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Speaker 4: Hello and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today
Speaker 4: we learn that Cobra Kai will never die, that some
Speaker 4: characters plotlines will always be a reset, and that adults
Speaker 4: are never ever ever around when kids start fighting. Yes,
Speaker 4: it is we are back talking about Cobra Kai Season six,
Speaker 4: the final season, though there are movies coming out still,
Speaker 4: the Cobra Kai universe apparently will go on forever. It
Speaker 4: is myself, Matthew Fox, Riki Hayashi, and our normal co
Speaker 4: host for Superherothics and returning guest original co host Grand
Speaker 4: High Pooba of Wrong Opinions, Paul Hoppy. Okay, so we're
Speaker 4: back in the Cobra Kai world. We have the first
Speaker 4: five episodes. What do we think?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so season six, part one of three. That's how
Speaker 5: they're released.
Speaker 3: The first third of season season.
Speaker 5: Six, which is okay, like that's a that's the thing.
Speaker 3: You can do now, right, that's just that what it is.
Speaker 5: I So, if any show can be a guilty pleasure
Speaker 5: for me, this is a guilty pleasure for me in
Speaker 5: that enjoy this. I enjoy this show because I enjoyed
Speaker 5: The Karate Kid the original movie, and I feel a
Speaker 5: little guilty for enjoying it because gosh, there's so many
Speaker 5: like problematic things going on, like in the show universe,
Speaker 5: and like I guess we'll say production of the show.
Speaker 5: I'm not sure that it makes me like should I
Speaker 5: be enjoying this? I don't know, but I do because
Speaker 5: like it was basically made for me and us, right,
Speaker 5: like people of our age generation. It's basically the target audience.
Speaker 3: I feel like, Yeah, I mean, I think they're trying
Speaker 3: to hit a broad swath by having, you know, the
Speaker 3: protagonists be younger and have that the way to kind
Speaker 3: of I imagine in their mind try to attract a younger audience.
Speaker 3: But definitely, i'd say the heart of the show is
Speaker 3: as kind.
Speaker 5: Of yeah, the nostalgia media, Like we get so much
Speaker 5: of it with reboots and stuff, and this is just
Speaker 5: a nostalgic TV series pining for the eighties of the
Speaker 5: karatey kid.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think it's both of what you're talking about,
Speaker 4: because this is gonna be a weird thought because all
Speaker 4: three of us I know are very young at heart,
Speaker 4: but quite a lot of folks our age and of
Speaker 4: our generation even a little older, have kids who are
Speaker 4: about the age of the younger protagonists in this show,
Speaker 4: or a little younger. And I think that what I'm
Speaker 4: seeing is that a lot of these nostalgia eighties shows,
Speaker 4: especially ones that are nostalgia for the teen shows of
Speaker 4: the eighties and movies, it's aimed at us who were
Speaker 4: kids then, and I was also aimed at, you know,
Speaker 4: the kids of our generation. The idea that you know,
Speaker 4: families can watch together and stuff like that. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: kind of a similar feeling of it. I am. I
Speaker 4: don't know if I would have watched it if we
Speaker 4: weren't recording on it, but I wanted to watch it,
Speaker 4: so I kind of twisted your arms so that we
Speaker 4: could record on it because I feel like there's so
Speaker 4: much that I don't like about it and so much
Speaker 4: I'm frustrated about, but I'm still like glad that I'm
Speaker 4: watching it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say that I enjoy the show but
Speaker 3: I don't particularly like it.
Speaker 4: That's fair, that's fair.
Speaker 3: I like that. I like that, and and the term
Speaker 3: guilty pleasure popped into my head, and like, I don't
Speaker 3: feel guilty about watching it because I don't feel like
Speaker 3: a lot of people were harmed in the making of it.
Speaker 3: And for what I feel like, it's not like deeply
Speaker 3: trafficking and problematic stereotypes, but I feel like it's and
Speaker 3: we can certainly get into that. I'm sure we will,
Speaker 3: but like, at the same time, it's definitely it's definitely
Speaker 3: not doing a very good job in the other direction either, Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: Like I feel like it. There's a lot to say there,
Speaker 3: and that's that's a whole thing. But like I think
Speaker 3: there's a lot of shows and movies that are or
Speaker 3: have done a lot worse in those regards. As a
Speaker 3: martial artist, I find it fun to watch martial arts
Speaker 3: school related comment content, and not just as a martial artist,
Speaker 3: but as someone who ran a martial arts school for
Speaker 3: a couple of years and taught for you know, over
Speaker 3: a decade, Like I can relate to a lot of
Speaker 3: this stuff, But then also there's this like that's that's
Speaker 3: not right, Like, you know, like down to like small
Speaker 3: things like watching you know them practice tong sudo and
Speaker 3: I don't even know where they were. I don't know.
Speaker 3: I like I thought they were in Korea, but like
Speaker 3: maybe they were in a forest in southern California. I'm
Speaker 3: not not sure.
