YouTube Red’s ‘Cobra Kai’ Has All the Charm and Flaws You’d Expect From a 1980’s Continuation Set in 2018

Back in the Game! Let’s get one thing straight about Cobra Kai. By any metric, Johnny Lawrence is not a good human being. He is, in fact, a horrible human being with next to no redeeming qualities. The choice to center him as a protagonist is strange given that he basically embodies all sorts of toxic masculinity you’d expect from a straight white dude who peaked right before losing a karate tournament in high school. And yet… and yet… I found myself deeply invested in the lives of Johnny Lawrence and Daniel LaRusso, 30-some-years after the story of their classic rivalry.

Cobra Kai was definitely made by someone who took How I Met Your Mother’s Barney Stinson’s take on Johnny Lawrence as the original Karate Kid a bit too seriously. Somehow along the way they’ve managed to create a compelling narrative. Furthermore, the person in charge of remixing and incorporating footage from the original film deserves a medal because I was not expecting to care about any of this nor was I expecting to tear up at one point. Just a man and his will to survive. The opening of Cobra Kai’s pilot features the old footage from the final fight of The Karate Kids. The producers discussed how some of the footage incorporated was from an unused reel. Rather than a shot of the crowd cheering on Daniel LaRusso, the fight ends with a close up on Johnny Lawrence taking a crane kick and him lying on the cold, hard ground. Fade-away to the present day, with Johnny Lawrence down on his luck and struggl…