challenge to pick who are going to be the captains of the team that's going to this big tournament the shai kai is that how you pronounce it, secon eye taykai, thank you you you can get that wrong. We'd already had a couple of competitions to find out who are the six from Miagido who are going to go and represent and now the question is going to
be who's going to be the captain? And the boys fight, Robbie wins he'll be the captain. The girls are in the middle of a fight. Tory is clearly very upset,
but she's fighting well. And when she is presumably very likely about to make a point on Sam and and even up the fight at two to two, the fight stops because Danny LaRusso and his wife and a Manna Lusso have found out that Tory's mother has died, and they have decided on her behalf that of course she must not want to fight, and so the fight should be stopped, and they make a big deal about how she's not in a right mind to make this decision
right now, she gets angry and storms off. They immediately decide, well, then she was in the right mind to quit, so we're going to replace her on the team without any attempt to her back. And then we all get to the tournament and the different teams are introduced, and then here comes a Cobra Kai team with a couple of Korean fighters we saw who There's a whole plot line there about you know, you have to slay the master
in order to become the master. Again, very sith related here, although the apprentice gets to stick around, just with a very bad black eye this time. And then who will join them as their female captain. Of course it's Tori. Is that a fair overview of the main issues we discussed with the main issues that come up in the in the season.
I feel like you skipped the bakeoff, baking competition or whatever other irrelevant activities they did to choose the six, Like they get this barns that's what was he in three or something. He's the guy who got his furniture store burned down.
Yeah, oh yeah, that's right.
And just in the martial arts aspects, like he actually his uniform or his belt says shotocn on it, which is a specific style of car that's like not the same as whatever else. The rest of them are grant but and they asked him to choose the six and then he has them play like capture the Flag, and like it's just it's all just very like, let's turn this into like one of those reality shows where we're like eliminating people and who will be the last two eliminated?
You're safe and you're safe, but that and it's just like okay, yeah, you know. So that that I felt like was actually the the main thing. Oh and then there's a thing with Miagi has some like dark past that we didn't know about and he I hate it, right, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I was like, okay, but yeah it Honestly, to me, it felt like it was kind of all over the place, and the main idea was Miaggito choosing six members to go to this ak Tai Kai and then Cobra Kai
doing the same. Did they have any other female students? No female captain by default? Then yea.
You know, there's a whole plot line about the grandfather not wanting to let his granddaughter train because girls shouldn't do martial arts. He lets her train. She's the master of the school now, but there's still no women right right. I want to get into the martial arts. I want to get into plot and all of that.
I do.
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All the informations on our website, and of course on that website also is all the information about how to give us feedback or on the Acolyte on Star Wars. We have a couple of great pieces of feedback we're going to talk about. We would love to get some more about Cobra Kai. We have other episodes coming up on Superherotics, so they're gonna be mostly based out of feedback. Send us tweets, send us email, send us you know,
messages to the website. Message on TikTok. Often I would say carry our pigeons, but they're probably not very kind to animals. So while Paul is here, I would say, only if this is like a pigeon that has landed on you and has like, let you know, it wants to be a carrier pigeon of its own free will, which would be quite a story and I probably would want to invict. You want to tell us about that?
Yeah, yeah, I'd love to hear about it that.
Please think up becoming a member. Please send us in your feedback. Now back to our conversation. Let's talk about how martial arts is portrayed in the show, because it seems you both have and I will say, I want you to know how diverse a perspective on the show we have. Because Paul can talk quite a lot about his time as a professional running a martial arts school.
I can talk about my time as a professional car salesman, which is also a very important plot point and is also I think God is inaccurately as some of the stuff about martial arts is. So either Paul or RIQUI take us away.
Do it? Paul? Is this even karate?
I mean, I don't know, like yes and no. Right. So here's the thing. When we first covered I think seasons one and two and maybe three, I forget what
was out. I think we did one and two back in the day, and my guess was that Cobra Kai was based on Kyokushen Karate, which was created by Maso Yama, who is Korean Japanese, and it has this reputation for being extraordinarily brutal and just like a you know, like he he invented this like hundred person kumite where like you fight one hundred people in a row as like a test. You know, he fought bulls, which I'm not in favor of, but I will say he did it
with his bare hands. And if you're gonna fight a bull, doing it with your bare hands seems more respectable to me than having some you know, manufactured weapon. But like it was this style that like really clearly to me matched up with kind of the Cobra Kai style. It turns out that Cobra Kai is actually more based on toms Sudo, which is is sometimes referred to as Korean karate. Right, Like the first time I took taekwondo, my teacher called it.
My teacher s henri Cho, which was one of the first people to teach martial arts in the United States.
He and he had a dojang on and he called it Korean Karate, and he wrote books called like the Secrets of Korean Karate and this that might be the exact title, but that was basically because Americans were familiar with the word karate, right, or karte or however you want to you know, whether you want to pronounce it like in Japanese or I feel like there's an English American pronunciation that like is like an English word now, but that's kind of neither here nor there.
And the martial art itself has evolved, as you said, like with the mixing of cultures and styles exactly first in Asia and now in the America. It's like you look at like mixed martial arts like jiu jitsu, like how they have thrived and grown in South America, like Brazilian jiu jitsu.
Like is a thing very different from the truths yeah, right, And tanks udo the name means like way of the China hands or fist, right, which is also what karthe originally met.
Right. And then in like nineteen thirty five, the character that was used for kara was changed because it's I think it's like a homophone right to like empty hand.
Yeah, okay, And that.
Just happened to kind of coincide with Japan attacking China and stuff like that, so you know, there was like a but at the same time, like it's very legitimate that like the roots of karate came from China like hundreds of years ago through Okinawa and then Okinawa also I think was independent, right and then got annexed or and in Korean martial arts, in taekwondo, like we have two patterns that are named after Korean patriots who have a very anti Japanese history, one of whom was the
patterns called jung Gun, named after Anjun Goon, who, in the description of the patriot of the pattern is referred to as the Korean patriot who assassinated hero Boomi Eto after the nineteen ten the like Korea Japan merger is how it's referred to, which seems like I don't know if that's right, and like that's like the most maybe like the most formative like difficult, right, some would call it that, and I think the assassination and then the upholding that person as a hero kind of says that,
you know, that's kind of the general implication. And then another one Moonmu, which is these are like two of the best most important taekwondo patterns and they're named after these like very anti Japanese pro Korea people in history, you know. And but at the same time, taekwondo traditional original taekwondo, which is much closer to the kind of cobra kai tansudo kind of thing you see, where there's like this more this greater severity of training method. It
the nominal founder of it. General Choi Hunki learned he was a second degree black belt in shotokan. He he lived in in Japan during you know, the Korea Japanese merger, and and then he became a general in the in the Korean Army and then actually got exiled because another
general did a coup and YadA, YadA, YadA. But the point being that like even this like Korean martial art, that's like this is a Korean martial art, and it's like to the point where the patterns are named like in a very like anti Japanese way, like it's progenitor or like the kind of the head of the founding,
because it's all complicated. There are a lot of different influences, right, but even he did karate you know, for years, to the point of being a second degree black belt, and so all of these martial arts are I want to say, they're distinct but related, right Like the same way humans are distinct individuals, but we're all related eventually, right like if you look back far.