Speaker 4: No, I think that was all supposed to be in Korea.
Speaker 3: Was supposed to be in Korea, Okay, because I was
Speaker 3: watching that, Yeah yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right, But
Speaker 3: like I also feel like that wasn't super clear because
Speaker 3: like how the heck did Grease get to Korea in
Speaker 3: back just like that when he's.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's a warrant out for his.
Speaker 3: Own yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Military, so therefore he had contact.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. Like they're speaking in you know, in Korean,
Speaker 3: they're you know, huge hug, like come on, like you know,
Speaker 3: Hanna Du said, like there, it's like, ah, this is
Speaker 3: like a taekwondo class. Well it's not taekwondo, it's it's tongue,
Speaker 3: which is another martial art. But then they're like sense
Speaker 3: since I'm like, ah oh, And to be fair, I've
Speaker 3: never practiced tongue sudo, so I can't say authoritatively. You
Speaker 3: don't call someone sense in tongue sudo, but like in
Speaker 3: taekwondo and any other Korean martial arts, as far as
Speaker 3: I'm aware, like that's not that's that's the Japanese word,
Speaker 3: like you say some of him or kuan jan him
Speaker 3: is like the grandmaster and and so it's like it
Speaker 3: felt like they were like, yes, we're gonna at these seats,
Speaker 3: but not this one.
Speaker 5: That seems like a big detail to not get right
Speaker 5: because yes, sense literally is just the word teacher, like
Speaker 5: if you're in school, you have your sense is as well.
Speaker 5: So it's not like a deeply rooted in martial arts word, right,
Speaker 5: and it would need to be used in this context exactly.
Speaker 3: And the very first I just wanted this last bit
Speaker 3: the very first episode of Cobra Kai, which I rewatched,
Speaker 3: and I was like this show was a little better
Speaker 3: in the beginning, but like yeah, okay, it's like yes, yes, sir,
Speaker 3: it's like sense, yes, sense, And Johnny's so insistent on
Speaker 3: using the word sense, you know, and it's like, well
Speaker 3: what do you be, Like what is that? But anyway,
Speaker 3: I digress. Let's let's regress or something.
Speaker 4: I think for many people, like it could be a
Speaker 4: guilty pleasure, could be just family watching whatever it is.
Speaker 4: For some folks, this podcast is a guilty pleasure.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: And so there are many folks you probably are listening
Speaker 4: along with us who haven't actually seen the show. M m.
Speaker 4: And many times I would say, go hit stop, make
Speaker 4: your life better by watching the show. Oh I can't
Speaker 4: say that now. I think you'll enjoy it. I think
Speaker 4: you'll maybe throw some things at the screen. But some
Speaker 4: people enjoy that kind of thing too. But for anyone
Speaker 4: who hasn't, let me get a quick plot summary, and
Speaker 4: you guys fill in anything that I miss. That's like vital.
Speaker 4: So we start with peace in the valley. The antagonists
Speaker 4: from last season have all been arrested or been otherwise
Speaker 4: taken care of. All the romantic pairings have settled down
Speaker 4: among the teens, all the family situations and dojo verse
Speaker 4: dojo stuff has settled down. Everyone's happy under Miagi Doo
Speaker 4: Ego Fang. We just don't have a name yet. And
Speaker 4: there's peace. And when Danny says that in the first
Speaker 4: epening scenes of the episode, of course you know that
Speaker 4: that won't last. Turns out that everybody's been invited to
Speaker 4: this World Fighting Tournament, a world martial arts tournament that
Speaker 4: is maybe a world Karate tournament, but has not really
Speaker 4: said that that is maybe an under eighteen tournament, but
Speaker 4: that's not actually said. That is you have to be
Speaker 4: like some of the best in the world. But three
Speaker 4: of the teams from a regional part of one state
Speaker 4: of one nation have all gotten invites to That's interesting,
Speaker 4: but the point is that's happening. So everyone's trying to train,
Speaker 4: and there's tension between Danny and Johnny as always about
Speaker 4: what's gonna be the name of the dojo and who's
Speaker 4: gonna be the focus and what's gonna be the focus.
Speaker 4: Johnny is kind of back to a lot of his
Speaker 4: same old ways, which I don't love. We'll talk about
Speaker 4: that in a bit. But also he's gonna become a parent,
Speaker 4: so there's just this kind of like everyone's there's tension.
Speaker 4: They kind of settle on that will do a kind
Speaker 4: of Miagi do but have a little bit of eagle
Speaker 4: thing in it. There's a fang now over the tree
Speaker 4: and the logo. Johnny tries to like embrace Miyagi do,
Speaker 4: but also to put a little the aggression into it,
Speaker 4: and there's some ridiculous sexism involved in that. And a
Speaker 4: bachelor in a slumber party scene. But moving on, there's
Speaker 4: a lot of little like high jinks that feel like
Speaker 4: they're fun but are also just kind of like killing time.
