June 22, 1984:
Karate Kid premieres. Diminuitive, baby-faced good guy Danny Russo, wearing pure white and mellowed by Taoist wisdom, clobbers the snarling, black-clad, bullying, hulking Johnny Lawrence. Purity defeats corruption, light defeats darkness, good scores a definitive win over evil. The audience cheers.
Thirty years pass. We are older but not wiser. The world has grown cold and dark, evil that we thought long-banished alive and vigorous. Every day we think "It can't happen here -- can it?" Then we realize that it already has. We need a new hero, a new baby-faced warrior in a white robe who can definitively defeat the Darkness.
May 2, 2018: The youtube series
Cobra Kai reunites Danny and Johnny.
Except Danny is no longer a bastian of purity, and Johnny is no longer pure evil. Both do despicable things while the younger generation tries to find its way.
1. 34 years after being trounced in the big karate tournament, Johnny (William Zabka, old photo) is middle-aged, unattractive, and poor, working at odd jobs, dreaming of his glory days.
2. One day Johnny saves a neighborhood boy, Miguel (Xolo Maridueña), from some bullies, and is inspired to re-open Cobra Kai, the karate dojo full of black-robed miscreants that bedeveled Danny Russo a generation ago. Oddly enough,his teaching method involves bullying.
Johnny also starts dating Miguel's mom until she starts dating someone else, and they fight.
3. Miguel enlists some of his bullied friends to join Cobra Kai: the chubby Anthony (Griffin Santopietro), the nerd Demitri (Gianni Decenzo), and the disabled Hawk (Jacob Bertrand, left). Hawk soon goes over to the Dark Side of the Force.
4. Meanwhile Danny (Ralph Macchio), who beat Johnny all those years ago, has had nothing but good luck. Karma, I guess. He's still teen-idol hot, he owns a chain of car dealerships, and he has a loving family, including daughter, Samantha.
When he discovers that Cobra Kai is opening again, Danny is livid with rage, and tries all sorts of dirty tricks to shut it down or otherwise bedevil his old nemesis.
5. For example, he talks his cousin Vinny...um, I mean Louie (Brett Ernst) into destroying Johnny's car.
6. And he gives Robby (Tanner Buchanan), Johnny's estranged juvenile delinquent son, a job at his car dealership, just to get Johnny's goat.
Eventually he starts giving Robby karate lessons, and is inspired to open his own Miyagi-Do, based on the principles of his deceased sensei, Mr. Miyagi.
7. Danny's daughter Samantha happens to be dating Kyler (Joe Seo) one of Miguel's bullies. But not to worry, the romance doesn't last long. Samantha is rather a player, moving on to Miguel, and then to Robby, and then back and forth.
It's the eternal triangle: respectable but boring, or wild and dangerous.
8. Johnny is just starting to reform when his old sensei from the 1980s, Kreese (Martin Kove, old photo), returns and pushes him toward the Dark Side again. But then he bonds with Danny, and the two work together to send Kreese back to Mordor.
Well, actually, alliances change so fast, among the adults and teens alike, that you can't really tell who's good and who's evil without a score card. Maybe that's the point.
There are no gay characters. Early fan buzz suggested that Robbie would be gay, but he turns out to be more obsessed with girls than with karate.
And, surprisingly, beefcake is limited. No one works out shirtless, like in the original, and besides, most of the kids at the dojo are actual kids, not 20-something hunkoids pretending to be high school students.
I only watched the free episode. A convoluted plot with no gay characters, limited beefcake, and a cast of scoundrels? I have the original
Karate Kid on DVD.
See also:
The Karate Kid