Well, And I think this might be a good way to kind of think about where the lines are, especially because in this show, one thing I like about the season is that we're kind of backing away from beating up people you don't like, back to an actual competition of a sport with still a lot of beating up people you don't like. You know, in the Olympics, there's
taekwondo is an Olympic sport. Yeah, if someone who had been trained in showed a kun karate entered that would they be would they just look weird or would they actually be like penalized because they were doing things that are illegal because they're karate not type.
Like I'm wondering people learn the rules really Yeah, And I mean karate was in the twenty twenty Olympics as well. I think it's been excluded this year. Maybe it'll make get back again. But there's different like taekwondo. Olympic taekwondo, which is distinct from the taekwondo that I practiced. I mean, we did learn that sparring system, but it's it's a different from the sort of karate, Like it's a the
level of content. There's like certain levels of contact, there's there's it's continuous scoring, so like if we trade kicks, we can each get fighting that we see in in Cobra kai, which is very true to most karate as far as I've seen and then have participated in such competitions as well, is like it's stop match right, you score a point, that's it, stop reset, go right, And
that's what we've seen in this. I fought in that in like Queens, Like my teacher would send us to these random tournaments and I didn't do that well, you know because like that's not what we trained in, you know. And similarly, if somebody who trained in that then came and played ours, and I say played because it is it's it's a game of hitting, right, It's not it's
not combat. It's combat related sport really, But if they do that, like they might hit me and be like, oh I scored a point, and then like I can hit them three times, right, yeah, And so that's I don't think training in one style is going to make you not viable in another but like you have to train for the I mean it's not quite like Michael Jordan going and trying to play baseball, right, but like it would be like going and playing basketball where there's
no three pointer, right, or like you're not allowed to dunk or something. It'd be like, oh, well that I got to work on my game, right, I got to make some adjustments and stuff. So yeah, I think people who practice any striking martial art could go to a tournament like this, as in Cobra Kai, right, But if you don't train in that specific system of sparring, you're
potentially going to have some issues. And I think that might even be a plot point because I don't really understand how there's individual competitions and team competitions like it. Is it just gonna be the stop matches or are they gonna have different types of events? Are they gonna have breaking or they're gonna have patterns ar kata? Like I don't know. That hasn't really been a big factor in the previous seasons or in the Karate Kid movies, but it's.
Was there not a season where in the tournament they had like a technical skills challenge or something.
I believe there was. Yeah, And when I say it wasn't a big point, like I think it was there and it was evident that it was there, and like maybe maybe it was a big point to some characters, right, But like I mean, in taekwondo competitions usually we have breaking,
right where we have boards. You break boards, you get you know, like judge of scores, and then you do patterns, you get judge of scores, and then there's fighting, and it's three separate competitions really, right, and then each one there's gonna be divisions in those interesting And they actually had kata in the Olympics when they did karate and which you know, which I think is cool. And they say, oh, but the average age was like thirty. It's like is that bad?
Like, yeah, it's not okay, it's not a training yeah, exactly, And than gymnastics, right, which.
I think brings us to another point is like is this an under eighteen because if it's not, like the winners aren't gonna be under eighteen, Like the best fighters in the world aren't gonna be under eighteen. That's just not how it works.
Like, yeah, there's a lot about this tournament that does not make any sense to me. The I they've never said it's a karate tournament, so I think that you know first, and I can see them like, especially if this we have ten more episodes basically, and I could definitely see them being a lot of the episodes being
about fighting some of the other teams. I'm like, you know, capoeira or brilliant jiu jitsu, like these things are fun to watch and that could definitely be a pop point, sure, but also like, yeah, I don't I assume this has to be or either it is and only either it is a eighteen and under tournament or this is the eighteen and under bracket, you know, right, Yeah, there's just there's a lot of handwaving that's happening around this tournament.
And I it's funny because uh rieky, no spoilers whatsoever. But you and I have different opinions on the pacing of some recent Star Wars shows, not just the most recent one. But I was just so you know that I'm not always uncaring about pacing. I thought the pacing of this was utterly ridiculous, and in terms of how it went from like Okay, we have this like we're starting to build up towards this tournament, we're starting to have some decisions to who's gonna go. Oh, and now we're there.
Yeah. I was like, wait what.
Yeah, they basically picked the team and the captains. It seems like the day before they left. Yeah, so I don't I don't know how you like book flights that late.
But I mean maybe the whole team is going and just those ones are competing and the other ones are just gonna like Chill and Barcelona. That sounds cool, but like, yeah, it it it's very weird. I also think could there be a time jump? Like could there have been a time jump between the last scene that we saw before that and then that scene and in the interim like season six point two takes place, and then the last third is actually the SECONDI tai kai mm hmm. Like
I think that would be a choice. I'm not saying it would necessarily be a good choice. I don't made. Okay, you think like it's like it's on.
Now and and the reason is because of Toy Tory leaves the captain battle, Yeah, and then they go to the second and then there's Tory on Team Cobra Kai. At this point in theory, Tory and Robbie are still dating, right, well we don't know though, Well they were just like they were dating, like right up until right they were and then Captain fights, but.
He couldn't get in touch with her the you know.
For the two days after her mom died. But what I'm saying is, if if there were a time skip and this is like a month later, presumably Robbie would would know something as of like Torri has ghosted me or whatever.
Right, it wouldn't.
It wouldn't be like this big reveal of like oh my god, I mean it still would because she's on the Team Cobra Kai.
She could have just been m I A though, right for a month and he's like where that you know, he doesn't know what happen to her.
Like, I feel like all of this is part of the larger conversation about Torri, which is one of theggest flop points and frankly one of the things that bothered me most about the season. So what did you all think about how that was handled?
Like it feels like the show being very true to itself of not being deeply interested in its characters and instead being deeply interested in conflict and just basically having characters work things out when the show feels it's convenient for them to work things out, and having them kind of fall into old habits or just have kind of nonsensical arguments for the sake of sending characters in opposite
directions because that's what it wants to do. I mean, it's been doing this the whole time, right, the whole like Danny and Johnny thing, It's like over and over, and like, I feel like there should always be some some kind of grind between that, right, some kind of friction, Like that's natural, that's there are people who don't really share a worldview who are trying to get along now. But who were you know, basically mortal enemies, but like
kind of most stakes mortal enemies, you know. And I felt like they really dragged out those two working through their things, and then this season they're like, oh, let's play with that again. It's like, didn't we do that enough? You know? And then well, just like they didn't have that blow up as much as it could have. I mean, you know, Johnny tried to start a new car dealership, but then Amanda was like Johnny, Johnny, that's that's not how anything works.
It's just that I like that moment for her character because she has watched these two men do ridiculous things, and she's seen it all and she knows. I think she knows that deep down they have respect for each other now and our friends. They just can't express it because their men raised in you know, eighties martial arts, right, right, So she has to pull them aside and be like Johnny, stopping an idiot, You're not leaving.