Speaker 4: There's a plot line about what college some of the
Speaker 4: kids are going to go to. There's a plot line
Speaker 4: about Johnny trying to find a new apartment. But all
Speaker 4: this time, we've also found that Chris has gone to Korea,
Speaker 4: back to the school of Matt sense Kim, uncle Kim,
Speaker 4: grandfather Kim. I guess he's referred to here for those
Speaker 4: who watched the last season, the woman who came in
Speaker 4: to be a co leader with Crease of cobra Kai
Speaker 4: who was absolutely not a sexy Asian dragon lady stereotype,
Speaker 4: not in the slightest I said, with some sarcasm. We
Speaker 4: find out that she only got trained by her grandfather
Speaker 4: because Chris like fought to help that happen. He has
Speaker 4: to come back and prove himself to the same grandfather,
Speaker 4: and when he does by having hallucinogenic situation by being
Speaker 4: bitten by a cobra, realizing that he has to stop
Speaker 4: trying to save Johnny and kill the cobra, kill Johnny
Speaker 4: and basically become a Sith lord, because then he then
Speaker 4: tells everybody that, like the way to the way you
Speaker 4: to feed people with heart is to be heartless and
Speaker 4: to embrace your anger. The words he says are actually
Speaker 4: pretty similar to the Sith code in a way that
Speaker 4: I found kind of amusing. And so all of this
Speaker 4: is building to a number of things. Tori is still
Speaker 4: having problems. She doesn't feel quite accepted by the group,
Speaker 4: and we find out that her mother winds up dying.
Speaker 4: Her mother had always had serious medical problems, some of
Speaker 4: them were drug related. Her mother dies, she doesn't tell anyone,
Speaker 4: and because the next day is supposed to be the
Speaker 4: big challenge to pick who are going to be the
Speaker 4: captains of the team that's going to this big tournament
Speaker 4: the shai kai is that how you pronounce it, secon
Speaker 4: eye taykai, thank you you you can get that wrong.
Speaker 4: We'd already had a couple of competitions to find out
Speaker 4: who are the six from Miagido who are going to
Speaker 4: go and represent and now the question is going to
Speaker 4: be who's going to be the captain? And the boys fight,
Speaker 4: Robbie wins he'll be the captain. The girls are in
Speaker 4: the middle of a fight. Tory is clearly very upset,
Speaker 4: but she's fighting well. And when she is presumably very
Speaker 4: likely about to make a point on Sam and and
Speaker 4: even up the fight at two to two, the fight
Speaker 4: stops because Danny LaRusso and his wife and a Manna
Speaker 4: Lusso have found out that Tory's mother has died, and
Speaker 4: they have decided on her behalf that of course she
Speaker 4: must not want to fight, and so the fight should
Speaker 4: be stopped, and they make a big deal about how
Speaker 4: she's not in a right mind to make this decision
Speaker 4: right now, she gets angry and storms off. They immediately decide, well,
Speaker 4: then she was in the right mind to quit, so
Speaker 4: we're going to replace her on the team without any
Speaker 4: attempt to her back. And then we all get to
Speaker 4: the tournament and the different teams are introduced, and then
Speaker 4: here comes a Cobra Kai team with a couple of
Speaker 4: Korean fighters we saw who There's a whole plot line
Speaker 4: there about you know, you have to slay the master
Speaker 4: in order to become the master. Again, very sith related here,
Speaker 4: although the apprentice gets to stick around, just with a
Speaker 4: very bad black eye this time. And then who will
Speaker 4: join them as their female captain. Of course it's Tori.
Speaker 4: Is that a fair overview of the main issues we
Speaker 4: discussed with the main issues that come up in the
Speaker 4: in the season.
Speaker 3: I feel like you skipped the bakeoff, baking competition or
Speaker 3: whatever other irrelevant activities they did to choose the six,
Speaker 3: Like they get this barns that's what was he in
Speaker 3: three or something. He's the guy who got his furniture
Speaker 3: store burned down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3: And just in the martial arts aspects, like he actually
Speaker 3: his uniform or his belt says shotocn on it, which
Speaker 3: is a specific style of car that's like not the
Speaker 3: same as whatever else. The rest of them are grant
Speaker 3: but and they asked him to choose the six and
Speaker 3: then he has them play like capture the Flag, and
Speaker 3: like it's just it's all just very like, let's turn
Speaker 3: this into like one of those reality shows where we're
Speaker 3: like eliminating people and who will be the last two eliminated?
Speaker 3: You're safe and you're safe, but that and it's just
Speaker 3: like okay, yeah, you know. So that that I felt
Speaker 3: like was actually the the main thing. Oh and then
Speaker 3: there's a thing with Miagi has some like dark past
Speaker 3: that we didn't know about and he I hate it, right, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: And I was like, okay, but yeah it Honestly, to me,
Speaker 3: it felt like it was kind of all over the place,
Speaker 3: and the main idea was Miaggito choosing six members to
Speaker 3: go to this ak Tai Kai and then Cobra Kai
Speaker 3: doing the same. Did they have any other female students?
