Cobra Kai, The Karate Kid, and Life’s Most Valuable Lessons
New Year’s Day marked the Season 3 premiere of Cobra Kai on Netflix, the perfect way to celebrate what’s regarded by many as one of the laziest days of the year (On a personal note, I recently transferred from Team “Up and at em! New Year, New Me.” to Team “Why didn’t I go to bed earlier? I’m going to feel like trash all day. And for what, Carson Daly? Oh lord, why don’t I respect myself?”). After the previous season’s dramatic finale, I, along with a projected 41 million households, couldn’t wait to dive back in and get caught up with arguably the world’s two most prolific fictional karate dojos.
After finishing the tenth and final episode of the season, I found myself inspired to watch 1984’s The Karate Kid (Cobra Kai is a modern continuation of the stories that began with the Karate Kid franchise) in its entirety, something I probably hadn’t done in a good 25, maybe 30 years. I walked away from the viewing with an unexpected sense of enlightenment, but before we get into that, I do have a few thoughts on Cobra Kai that I’d like to share. If you haven’t gotten the chance to watch it yet, and/or if you have no interest in hearing about it, I’ll post a photo of a chimp wearing a nice shirt when I’m done talking about it and you can just meet back up with the rest of us there.