Yeah, And that was the thing yourself, right exactly, And it felt like the origin of that conflict was kind of not necessary, but I agree with you that the resolution of it was satisfying.
Yeah. I think I want to talk about the specifics of Tory, but I think you've touched on what Toy is also part of kind of this larger pattern and think what frustrates me? And it's frustrated me ever since season two. In season one, they kind of give us this really interesting idea of what if the hero and the villain are somewhat flipped where Johnny was, you know, the kind of person who like has a lot of things that are problematic and that a lot of people
are going to write them off very quickly. But it is also a fundamentally decent guy with some shitty world views who also was in a really bad situation as trying to make the best of it. Where's Damian The Russo has kind of grown up to be kind of a rich, snobbish creep and that was a really interesting
thing to do. And then somewhere along the line, and there's been a lot of rumors about if this is because of pushing from Ralph Maccio or just different studio, they sort of remembered Wait a minute, but Danny is supposed to be our hero, and you know, having it
be back and forth makes some sense. But starting around like late season two, season three, it did seem like we got to a point of the Larussos will have their Foi Bowls and will have their struggles, but the Johnny's and the the Johnny's and the Tories and the Kennys of the world, they're always going to be the ones who are like, maybe they're good enough to be welcomed into l Russo's world, or maybe they're going to be bad and be punished and go back to the
Cobra KaiA things, and it feels kind of classist, and it feels in some ways kind of racist, especially in the story of Kenny, if you can get into it
a bit. And with Tori, I think I specially felt it because like, yes, I'm bored about her going back to Cobra Kai, I'm bored that storyline, but especially because and I I don't think the writers know this as someone whose mother has died, and you know, I think a lot of people, whatever parent has died, maybe you can understand it's gone through any kind of tragedy like that. And for me, my mother died when I was an adult, but my best friend died when I was a kid.
I was so angry at Danny and Amanda in that scene because they are so fundamentally wrong. I I don't think there is any possible justification for stopping the fight when they did, particularly given that, like it's a fight against their daughter with Tory, who's always felt that she's being kind of like condescended to and she's not going to get a fair shake. If after a point you want to say, hey, Tori, we want to pull you aside and offer you the chance to say we know
about this terrible thing that's happened. We want to be here for you. You don't have to go through this alone. You don't have to fight now. Sure, But then when she says no, I want to fight, and Johnny agrees with her to refuse to listen to that, and I think we're gonna get something in the later season of you know, them realizing they were wrong and blah blah blah. But to me, the double hypocrisy of you're not They literally say, you're not in the right mind to make
this decision not to fight. But then when she walks off, no one goes after her, no one tries to like talk her down, but they say, oh, but she wasn't a good enough decision to decide to quit, So we're not gonna like go visit her at her home later tonight or tomorrow or during the time junk you're talking about. They just say, she walked away. We have to respect the decision. Hawk, You're on the team, Like, I didn't want her to go to Cobra Kai, but I'm I
now feel like she's completely justified in doing so. I have no complaints that her doing so, And I'm gonna be rooting for her in the fight because I think I don't think it's Sam's fault, but I think the Larussa's were completely wrong, to the point that I was angry about it.
Yeah, I mean the whole thing with her mom I found, I would say, borderline upsetting. Like if it were a show where I could get more deeply invested in the characters, I would have found it upsetting. Yeah, but I was like, who's her mom again? Like, like, you know, they did so at least they didn't do the thing of like having like a heartwarming moment between her and her mom in the beginning of the episode and like just like kind of like making the character more of a character
just so they could bump her off. But like that whole thing felt like it was so deliberately manipulated.
Didn't they, because they held the whole thing about like they had a flash if they.
Had a flashback after she'd already had a and so it was the kind of like drawn out death as opposed to like, no, you know, Buffy's mom kind of like that's it right, but like it it was. I mean I didn't like it, you know, but.
Like they, yeah, what it needed, Like we needed her character to appear more leading it to this, and especially when Tory herself says, my mom would have wanted this for me to fight. I don't know that right based on what they've given us.
Basically give one flashback supporting that.
Yeah, if they had shown I don't like more scenes of her like talking about you know why she's doing this, you know why she's doing karate, or have her show up for a practice and like say, oh, like you really seem like you found your place here like that, that type of thing. It would have hit real hard, right like it hit okay because that's the way the scene played, but not as much as it could have, and that's disappointing, I think to use the character death.
Yeah, to be clear, I agree with all that. I'm not saying that I was upset by the mother dying. I know as someone who got told by a lot of people that I was having the wrong reaction to my own mother's death. It was them stopping the fight that we upset me. But yeah, I do you totally agree. I think that we would have sympathized a lot more with her and maybe felt that moment more if we'd had all the stuff you guys are talking about.
Yeah, and and to your point, Matthew, like I think if they found out ahead of time, like having a conversation would have been a good idea before the fight for sure, you know, the same way like you actually before a fight, like lay out the ground rules, who restate the rules? You know, I want to clean fight,
blah blah blah blah, stuff like that. And as a ref as someone who has Center refed martial arts fights non you know, continuous fighting there, especially with like the heavyweight red belts, Like there's this point where people know enough to really hurt each other and don't know enough to not hurt each other. You know, there's power, but
there's no control. Right. It's like someone who can throw a one hundred and three mile an hour fast, but they have no idea where it's going, right, shout out in nukloosh and like there is a very real like you know, stop like I want, like we need control, right. And the thing is either Johnny should have stopped the fight because Tori was out of control, or they should have let the fight go on because Tori was in control.
Right, Yeah, feeling they tried to show something like that when like she got a clean hit and got the point and then did like a secondary hit after that, right, Yeah.
Yeah, something like that. And and that is a legitimate like, yeah, you can stop a fight because that's going on, and you can give a warning and whatever, right, And but like you can't stop a fight in the middle because you think maybe someone's mentality might be compromised, you know, like that's that's not the time to do it. Like once the fight's going, the fight's going, and you have to observe the behavior. And like she looks like not super in control, but she wasn't like super out of
control either, you know. Like when Johnny said stop, she stopped, right, And like that's that's the that's the litmus test for me. So like that's just like bad martial arts, you know. And yeah, and obviously when it comes to like what you feel in response to the death of a loved one, like that's that's you, right, that's no no one can tell you how you're supposed to feel. There's no supposed to it's just what you feel, you know. And then there's how you process that, how you deal with that.
People can be supportive, people can listen, People should be supportive and listen, but like shouldn't be telling you what to feel and and so yeah, I deeply agree with that, and and that whole thing was just like but also to me that was the like the writers not really being super interested in their own characters in terms of like, what's this character feeling? Like, what's really like? It was to me it felt like, no, this is how we want to write it, so we get to this point,
how do we get hurt at Cobra Kai. That was what it was, And it was like, it's that same thing so many times, and it's it's a little exhausting, but the episodes are only like thirty five to forty some minutes long, so it's less exhausting than if they were an hour. I guess, I don't know.
Yeah, that's the thing is that we're in season six and you said you went back to season one and it was better, And I think that that resonated with me because I also think like season one and maybe
two are the best ones. Yeah, And part of the problem is that subsequent seasons are just rehashing the same conflicts, and they're resetting the characters every season to like a now we kind of hate each other again, when if you look at the arc of the characters and what they've done, they should be closer than that.