Speaker 3: No female captain by default? Then yea.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a whole plot line about the grandfather
Speaker 4: not wanting to let his granddaughter train because girls shouldn't
Speaker 4: do martial arts. He lets her train. She's the master
Speaker 4: of the school now, but there's still no women right right.
Speaker 4: I want to get into the martial arts. I want
Speaker 4: to get into plot and all of that.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 4: Just want to, first though, say a big thank you.
Speaker 4: We've been getting more and more people signing up to
Speaker 4: become members. It's a fantastic thing to do. Only five
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Speaker 4: a member of both this podcast and our Star Wars
Speaker 4: Universe podcast Star Wars Generations podcast. You get free content,
Speaker 4: You get bonus content. At the end of episodes. You
Speaker 4: get some bonus episodes that have been coming out on
Speaker 4: Star Wars, we don't have them Superherotics starting the fall.
Speaker 4: And most of all, you can to help support the podcast.
Speaker 4: It's a great way to help us keep the lights on.
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Speaker 4: All that is done through the membership. So if you
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Speaker 4: All the informations on our website, and of course on
Speaker 4: that website also is all the information about how to
Speaker 4: give us feedback or on the Acolyte on Star Wars.
Speaker 4: We have a couple of great pieces of feedback we're
Speaker 4: going to talk about. We would love to get some
Speaker 4: more about Cobra Kai. We have other episodes coming up
Speaker 4: on Superherotics, so they're gonna be mostly based out of feedback.
Speaker 4: Send us tweets, send us email, send us you know,
Speaker 4: messages to the website. Message on TikTok. Often I would
Speaker 4: say carry our pigeons, but they're probably not very kind
Speaker 4: to animals. So while Paul is here, I would say,
Speaker 4: only if this is like a pigeon that has landed
Speaker 4: on you and has like, let you know, it wants
Speaker 4: to be a carrier pigeon of its own free will,
Speaker 4: which would be quite a story and I probably would
Speaker 4: want to invict. You want to tell us about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'd love to hear about it that.
Speaker 4: Please think up becoming a member. Please send us in
Speaker 4: your feedback. Now back to our conversation. Let's talk about
Speaker 4: how martial arts is portrayed in the show, because it
Speaker 4: seems you both have and I will say, I want
Speaker 4: you to know how diverse a perspective on the show
Speaker 4: we have. Because Paul can talk quite a lot about
Speaker 4: his time as a professional running a martial arts school.
Speaker 4: I can talk about my time as a professional car salesman,
Speaker 4: which is also a very important plot point and is
Speaker 4: also I think God is inaccurately as some of the
Speaker 4: stuff about martial arts is. So either Paul or RIQUI
Speaker 4: take us away.
Speaker 5: Do it? Paul? Is this even karate?
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't know, like yes and no. Right.
Speaker 3: So here's the thing. When we first covered I think
Speaker 3: seasons one and two and maybe three, I forget what
Speaker 3: was out. I think we did one and two back
Speaker 3: in the day, and my guess was that Cobra Kai
Speaker 3: was based on Kyokushen Karate, which was created by Maso Yama,
Speaker 3: who is Korean Japanese, and it has this reputation for
Speaker 3: being extraordinarily brutal and just like a you know, like
Speaker 3: he he invented this like hundred person kumite where like
Speaker 3: you fight one hundred people in a row as like
Speaker 3: a test. You know, he fought bulls, which I'm not
Speaker 3: in favor of, but I will say he did it
Speaker 3: with his bare hands. And if you're gonna fight a bull,
Speaker 3: doing it with your bare hands seems more respectable to
Speaker 3: me than having some you know, manufactured weapon. But like
Speaker 3: it was this style that like really clearly to me
Speaker 3: matched up with kind of the Cobra Kai style. It
Speaker 3: turns out that Cobra Kai is actually more based on
Speaker 3: toms Sudo, which is is sometimes referred to as Korean karate. Right,
Speaker 3: Like the first time I took taekwondo, my teacher called it.
Speaker 3: My teacher s henri Cho, which was one of the
Speaker 3: first people to teach martial arts in the United States.
Speaker 3: He and he had a dojang on and he called
Speaker 3: it Korean Karate, and he wrote books called like the
Speaker 3: Secrets of Korean Karate and this that might be the
Speaker 3: exact title, but that was basically because Americans were familiar
Speaker 3: with the word karate, right, or karte or however you
Speaker 3: want to you know, whether you want to pronounce it
Speaker 3: like in Japanese or I feel like there's an English
Speaker 3: American pronunciation that like is like an English word now,
Speaker 3: but that's kind of neither here nor there.
Speaker 5: And the martial art itself has evolved, as you said,
Speaker 5: like with the mixing of cultures and styles exactly first
Speaker 5: in Asia and now in the America. It's like you
Speaker 5: look at like mixed martial arts like jiu jitsu, like
Speaker 5: how they have thrived and grown in South America, like
Speaker 5: Brazilian jiu jitsu.
