'Cobra Kai' offers uplifting, redemptive resolution

As fond as I remain of the original "Karate Kid" films, Parts I through III never quite hung together well as a trilogy, even before they attempted to resurrect the franchise on the big screen - twice, with Hilary Swank and Jackie Chan (and we won't even get into the cartoon).

Which makes it all the more impressive that the "Cobra Kai" streaming series, whose fifth season debuted on Netflix on Sept. 9, has not only managed to retroactively recast those disparate films as chapters of a thematically consistent narrative, but has also delivered more earnestly earned villain redemptions than any other storytelling series I can think of.

"Cobra Kai" began by catching up with an adult Johnny Lawrence - the 1980s' quintessential definition of cinematic bully antagonists, from the first "Karate Kid" film - and recasting him as the protagonist of his own story as he struggled to figure out where he'd gone wrong as he'd grown up and how he might get his life back on track.

What gave Johnny's journey more mileage than one might have expected was how many other characters he wound up bringing along for the ride. In addition to Daniel LaRusso, who'd gone from Johnny's bullying victim to a successful adult businessman and married father of two, there were virtual legions of kids who switched sides back and forth between Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do, as Daniel's suspicions of Johnny's motives revived their adolescent rivalry.

Not only did former bullying victims like Miguel Diaz and Eli "Hawk" Moskowitz briefly succumb to the lure of becoming bullies themselves, but that dark side also infected Johnny's estranged and neglected son, Robby Keene, and Daniel's spoiled and lazy son, Anthony.

But a funny thing happened, and it started with the adults, because as "Cobra Kai" brought back more and more characters from the original films, it lent weight and depth and wisdom to these now-old men that they'd never possessed in their younger years.

When Johnny reunited with the fellow Cobra Kai members who used to ride with him (back when they were young enough to ride bicycles instead of motorcycles), one was a devout church pastor, and another was a cancer patient who died alongside them during their final campout, after confessing he'd always had a crush on Johnny's girlfriend.

When Johnny's Cobra Kai sensei, John Kreese, re-entered his life, we saw how the years had broken Kreese down, as a veteran of an unpopular war with a snarling inability to avoid petty personal conflicts, and likewise, when Kreese sought out his old war buddy and Cobra Kai co-founder Terry Silver, the first thing Terry did was chalk up his virtually cartoonish villainy from "The Karate Kid Part III" to how many drugs he was doing at the time.

Some of these old men reverted to their bad old ways, while others healed and atoned for the sins of their youth, but in each instance, we saw former ciphers of melodramatic menace treated as well-rounded, fully realized people in their own right, even as the world they inhabited blended real-life issues such as cyber-bullying with the unrealistic genre rules of Eighties martial arts movies.

In those respects, "Cobra Kai" Season 5 has continued to deliver, as we've been treated to lessons on how to navigate teen relationship troubles through social media (emojis are serious business) while also getting more fully reacquainted with the adult incarnations of Chozen Toguchi, who tried to kill Daniel in Okinawa in "The Karate Kid Part II," and even Mike Barnes, "Karate's Bad Boy" and Terry Silver's protégé from "Part III."

Chozen in "Part II" radiated angry jock energy, while Chozen in "Cobra Kai" labors under the shame of his decades-old misdeeds, while also providing some fish-out-of-water laughs as he adjusts to the LaRussos' upper-middle-class lifestyle in America.

As for Mike Barnes, I won't spoil how he turned out, but the initial reveal is hilarious, before becoming heartbreaking in short order.

If you'd told me in 1989 that, 33 years later, I'd be feeling genuine empathy for the plight of "Karate's Bad Boy," I would have found it as unlikely a prospect as the mere existence of a "Cobra Kai" TV series in the first place, but that really is the point.

Eighties villains were built to be broadly stereotypical, with not a lot of questions asked about their less overt motivations, but "Cobra Kai" has taken the succession of adversaries churned out by the "Karate Kid" films, and expanded them all through compelling character studies.

Even Terry Silver, who's more of a comic book supervillain than the Marvel Cinematic Universe has yet adapted unfiltered onscreen, comes across as haunted by the ghosts of what could have been, as he confesses that his quest to expand Cobra Kai "beyond the Valley" are driven by his desire for a legacy, as an unmarried old man with no children of his own.

And even the misfiring subplots of "Cobra Kai," such as Miguel's search for his father in Mexico, owe to this ethos, because while certain people might turn out to be as bad as we'd always been told they were, the moral message of this show is that just about everyone deserves a shot at showing us who they are, because from a self-proclaimed "cowardly Dwarven monk" to "Karate's Bad Boy," you might be surprised by how many people can grow into their better selves.

Even John Kreese, flinty-eyed manipulator that he remains, is afforded the opportunity to "write a better ending" for himself, albeit on his own scheming terms.

And 38 years after the original film, Neil Patrick Harris' joke from "How I Met Your Mother" is a joke no longer, because with the fifth (and possibly final) season of "Cobra Kai" - and after doing a considerable amount on work on himself - Johnny Lawrence has finally become the hero, not just of his own story, but of the "Karate Kid" saga as well, as a friend to his former foe, a worthy father to both his stepson and his biological son, and a good man to the woman he loves.

Which is a resolution just about everyone should find uplifting, because if an unreconstructed Eighties bro can rebuild himself into a better person, then there's no excuse for the rest of us not to do the same.

P.S. When Daniel's wife Amanda takes a trip with the kids, keep an eye out for the character from "The Karate Kid Part III," whom we learn introduced Daniel and Amanda.

Author Bio

Kirk Boxleitner, Reporter

Shelton-Mason County Journal & Belfair Herald
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