Yeah.
Yeah, Like Johnny isn't really allowed to grow is one of the big frustrations.
Resets, right exactly.
Yeah, And I think another part of it is And in this way, I'll say I do like this season a lot more than last season. For example, one of the reasons why I like shows about teenagers is that their perception of the stakes is really really, really high, but the actual stakes are not very high, and so I get to watch people be super dramatic about like is Johnny going to take me to the not I'm saying Johnny in general, is this boy going to take
me to the prom? Or you know, does this person have like, you know, more attention from this paournal figure, Like, you know, those things matter, and they really matter when you're seventeen. But at a time when in our own world there's a lot of things with a lot of high stakes happening pretty frequently, it's kind of a nice
escape to watch that. And so when at the end of last season, this kind of fun show about people who fight each other because they're upset at each other and sometimes it goes too far and like we've already seen that, we pull back. Now becomes adults trying to kill each other with swords. Oh yeah, like whoa, whoa, whoa. This is not the show I signed up for. And so this season it being much more about like, no, no, no, we're going to settle this in the fighting ring, not
in the school yard. Right, So, yeah, like I like that they're loaning the stakes, but I do agree that. I think like that's part of I like so much about seasons one and two is the stakes were fairly low, particularly from the teenager protagonist side, and this time it just seems like, yeah, I have no idea what they're trying.
To do, but if we're to believe them, the stakes of this tournament are pretty high. Right, Like, Miguel got deferred from his early admission for Stanford and he believes, and we have no choice but to believe that this is possible, right, that him winning this tournament will elevate his status in the eyes of the admissions.
Yeah, well here's the thing.
You're rolling your eyes at that, but like, I don't know, That's what I'm saying.
Like the show has introduced this as a premise, and I really we have no choice but to believe it.
Let me just clarify my side. I do believe that having a big achievement like that would matter in the eyes of a university.
Right.
My sigh is more that like most shows that talk about kids trying to get into college, we have either the IVY League and the IVY League equivalents like Stanford and you know, m I T or we have your local community college where people just get drunk and have dumb frat nights. Yeah.
And are you saying there are other universities?
I am, yeah, should just go to a state school for two years, Like from the cost perspective, it.
Might happen to live in the state in this in the state that has arguably the a state school system in the nation.
I will say though, that the whole bit with Kyler and then being like being like like, I didn't realize that there were other options that I could have, like tried to get into a really great party school.
Yeah, that was fun. It was fun.
I kind of like that, and like his sort of rehabilitation a little bit mm hmm.
Like that was a more one of the more fun side quests. We wanted right right, right right, I just like, yeah, I mean they established that stake for Miguel. It just to me if I doesn't feel as much as I love the high school drama, the two plot lines I hate the most are will I get into the perfect college because there's no other choice? And the love triangle? Right, it does seem like we're finally, finally, finally, finally, finally
done with love triangles, which makes me really happy. Robbie and Sam are the captains, so they might go back there, in which case I'll throw things at my television again. I hope we're not doing that, but yeah, yeah, I agree that, but there are serious consequences for who can do what depending on who wins this tornent.
And like there are real world championships of various martial arts right, Like there is a World Karate Championship, there's World Taekwondo champion championships, there's Olympics, right, and there are age groups in various ones and that you know where maybe a seventeen year old, eighteen year old you know, might win as oppose if they're fighting twenty two to twenty three year olds, like probably not, Like you don't see a lot of eighteen year olds in Major League Baseball, right,
every now and then you get like a Dwight Goodin, a Bryce Harper like every now and then, but like, by and large, like the absolute best of the best in pretty much any athletic endeavor is not going to be super young, right, because there's gonna be somebody of similar talent level who just had a few years of extra training, a few years more muscle development, bone growth, like, and they're generally gonna smoke the similar, the younger version
of themselves, you know, speaking of who should or shouldn't get smoked and rooting for Cobra Kai.
Yeah, let's talk about this guy, Brandon h Lee.
Wow is the.
Actor playing the Kwan Himry antagonist at this point? I guess yeah, Kwan jay Soon is the character's name.
Yeah, Wow, I mean he's for real, he's this guy, Paul.
You had the resume what this guy has done, so you know he's an actor and a model, but also a fifth degree black belt in taekwondo as like me, right, but I think he probably does more of a WTF world taekwondo.
I didn't take that deeply. His father is an eighth degree taekwondo grandmaster who runs a school and Brandon also is on the web page, is like teaching at the school. So like he's a martial arts professional. Probably more or lessons birth is my guess. Also, his name is Brandon Lee, which is a lot to live up to. Right. To be clear, he's Korean American. Brandon Lee is or was.
In terms of Hollywood, he was a stut double for Simoul Liu in so he's got that credential.
Yeah, and I mean this, The martial arts in that movie were very good.
Yeah.
Yeah, and he doesn't I will say, you guys can speak to his martial arts nest, which like I don't really notice, but I definitely thought he looked good. You know, he doesn't get much to do acting wise. He's playing your kind of traditional rebellious bad boy, but he plays that part perfectly. Like I thought, I really believed him as the like you know, I don't care about this, and you know, he he's the sith apprentice who overtakes the master. You know, while the he he's the like actually.
The other apprentice really is what he's.
He's the like if Luke killed Vader and then Palpatine was like yes, excellent, you know.
Right, or if Anakin killed Dooku.
And yeah, that's a better example. Yeah, but this time was still alive and still fighting and now right.
Right, right, he's not just standing there. Yeah, but yeah, it's he's he's legit good at martial arts.
And the standout stunt, at least in this portion of the season. He does a board break, he does a jumping kick to break a board and does three rotations in the air he does ten eight. Yeah, yeah, yeah, which I didn't even know that was possible.
Yeah, I mean there's there's ones where you do. He's got one on like his Instagram, Like he's got Instagram reels of ridiculous, you know. Stunt taekwondo basically, which is it's like a whole genre of like taekwondo of like at demonstrations and stuff, but where you break three boards going up, like spitting and kicking three times as you're going up, and it's like pop pop pop. And I mean these boards are like they're the little boards that
are like demonstration boards, you know. But I mean I wouldn't be surprised, you know, like several boards like suspended or whatever. But like, yeah, the it's it's extremely acrobatic taekwondo, which is you know, not tongue pseudo. It's like it's super clear that like he's just doing taekwondo, you know, and is is very good at it. So yeah, there's
there's that. I mean that too in a way, like all that was kind of like the highlight of the show for me was like and then then there're c s Lee as the the as the like Master Kim grand Master grand Master, but like and not that it's all great, but it's like it there's a familiar to me, you know, like as being you know, growing up in Korean martial arts basically and hearing them counting Korean and say start and stop and now, and you know, but then when they say sense it like breaks the spell.
It's because that is specifically a Japanese word that would not necessarily be used in taekwondo.
Correct.
Yeah, so you were saying that there's no way that any of these miagido kids should be able to stand up to Brandon or the character Kwan, right basically, Yeah, I mean like everything they display is like very TV martial arts and he's just doing the real thing. It's like, oh, this is different.