Speaker 6: Like is a thing very different from the truths yeah, right,
Speaker 6: And tanks udo the name means like way of the
Speaker 6: China hands or fist, right, which is also what karthe
Speaker 6: originally met.
Speaker 3: Right. And then in like nineteen thirty five, the character
Speaker 3: that was used for kara was changed because it's I
Speaker 3: think it's like a homophone right to like empty hand.
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, And that.
Speaker 3: Just happened to kind of coincide with Japan attacking China
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, so you know, there was like
Speaker 3: a but at the same time, like it's very legitimate
Speaker 3: that like the roots of karate came from China like
Speaker 3: hundreds of years ago through Okinawa and then Okinawa also
Speaker 3: I think was independent, right and then got annexed or
Speaker 3: and in Korean martial arts, in taekwondo, like we have
Speaker 3: two patterns that are named after Korean patriots who have
Speaker 3: a very anti Japanese history, one of whom was the
Speaker 3: patterns called jung Gun, named after Anjun Goon, who, in
Speaker 3: the description of the patriot of the pattern is referred
Speaker 3: to as the Korean patriot who assassinated hero Boomi Eto
Speaker 3: after the nineteen ten the like Korea Japan merger is
Speaker 3: how it's referred to, which seems like I don't know
Speaker 3: if that's right, and like that's like the most maybe
Speaker 3: like the most formative like difficult, right, some would call
Speaker 3: it that, and I think the assassination and then the
Speaker 3: upholding that person as a hero kind of says that,
Speaker 3: you know, that's kind of the general implication. And then
Speaker 3: another one Moonmu, which is these are like two of
Speaker 3: the best most important taekwondo patterns and they're named after
Speaker 3: these like very anti Japanese pro Korea people in history,
Speaker 3: you know. And but at the same time, taekwondo traditional
Speaker 3: original taekwondo, which is much closer to the kind of
Speaker 3: cobra kai tansudo kind of thing you see, where there's
Speaker 3: like this more this greater severity of training method. It
Speaker 3: the nominal founder of it. General Choi Hunki learned he
Speaker 3: was a second degree black belt in shotokan. He he
Speaker 3: lived in in Japan during you know, the Korea Japanese merger,
Speaker 3: and and then he became a general in the in
Speaker 3: the Korean Army and then actually got exiled because another
Speaker 3: general did a coup and YadA, YadA, YadA. But the
Speaker 3: point being that like even this like Korean martial art,
Speaker 3: that's like this is a Korean martial art, and it's
Speaker 3: like to the point where the patterns are named like
Speaker 3: in a very like anti Japanese way, like it's progenitor
Speaker 3: or like the kind of the head of the founding,
Speaker 3: because it's all complicated. There are a lot of different influences, right,
Speaker 3: but even he did karate you know, for years, to
Speaker 3: the point of being a second degree black belt, and
Speaker 3: so all of these martial arts are I want to say,
Speaker 3: they're distinct but related, right Like the same way humans
Speaker 3: are distinct individuals, but we're all related eventually, right like
Speaker 3: if you look back far.
Speaker 4: Well, And I think this might be a good way
Speaker 4: to kind of think about where the lines are, especially
Speaker 4: because in this show, one thing I like about the
Speaker 4: season is that we're kind of backing away from beating
Speaker 4: up people you don't like, back to an actual competition
Speaker 4: of a sport with still a lot of beating up
Speaker 4: people you don't like. You know, in the Olympics, there's
Speaker 4: taekwondo is an Olympic sport. Yeah, if someone who had
Speaker 4: been trained in showed a kun karate entered that would
Speaker 4: they be would they just look weird or would they
Speaker 4: actually be like penalized because they were doing things that
Speaker 4: are illegal because they're karate not type.
Speaker 3: Like I'm wondering people learn the rules really Yeah, And
Speaker 3: I mean karate was in the twenty twenty Olympics as well.
Speaker 3: I think it's been excluded this year. Maybe it'll make
Speaker 3: get back again. But there's different like taekwondo. Olympic taekwondo,
Speaker 3: which is distinct from the taekwondo that I practiced. I mean,
Speaker 3: we did learn that sparring system, but it's it's a
Speaker 3: different from the sort of karate, Like it's a the
Speaker 3: level of content. There's like certain levels of contact, there's
Speaker 3: there's it's continuous scoring, so like if we trade kicks,
Speaker 3: we can each get fighting that we see in in
Speaker 3: Cobra kai, which is very true to most karate as
Speaker 3: far as I've seen and then have participated in such
Speaker 3: competitions as well, is like it's stop match right, you
Speaker 3: score a point, that's it, stop reset, go right, And
Speaker 3: that's what we've seen in this. I fought in that
Speaker 3: in like Queens, Like my teacher would send us to
Speaker 3: these random tournaments and I didn't do that well, you
Speaker 3: know because like that's not what we trained in, you know.