Right exactly. And I mean there's more to fighting than just than just being able to do technique in a vacuum. Right, we also see him fighting and being a crap out of like three highly trained, you know, members of his school, and and you know that's the thing is like, that's clearly these are people who have been training for like their whole lives more or less, and then you have the miagy.
Do after school kids.
Yeah, exactly, and it's like that's just not the same, right, I mean having I didn't start super young, right, I mean I trained a little bit when I was like eleven, then I started again when I was seventeen, Then I started again when I was twenty, and then I went from like twenty to like thirty something, and like, I
trained super hard. But there are people I knew who had started as kids, and there are certain things that they just had a facility with that is extremely difficult to gain a facility with when when you start older, or when you don't do a heavy amount of training younger. I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying the people who are generally the best of the best generally started younger, right, and that doesn't mean you can't wire great skill. You can.
It doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. The point of martial arts in general, of modern martial arts is to try and improve your own ability, right, It's not to compare
your ability to someone else's. That's not like the purpose of it, right, Like we're not generally training for real world fighting all that much, right, Like, hopefully the hope is you're not actually going to use this very much, So there has to be some other benefit that you're getting from training besides just being able to use it. You do want to be able to use it, and like if it's necessary, right, And I think somebody with the amount of training is these after schools kids do.
I think it's very realistic that they'd be able to defend themselves or aggress effectively against people who are somewhat more physical of their own age group, who are completely untrained. I think that's reasonable, right, Like, I think you can learn a lot in six months to two years or whatever, but like it kind of defies belief that you would then be able to Like if these kids kept training super hard until they're like mid twenties, late twenties or something.
I could see them being really good, but like to get outstanding at martial arts, it's a matter of decades, not years or months.
Well, and not to mention that there's a general level of athleticism that a human can have or not have. And so like, you know, you were talking about, like how you like people who are like eighteen and very good at one sport or something like that. You know a person who is starting in age twenty or starting at age sixteen, whatever, and has been already doing an
athletic pursuit of some long time switching sports. To me, that makes a lot more sense than someone like I think his name is Brandon, I'm not sure, the nerdy kid who's Hawk's best friend to me, Dmitri, Dmitri, thank you. He's a great character. I really like him a And to me, the idea that like he learns enough to stand up to the people who've been bullying him and like get in a good shot every now and then,
that's a totally believable story. The idea of this person who just was not an athletic person in any way, shape or form, which is there's nothing wrong with that. Like, I think that's a great you know, I certainly was that in many ways, could all of a sudden go to being a you know, martial arts expert enough that he gets to go to this tournament just really beggars belief.
Right, He's he's a skinny nerd who got into Mit on his academic record, so pretty much solely, right, Yeah, that's where we're at and that. But now he's also been invited to the World Championship.
Yeah, and if he trained like super hard for five to ten years, maybe you find out what his potential is. But like the idea that he's reached anything, Like the people who are competing at some World championship should be somewhere near their potential, right, Like there's you know, there's a learning curve, and like at a certain point it starts to level off, right where it's hard to actually
improve beyond the point you've gotten to. Not impossible necessarily, but like where you get close to whatever your potential is. And for different people it's going to take a different amount of time. But like it's just probably not like a one or two year thing for even for like a great athlete, right, I mean, you could probably get really good pretty fast if you're just a phenomenal athlete.
And it was interesting watching the first episode. There's a picture on Johnny's fridge of young Robbie, like when he's like a little kid with a soccer trophy. So it's just like a little thing basically telling us that, like Robbie as a little kid was one at soccer or whatever. Like, yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean he was great, but I think we're meant to believe like he's a naturally athletic kid who's done a lot of athletic things. Soccer involves kicking.
Martial arts involved kicking, you know, it's like and honestly, like, actually people who are like soccer players like gymnasts, Like there are certain sports that cross over better with different martial arts, right, And yeah, and I mean I think athleticism really plays a huge role early on and then further on, like it'll kind of determine a lot of maybe what your absolute peak might look like, and it'll also tell you a lot what you'll look like early on.
You get in there a little further and it's like really hard work is gonna be a whole lot of it, right, But like kind of your floor and your ceiling, I think kind of your athleticism are gonna determine a lot of that. But then it's a lot of hard work,
and it's hard work over years and then maybe decades. Right, So, like I feel like anybody with like less than I don't know, less than ten years training, like, really you're gonna add a world championship, Like unless it's like, oh, so you did gung fu for like ten years and now you've done karate for two years, Okay, you could probably be pretty good.
Well that's why I'm just still so lost in this idea that like three different schools from the valley in the valley, right, you know, Yeah, there's a lot more we can say about this, but one or two other issues that I want to, MA sure we touch on, and unsurprisingly for the three most winded guests that we are people we ever have on myself included, we're going
pretty long already. But I want to talk about race a little bit because I think the show is trying to be a very kind of like multicultural, diverse show, and in some ways it's getting that right. I kind of always loved the Miguel storyline, particularly the way like they've played off Miguel and Robbie and Robbie being the white kid, but also a little bit more like kind of disadvantage in some ways the Miguel but not in
some other ways. But both with the Kenny storyline and also with this idea of like we're playing so much attention to Miagi Do is like pure and right and good, and that's from like the original Karate of Okinawa, and then Cobra Kai is from Korea in this place where like you have to go like survive a snake bite and like maybe get sent to your death, and it's all very like siff like it feels like there's a messaging going on there, and I'm curious kind of what
you guys are picking up on either of those storylines or in other directions as well.
I mean, at last we get to have our revenge, by which but the we I mean Japanese, not that we've been like super downtrodden, but I think we're gonna talk about it mon later and the way that they portray Japanese people and not understandably from like the history
of that franchise, like what it's depicting. But I needed this, I needed a little bit of no no, no, like Japanese people can be like a guy, right, No, but it's it's to your point, Matthew, it's weird, Like I don't get it, especially because this show already, in my opinion, has done a poor job of representation of Asians. For you know, Asian martial arts theme show. Pretty much all the main characters are white. You get a little bit of chosen sprinkled in, but none of none of the kids.
I guess Devin might be like half right.
I would. I would say none of the kids except Mede Devon are Asian. I do that like Miguel is one of the main characters and he's yeah, you know, Latino, but yeah, I hear what's saying from the Asian representation.
And you get into these questions of you know, what is enough representation or like what is correct representation. There's no easy answer for that, But I feel like an easy answer for a show called Karate Kid is you have to center it a little bit more on Japanese culture and characters than they have done, and then to
bring in this major evil faction as Koreans. It's just it's just kind of like comically bad to me, right in a way that I seriously, like question whether there's a cultural consultant on this show, like in terms of like Asian matters, because there are other things where there's been like Japanese writing on some of you know, the Miyagi Doo stuff that's just like not not good. So I I wonder what's going on behind the scenes.
Yeah, I mean it's interesting because I think the villains being Korean goes back to the origin of the series of the Karate Kid, where the what's his name, Caman, I forget his whole name. I keep thinking Michael came in, but it's definitely not my Robert Mark Cayman. Apparently he took tom Sudo, which is who was he? Yeah, yeah, the the the writer of the original Karate Kid.
Okay, so he he.
Took tog Sudo and did not enjoy the experience, found
it too kind of cobra kai for his liking. And then he took Gojiu, which is what Miagi Doo really is, and enjoyed it, you know, and basically wrote a movie where the villains were tong Sudo practitioners and the but called it, you know, karate right, they didn't call it Tongsudo, which honestly is kind of authentic, right, Like I saw Cobra Kai at some point I think they described described it, maybe Johnny did as like American karate, which I think
is a thing, right, That's like, that's the thing where and like Crease being an American soldier who learned martial arts while in Asia and then brought it back and then taught it with his own, you know, kind of American machismo kind of thing. Like I feel like there is something legitimate to that story, like it actually rings true.
I mean, in any ways, it's very similar to to you know, I think it's the last or one of the last Ipman movies. Yeah. Four, we get a similar dynamic of like that karate as Americans understand. It might be a melding of a number of martial arts, but also has this very American very like raw raw, We're gonna win, there's no such thing as losing kind of thing.
And I felt like some of the middle seasons of Cobra Kai were more of that, were of like Cobra Kai is very Americanized in some not good ways, and that's what's weird to be. Oh no, no, but all the problems actually go back to.
Korea, right, right right, and Crease who was in Iman.
For by the way, Oh was he okay, that's cool.
Yes, there's there's a scene. It's just an easter egg. But the guys like drop and give me fifty, mister Crease, and it's like clearly around, it's awesome to Crease from from the so so, which is funny because obvious the movies do not cast the Japanese as the protagonists, but also don't you know, also don't cast the Americans as a protagonist or the British if you watch this, I
think the second one. But anyway, it so I feel like there is this and there's a legitimacy to the lineage actually being Korean, you know, and and there is a realness to like the brutality of some Korean martial arts and as far as forms of karate in Japan
that are also very kind of brutalistic. At least one kyokushin, which I mistakenly thought is what this was based on, is was founded by a Korean Japanese person, right, I mean because he moved to Japan and lived there from maybe age fifteen or something, so I don't know exactly
like how Masoyama identified. But but the point being that, like this isn't just like totally made up and oh, let's just make like the Koreans the villains, because right, But like that doesn't mean obviously that like all Korean martial arts are like that, or like all Japanese martial
arts are like Miyagi Doo. Like It's it's super weird though, because it's like they took two real world styles and then made made up styles based on those real world styles, and then they have not a lot of representation of people from the countries and cultures that those styles originally
came from. Yeah, and it takes place in southern California, which last I checked, there are like a few Asian Asian American people in Southern California, you know, like the demographics of the show don't feel quite spot on, although
obviously different areas are different. But like, you know, most martial arts schools have Okay, I shouldn't say most, because I haven't been everywhere, but like in New York in California, you often get a fair number of like Asian students, right, Like that's just pretty common and not necessarily like you know, Japanese Americans taking karate and like Chinese Americans taking kung
fu print whatever like combinations. But like the point being that, like I definitely agree with what what you're saying, Riki, where it feels like they don't have a they're not deliberate, and they're not I feel like they're not very cognizant of how their choices kind of look like overall, and and sort of which characters have more of a voice
and which ones don't. And in a way that I feel like the I mean, it wasn't great in that regard, but like I feel like Miyagi was by far the most interesting character.
Yeah, And I think one of the fundamental problems that this show has from the get go is that unfortunately Pat Maurita passed and could never be a character on the show. So they have to constantly have like these callbacks and references and play a little Shami san music
when they're thinking about him. But they there's like not a very good viable replacement for how central Miyagi was to the original franchise, and they brought in Chosen m But unfortunately the problem there is that the actor is a third generation Japanese, so he does he actually doesn't speak Japanese. Japanese, yeah, usually Okamoto so and that's not his fault. Like he was cast in a movie in his twenties and was like told to be Japanese and like, all right, like this is the role I.
Can get, right right, Hollywood?
And I think they have done the best they can with his characters and his limitations in terms of like what he says and how he speaks. But it's just it's not it's not very authentic, and unfortunately it does disservice to the story to not have like an authentic Japanese character imparting, you know, the ethos of Miyagi. Though I feel like.
Well, it's funny. I hadn't thought of it until this moment, but it feels like we're almost definitely going to get flashbacks to a younger Miyagi.
Yeah right, the second because the we we just got the reveal that he was in a sei tai kai and has a bloody bandana.
Right, Like, I'm not crazy about that storyline, but like, and I don't love prequels, but like, I don't know, I'd watch a story about a younger Miyagi if it wasn't bad. I don't trust them. I don't trust them and not make it bad. But like I don't know here, I don't know because then no, I mean, because then you would be centering his character.
Yeah, you know, I mean see that, And I do feel like it could fit into one part of the story that I want, because I do feel like overall, Danny Lusso is in the wrong in terms of the things that are happening, and I think one of the things that he's doing wrong is how much he has mythologized Miyagi and Miyagi to the point where the idea that he has any kind of a hard past really
upsets him. And given that the original premise of the show is that people can grow beyond their pasts, with people like Johnny and Robert and Tory, I think there could be a very well done story about Danny coming to understand that Miyagi was this wonderful person who had a troubled past and maybe he should stop judging all the other people around him because of their past. That could be a very good story. Do I trust these writers in this situation that right? Absolutely not?
Uh.
And I think one example of that is just really building on something I think Griegy, you said that doesn't seem like there's a cultural consultant, And I think Paul you were saying that it feels like they're not uh doing enough to uh, you know, be thoughtful about the things that they're uh that are happening. Also, Daniel Berry some Sports Highlights, says uh Stubb Dan and uh says Dory.
Tory rejoining was predictable. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, good comment. I think that you know, it just it felt like they're going back and back and back. Let's talk about Kenny, because Kenny again started out last season May it's two seasons ago, but as another inching story of the kind of kid who gets bullied, learns to fight back and grows up into the bully himself. And I think that itself is an interesting story and can be told from
any racial background. But the way that they've taken him, especially in terms of like him being this very street note, you know, very kind of like street wise, you know, hard nosed kid who just wants to fight at every opportunity and doesn't want to listen to anybody. Even though I think I feel like his anger at Robbie is completely justified, it not feel the most racially aware portrayal of that character.
Well, both of them. So Anthony LaRusso was the bully, right and then and then Robbie took took Kenny in to Cobray when it was still reasonable and then left when I think Chreas came back or Silver showed up and left Kenny there, and then that that's what poisoned to Kenny to the point he is at the start
of the season. Yeah, I really I hate it. I'm going to say, I mean, he's the word hate, which I try not to use, but I hated the scene where the four of them, the power couples, are trying to convince Kenny to come back to Miagido, you know, against his will and against his brother's will, and they're like, yo, leave us alone, and they're like no, no, no, like you have to come with us, like it's for your own good.
Yeah, And I hate that they ended up being right.
Right, like, yeah, yeah, it is what he needed, but that's not the way that that should have been done. Yeah, very uncomfortable for me.