Speaker 3: And similarly, if somebody who trained in that then came
Speaker 3: and played ours, and I say played because it is
Speaker 3: it's it's a game of hitting, right, It's not it's
Speaker 3: not combat. It's combat related sport really, But if they
Speaker 3: do that, like they might hit me and be like,
Speaker 3: oh I scored a point, and then like I can
Speaker 3: hit them three times, right, yeah, And so that's I
Speaker 3: don't think training in one style is going to make
Speaker 3: you not viable in another but like you have to
Speaker 3: train for the I mean it's not quite like Michael
Speaker 3: Jordan going and trying to play baseball, right, but like
Speaker 3: it would be like going and playing basketball where there's
Speaker 3: no three pointer, right, or like you're not allowed to
Speaker 3: dunk or something. It'd be like, oh, well that I
Speaker 3: got to work on my game, right, I got to
Speaker 3: make some adjustments and stuff. So yeah, I think people
Speaker 3: who practice any striking martial art could go to a
Speaker 3: tournament like this, as in Cobra Kai, right, But if
Speaker 3: you don't train in that specific system of sparring, you're
Speaker 3: potentially going to have some issues. And I think that
Speaker 3: might even be a plot point because I don't really
Speaker 3: understand how there's individual competitions and team competitions like it.
Speaker 3: Is it just gonna be the stop matches or are
Speaker 3: they gonna have different types of events? Are they gonna
Speaker 3: have breaking or they're gonna have patterns ar kata? Like
Speaker 3: I don't know. That hasn't really been a big factor
Speaker 3: in the previous seasons or in the Karate Kid movies,
Speaker 3: but it's.
Speaker 5: Was there not a season where in the tournament they
Speaker 5: had like a technical skills challenge or something.
Speaker 3: I believe there was. Yeah, And when I say it
Speaker 3: wasn't a big point, like I think it was there
Speaker 3: and it was evident that it was there, and like
Speaker 3: maybe maybe it was a big point to some characters, right,
Speaker 3: But like I mean, in taekwondo competitions usually we have breaking,
Speaker 3: right where we have boards. You break boards, you get
Speaker 3: you know, like judge of scores, and then you do patterns,
Speaker 3: you get judge of scores, and then there's fighting, and
Speaker 3: it's three separate competitions really, right, and then each one
Speaker 3: there's gonna be divisions in those interesting And they actually
Speaker 3: had kata in the Olympics when they did karate and
Speaker 3: which you know, which I think is cool. And they say, oh,
Speaker 3: but the average age was like thirty. It's like is
Speaker 3: that bad?
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, it's not okay, it's not a training yeah, exactly,
Speaker 4: And than gymnastics, right, which.
Speaker 3: I think brings us to another point is like is
Speaker 3: this an under eighteen because if it's not, like the
Speaker 3: winners aren't gonna be under eighteen, Like the best fighters
Speaker 3: in the world aren't gonna be under eighteen. That's just
Speaker 3: not how it works.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, there's a lot about this tournament that does
Speaker 4: not make any sense to me. The I they've never
Speaker 4: said it's a karate tournament, so I think that you
Speaker 4: know first, and I can see them like, especially if
Speaker 4: this we have ten more episodes basically, and I could
Speaker 4: definitely see them being a lot of the episodes being
Speaker 4: about fighting some of the other teams. I'm like, you know,
Speaker 4: capoeira or brilliant jiu jitsu, like these things are fun
Speaker 4: to watch and that could definitely be a pop point, sure,
Speaker 4: but also like, yeah, I don't I assume this has
Speaker 4: to be or either it is and only either it
Speaker 4: is a eighteen and under tournament or this is the
Speaker 4: eighteen and under bracket, you know, right, Yeah, there's just
Speaker 4: there's a lot of handwaving that's happening around this tournament.
Speaker 4: And I it's funny because uh rieky, no spoilers whatsoever.
Speaker 4: But you and I have different opinions on the pacing
Speaker 4: of some recent Star Wars shows, not just the most
Speaker 4: recent one. But I was just so you know that
Speaker 4: I'm not always uncaring about pacing. I thought the pacing
Speaker 4: of this was utterly ridiculous, and in terms of how
Speaker 4: it went from like Okay, we have this like we're
Speaker 4: starting to build up towards this tournament, we're starting to
Speaker 4: have some decisions to who's gonna go. Oh, and now
Speaker 4: we're there.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was like, wait what.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they basically picked the team and the captains. It
Speaker 5: seems like the day before they left. Yeah, so I
Speaker 5: don't I don't know how you like book flights that late.
Speaker 3: But I mean maybe the whole team is going and
Speaker 3: just those ones are competing and the other ones are
Speaker 3: just gonna like Chill and Barcelona. That sounds cool, but like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it it it's very weird. I also think could there
Speaker 3: be a time jump? Like could there have been a
Speaker 3: time jump between the last scene that we saw before
Speaker 3: that and then that scene and in the interim like
Speaker 3: season six point two takes place, and then the last
Speaker 3: third is actually the SECONDI tai kai mm hmm. Like
Speaker 3: I think that would be a choice. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: it would necessarily be a good choice. I don't made. Okay,
Speaker 3: you think like it's like it's on.