I feel like making it clear that he's welcome and has a place there, and if he comes to the point where he decides he wants to do that, like that they will be happy for him to come join them there, but like then.
But instead they like to fight because it.
Right, But we're going to fight you to show you how much you care, how much we care that you don't learn the wrong things about fighting from oh.
Especially yes, we're gonna fight your brother because clearly he's the bad influence and we're the good one.
Well, and then it was so weird how he was, how the brother was so against them, and then all of a sudden, he just like spun on a dime.
And it was like but the way that they fought was very defensive and carry it or something like that.
Right right, right, They could have hurt you, but they did it. Just it felt very not real. And to me, I don't know if it was like super stereotype whatever stuff, but I feel like some of this is just what happens when, you know, when you only have like three or four black characters, like if you know, I feel like almost any choice is fine for any one character. But the problem is, like I mean, it's a show
that has a lot of characters. They've gone through a lot of characters, you know, and and I think it's medium in terms of representation, in terms of like at least diversity of people on screen, Like it's reasonable. It's kind of like Hollywood's improved, and I feel like it's improved with Hollywood, but it hasn't. It's not on the forefront, but it's also kind of not at the tail, you know.
But it certainly isn't great in that regard, and it's like it's just, you know, the the characters who are centered are I mean, they're not all white or they're not all all white or whatever, you know, but it's like it at first, like I kind of thought it was interesting that there weren't a lot of Asian characters early on, right, and like that the one main Asian
character was kind of like a bully. But then there was like another one who was like you know, sort of like the god figure of Miyagi or whatever, but.
Like he wasn't even like he was a bully for sure, but also he was not interested in martial arts, not interested in like he didn't want to eat sushi, He want to eat fingers.
Like right, right, to talk about Kyler in season Yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel.
Like that was fun, but especially but not if that's the only Japanese kid.
You have zactly like right right. It was a funny subversion, but then that was the only Asian character we got in season one.
I think, yeah, more or less, I think, yeah, so you know, and again like you're in southern California, you know, and it's.
Like you're southern California running martial arts schools Asian just around.
Yeah, And I mean there was like at the Aul Valley whatever, Like I think there were schools that had more asianies and like maybe not a ton of Asian students are going to like be like, yeah, I'm going to go train with that guy, you know, like Johnny Lawrence. Right, But like I don't know.
I will say, just going back on the Kenny point of it, Daniel also brought the point that I think is right. He wrote, Kenny may join Cobra Kai again, And honestly, I feel like that would have been the much better reveal, like not to have Tory go do this again, Yeah, because the idea that Kenny never really left Cobra Kai, that he still kind of believes a lot of it, yeah goes back. That would have made much more sense, right.
Right, especially if he found out that he'd gotten you know, poisoned basically with the laxatives.
Yeah, oh god, yeah, we haven't even talked about that part.
Right, right, But there's a weird thing going on with the girls a lot of the times, right, Like with Tory Increase, it's it's obviously like very uncomfortable. Yeah, that slumber party like that was was Johnny really like.
With three? What are you doing? Man?
It was?
How How's I know it's a TV show, but come on, sometimes you got to be like, no, not like this, this is how I feel.
Well and just it also because his idea of that they need to be they need to hate each other in order to fight well, right, I mean again, it's like the Sith ideology of like fight from your hate. It's just all over that, which is kind of fun. But even more so, it feels to me that the emotional place you need to be in in order to fight versus compete in a fighting sport are very different. And I and maybe it's not, but I feel like getting me to want to beat up my friend is
gonna be a hard thing to do. Getting me to want to score points on my friend in a way that we are both trying to hit and kick each other, knowing the others trying to do it to us too. I'm not someone who knows anything about this world. I know something about it from like tackling, like you know, so my best friends, I would be happy to get into, like you know, tackling matches with you know which we're gonna do some real harm to each other. But that's
very different, felt like than fighting. But that's not martial arts at all. Paul, you're making a face. What do you think?
Yeah, I mean, I I soft agree with you, like I do feel like there is a I feel like their problem wasn't that they didn't hate each other, it was that they felt that their reconciliation was tenuous, yep. And so I feel like they didn't feel like they could go hard against it. Like there's two ways that
you could really go hard against someone. One is you hate them and you want to call them harm, and two is that you respect them and respect that they're going to defend themselves properly and that they're not going to take it personally when you were doing the thing you were there to do right.
Like money and chosen resolving their differences, but still wanting to fight feels very much like that second thing for sure. Yeah, we're now buddies. We resolve our conflict, but yeah we want to fight. We're both good at this and we want to see who's better.
Yeah, and I mean my friends. Yeah, it was Yeah, I love that.
That did.
Like the whole thing leading up to it, I could have done without, but that that was another thing where I felt like they got the resolution right, even if the conflict itself felt you know, goofy. But like, you know, my friends and I used to get together every Sunday and just beat the crap out of each other and like but like within certain rules of this is what you do, you know, and like at the end of it,
we're still friends. Maybe we're better friends than before. It's like it's there's like there could be like a bonding thing of just like beating the tar out of each other, because that's what you're there to do. You're practicing fighting. How do you practice fighting well by fighting? Right? But like you know, we're not We're not trying to break
each other's knees or noses or like various things. And so if if there's a weird dynamic, it's just going to be hard to do that, right, because that dynamic is going to be in the way. So I think Johnny was right that there was a dynamic in the way that wasn't working, but he was wrong that the dynamic had to change back to what it was before. It didn't, and it actually it worked. His plan backfired
and worked because it backfired. And I kind of like that except for what the actual plan was in the first place, Like I think them just having it out and then actually reconcile in a like okay, we we cleared the air. We didn't just kind of say, okay, we'll go with each other, like we actually cleared the air and now we can now we can fight, like.
Well especially felt it felt like also it was mostly an excuse to be able to say, yes, Johnny has gotten better about women enough that he can hold down this relationship, that the mother of his girlfriend really likes him, that he's much more accepted in these ways. But isn't he still kind of a laughable misogynist with all of his silly ideas about girls, right right? And that just felt awful.
Yeah, And I think they just want to hang on to things like that, And speaking of Carmen, like she had what like three lines this season or something like. Yeah, I feel like they really leave a lot of characters just kind of like.
For you know, well, they introduced too many.
Yes, they introduced so many, but they want to keep their run times short, and they want to have this maximization of like conflict and action and those things. You just can't you can't do all those things and then actually keep up with all your characters and have them all feel real, all right.
Which is why apparently there wasn't a single adult who wanted to step in at the batting cages when the kids started fighting each other.
All right, well, there's no adults in that world. We've discussed this. We know there's adults and stuff.
There's always the Gulf.
Right exactly, The frat parties always you know, get into fist fights and stuff.
Yea, all right, I'm ready for my brand. Oh kay about Okay, So the.
Daniel had said, imagine if Robbie and Sam get back together. Daniel, I know you're kind of new to this podcast. It's awesome. I've already given my personal rant about love triangles and how I'm so glad we're not going back there. So I'm glad you're here, please stick around, bite your tongue anyway, Riki, you were saying.
The is bs and no like okay. So the word saiki tyke i literally means world tournament, and that's it. So again we don't know if it's kate, is it all martial arts makes martial arts? Like? What is this tournament? I looked up the logo. Actually it does have the Japanese characters saiki tyke i, like very small in the middle, but like up across the top big in English. Across the bottom it says best of the best in English, and then it's got like twenty flags around this circle
with Japan at the top, right. But I don't understand this tournament and this organization and what is it supposed to be like again, like a lot of the stuff on this show, it feels too too much like it was written by white people because of just like the way that they named it, the logo, the the director or whoever this guy is, like is a European bond villain I called him, Yeah, And it's not like an international organization, and I like, you can have it doesn't
have to be an Asian person. But given everything else, that this show has done. Probably should have made it an Asian person and probably should have gone to Japan and not Spain. Like I did not understand those choices at all, Like yeah, like it's a good thing, like, ah, we've seen a rise in martial arts in Europe, that's great, but you haven't done enough with Japan.
I guarantee you. That's because Barcelona gave them some really good rate.
On Oh yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, I mean yeah, tax breaks, tax breaks, although it's obviously because you know, Miguel speaks some Spanish and his dad's going to be there and have you know, a language advantage. And I forgot about that story.
Either that or they thought there would be some like really nice second unit photography.
But yeah, and that when they walked into that hall, it just looked very cheap, Like, Matthew, you and I have been in a lot of like convention centers, and that just looked like generic convention center dressed up with a few banners. It just didn't it didn't look good.
That's how most martial arts tournaments are, Like.
I know, I know, yeah, I know, especially what it's supposed to be right.
The way they did it, as though, like Look, here's every team taking part standing in different places of the Matt right. I don't mean to keep harping on this three teams from the Valley thing, but like, if there's three teams from one part of the United States and there's like fifteen teams in this thing total, that sounds, you know, like the way they're figuring it out. I thought this was gonna be like two hundred teams, you know, and some kind of like you know, you know, Final
sixty four kind of thing around robins or whatever. Yeah, I think you're right now. It feels like it's written by people who don't have martial arts experience, who don't have cultural experience of the things they're writing about, and I think that goes true for both the Asian stuff. I also know that the first Reasons of Miguel and his family, there was a lot of Latino and La Tina commentators
who are really unhappy with it. That apparently has gotten better, but that also felt very much like written by white people, especially the idea that like they would tolerate Johnny for a second given the horrible racist things he was saying. But it also just felt like it's, yeah, it's it's exactly what the plot needs it to be. It's the world's biggest thing, but it's only twelve teams because that's going to look really good for that reveal moment with Tory.
It just none of it makes sense, I am.
I'm also I'm not even sure that they're actually filming in Barcelona. I think they just like took the wide shots of the tourist attractions that you would know, and they like walked into a convention center in California.
I mean, that's that's pretty standard. Like what would you go to a convention center like a sound stage in Barcelona, you know. I mean maybe they'll have some you know, on location.
I really hope. So they need to do something to make us actually believe that they went to Barcelona.
Yeah, and I mean just architecturally, it's it's it's beautiful, right.
So, I mean, all right, Well, in our bonus member section, we're gonna be talking a little bit more about the wider Cobra, the wider karate Kid universe, and what we might be seeing in the future. But for everybody else, thank you all so much for listening. Uh Riki and Paul, do you have last comments?
I mean, the last thing I was going to bring up, I'm going to bring up after the thing, so definitely become a member. But overall, like I guess, I still enjoy the show, not enough to like rewatch episodes aside from I was like rewatching the first episode of the series kind.
Of for.
Research purposes, you know, to be like kind of reground myself and like, okay, what what exactly where did we come from here? You know, how do we get here? I feel like the show is true to itself in you know, it wants some fun fights, it wants a lot of drama. It wants characters to learn and grow and reset and learn and grow and reset and like it. Yeah, I guess like I enjoy it, but I don't. I
don't like it that much. And I wish there were more series that captured the things that I do like about the series without the things that I really don't like about the series. I think that would be cool. I mean, I think it would be interesting, Like, are we going to get some other like martial arts kind of series that's like, I don't know, maybe a little bit better with representation, both in terms of culturally and in terms of you know, and racially and and and
in terms of like martial arts culture. Yeah, it's not the queen's gambit of martial arts. You know.
I think what you said about enjoy it, but not like it's perfect and it even it wasn't the podcast, I wouldn't watch it if I didn't have people to talk about it with, like I do. Think it makes me think about things. I enjoy our conversations about it, and for that I enjoy watching it. But if like no one else knew was watching it, I probably wouldn't watch it. Yeah, I would just get people to watch.
It, right right, you did, That's what you did.
My last thing is I genuinely hope that some of these kids, you know, they're they're young adults now, but some of these kids from this show become huge stars because they deserve it. Like, you know, we can talk about how quote unquote fake the martial arts is, but they're still doing like a reasonable enough job. And some of the acting is very good from the kids, especially Cholo, who was a Beetle right, like, yeah, I really have high.
Hopes for him in the yeah Blue Beetle unfortunately, like he was very good in it, And there are parts of it that are very good. It was not a good movie, which I think is too bad because yeah, I think he's perfect as a superhero.
Yeah, well he was the greatest Blue Beatle. Blue Beatle wasn't great. But yeah, yeah, I totally second what you're saying, Riki. I feel like I feel like the acting exceeds the writing, which is a hard thing to do, I think, you know, and I think the martial arts are very good for non professional martial artists. Yeah, you know. And the thing is then when someone like Brandon each Lee shows up, it's just like, oh, right, that's what like a real
martial artist looks like doing martial arts. And I respect that the show has the actors doing a ton of their own stunts. I think that's great, but I think it shows because they're not on people, you know, they are actors who have learned some martial arts.
I agree with Paul. I think that's what elevates the fight scenes, is that they are able to like be on their faces and show them doing these things. Make gives it that realism, even if it's not like realistic fighting.
Right exactly, Well, it looks like good Hollywood fighting.
Yeah.
Yeah, And like when it is the kid. You know, the actors I think have got have had enough time in trading, athleticism and all these kind of things that they can get something equivalent to, you know, a kid who's been taking martial arts once or twice a week after school and so like in the early seasons, that's what the actors were at about that level. But yeah, now they're going up against world class people, and you know, from the Korean team, some of the actors are world
class martial artists as well as good actors. I do definitely think that guy who's playing the young Sith. You know, if nothing else, he is beautiful, he is good at martial arts, and he's good at being a bad boy.
Uh.
He's definitely gonna get some some some starring roles soon.
Yeah, we will see.
All right, Well, thank you all so much. Thank you to our listeners who are schiming in. We're gonna start putting the times and topics of this on our website. We've got a couple of things to figure out to make it happen. I just need to sit down and do it. But we're gonna start doing that because we love people who sit and kind of jump into the chat with us, and watch us as we're streaming. It is another way to get the free bonus content everyone else,
though you do have to become a member. For our members, we'll have some more bonus content for you fose who aren't very sick of our voices by now for everyone else, Thank you all so much. Send in your feedback. We have spoken