Speaker 5: Now and and the reason is because of Toy Tory
Speaker 5: leaves the captain battle, Yeah, and then they go to
Speaker 5: the second and then there's Tory on Team Cobra Kai.
Speaker 5: At this point in theory, Tory and Robbie are still dating, right,
Speaker 5: well we don't know though, Well they were just like
Speaker 5: they were dating, like right up until right they were
Speaker 5: and then Captain fights, but.
Speaker 3: He couldn't get in touch with her the you know.
Speaker 5: For the two days after her mom died. But what
Speaker 5: I'm saying is, if if there were a time skip
Speaker 5: and this is like a month later, presumably Robbie would
Speaker 5: would know something as of like Torri has ghosted me
Speaker 5: or whatever.
Speaker 3: Right, it wouldn't.
Speaker 5: It wouldn't be like this big reveal of like oh
Speaker 5: my god, I mean it still would because she's on
Speaker 5: the Team Cobra Kai.
Speaker 3: She could have just been m I A though, right
Speaker 3: for a month and he's like where that you know,
Speaker 3: he doesn't know what happen to her.
Speaker 4: Like, I feel like all of this is part of
Speaker 4: the larger conversation about Torri, which is one of theggest
Speaker 4: flop points and frankly one of the things that bothered
Speaker 4: me most about the season. So what did you all
Speaker 4: think about how that was handled?
Speaker 3: Like it feels like the show being very true to
Speaker 3: itself of not being deeply interested in its characters and
Speaker 3: instead being deeply interested in conflict and just basically having
Speaker 3: characters work things out when the show feels it's convenient
Speaker 3: for them to work things out, and having them kind
Speaker 3: of fall into old habits or just have kind of
Speaker 3: nonsensical arguments for the sake of sending characters in opposite
Speaker 3: directions because that's what it wants to do. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's been doing this the whole time, right, the whole
Speaker 3: like Danny and Johnny thing, It's like over and over,
Speaker 3: and like, I feel like there should always be some
Speaker 3: some kind of grind between that, right, some kind of friction,
Speaker 3: Like that's natural, that's there are people who don't really
Speaker 3: share a worldview who are trying to get along now.
Speaker 3: But who were you know, basically mortal enemies, but like
Speaker 3: kind of most stakes mortal enemies, you know. And I
Speaker 3: felt like they really dragged out those two working through
Speaker 3: their things, and then this season they're like, oh, let's
Speaker 3: play with that again. It's like, didn't we do that enough?
Speaker 3: You know? And then well, just like they didn't have
Speaker 3: that blow up as much as it could have. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, Johnny tried to start a new car dealership,
Speaker 3: but then Amanda was like Johnny, Johnny, that's that's not
Speaker 3: how anything works.
Speaker 5: It's just that I like that moment for her character
Speaker 5: because she has watched these two men do ridiculous things,
Speaker 5: and she's seen it all and she knows. I think
Speaker 5: she knows that deep down they have respect for each
Speaker 5: other now and our friends. They just can't express it
Speaker 5: because their men raised in you know, eighties martial arts, right, right,
Speaker 5: So she has to pull them aside and be like Johnny,
Speaker 5: stopping an idiot, You're not leaving.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And that was the thing yourself, right exactly, And
Speaker 3: it felt like the origin of that conflict was kind
Speaker 3: of not necessary, but I agree with you that the
Speaker 3: resolution of it was satisfying.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I think I want to talk about the specifics
Speaker 4: of Tory, but I think you've touched on what Toy
Speaker 4: is also part of kind of this larger pattern and
Speaker 4: think what frustrates me? And it's frustrated me ever since
Speaker 4: season two. In season one, they kind of give us
Speaker 4: this really interesting idea of what if the hero and
Speaker 4: the villain are somewhat flipped where Johnny was, you know,
Speaker 4: the kind of person who like has a lot of
Speaker 4: things that are problematic and that a lot of people
Speaker 4: are going to write them off very quickly. But it
Speaker 4: is also a fundamentally decent guy with some shitty world
Speaker 4: views who also was in a really bad situation as
Speaker 4: trying to make the best of it. Where's Damian The
Speaker 4: Russo has kind of grown up to be kind of
Speaker 4: a rich, snobbish creep and that was a really interesting
Speaker 4: thing to do. And then somewhere along the line, and
Speaker 4: there's been a lot of rumors about if this is
Speaker 4: because of pushing from Ralph Maccio or just different studio,
Speaker 4: they sort of remembered Wait a minute, but Danny is
Speaker 4: supposed to be our hero, and you know, having it
Speaker 4: be back and forth makes some sense. But starting around
Speaker 4: like late season two, season three, it did seem like
Speaker 4: we got to a point of the Larussos will have
Speaker 4: their Foi Bowls and will have their struggles, but the
Speaker 4: Johnny's and the the Johnny's and the Tories and the
Speaker 4: Kennys of the world, they're always going to be the
Speaker 4: ones who are like, maybe they're good enough to be
Speaker 4: welcomed into l Russo's world, or maybe they're going to
Speaker 4: be bad and be punished and go back to the
Speaker 4: Cobra KaiA things, and it feels kind of classist, and
Speaker 4: it feels in some ways kind of racist, especially in
Speaker 4: the story of Kenny, if you can get into it
Speaker 4: a bit. And with Tori, I think I specially felt
Speaker 4: it because like, yes, I'm bored about her going back
Speaker 4: to Cobra Kai, I'm bored that storyline, but especially because
Speaker 4: and I I don't think the writers know this as
Speaker 4: someone whose mother has died, and you know, I think
Speaker 4: a lot of people, whatever parent has died, maybe you
Speaker 4: can understand it's gone through any kind of tragedy like that.
Speaker 4: And for me, my mother died when I was an adult,
Speaker 4: but my best friend died when I was a kid.
Speaker 4: I was so angry at Danny and Amanda in that
Speaker 4: scene because they are so fundamentally wrong. I I don't
Speaker 4: think there is any possible justification for stopping the fight
Speaker 4: when they did, particularly given that, like it's a fight
Speaker 4: against their daughter with Tory, who's always felt that she's
Speaker 4: being kind of like condescended to and she's not going
Speaker 4: to get a fair shake. If after a point you
Speaker 4: want to say, hey, Tori, we want to pull you
Speaker 4: aside and offer you the chance to say we know
Speaker 4: about this terrible thing that's happened. We want to be
Speaker 4: here for you. You don't have to go through this alone.
Speaker 4: You don't have to fight now. Sure, But then when
Speaker 4: she says no, I want to fight, and Johnny agrees
Speaker 4: with her to refuse to listen to that, and I
Speaker 4: think we're gonna get something in the later season of
Speaker 4: you know, them realizing they were wrong and blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: But to me, the double hypocrisy of you're not They
Speaker 4: literally say, you're not in the right mind to make
Speaker 4: this decision not to fight. But then when she walks off,
Speaker 4: no one goes after her, no one tries to like
Speaker 4: talk her down, but they say, oh, but she wasn't
Speaker 4: a good enough decision to decide to quit, So we're
Speaker 4: not gonna like go visit her at her home later
Speaker 4: tonight or tomorrow or during the time junk you're talking about.
Speaker 4: They just say, she walked away. We have to respect
Speaker 4: the decision. Hawk, You're on the team, Like, I didn't
Speaker 4: want her to go to Cobra Kai, but I'm I
Speaker 4: now feel like she's completely justified in doing so. I
Speaker 4: have no complaints that her doing so, And I'm gonna
Speaker 4: be rooting for her in the fight because I think
Speaker 4: I don't think it's Sam's fault, but I think the
Speaker 4: Larussa's were completely wrong, to the point that I was
Speaker 4: angry about it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the whole thing with her mom I found,
Speaker 3: I would say, borderline upsetting. Like if it were a
Speaker 3: show where I could get more deeply invested in the characters,
Speaker 3: I would have found it upsetting. Yeah, but I was like,
Speaker 3: who's her mom again? Like, like, you know, they did
Speaker 3: so at least they didn't do the thing of like
Speaker 3: having like a heartwarming moment between her and her mom
Speaker 3: in the beginning of the episode and like just like
Speaker 3: kind of like making the character more of a character
Speaker 3: just so they could bump her off. But like that
Speaker 3: whole thing felt like it was so deliberately manipulated.
Speaker 5: Didn't they, because they held the whole thing about like
Speaker 5: they had a flash if they.
Speaker 3: Had a flashback after she'd already had a and so
Speaker 3: it was the kind of like drawn out death as
Speaker 3: opposed to like, no, you know, Buffy's mom kind of
Speaker 3: like that's it right, but like it it was. I
Speaker 3: mean I didn't like it, you know, but.
Speaker 5: Like they, yeah, what it needed, Like we needed her
Speaker 5: character to appear more leading it to this, and especially
Speaker 5: when Tory herself says, my mom would have wanted this
Speaker 5: for me to fight. I don't know that right based
Speaker 5: on what they've given us.
Speaker 3: Basically give one flashback supporting that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, if they had shown I don't like more scenes
Speaker 5: of her like talking about you know why she's doing this,
Speaker 5: you know why she's doing karate, or have her show
Speaker 5: up for a practice and like say, oh, like you
Speaker 5: really seem like you found your place here like that,
Speaker 5: that type of thing. It would have hit real hard,
Speaker 5: right like it hit okay because that's the way the
Speaker 5: scene played, but not as much as it could have,
Speaker 5: and that's disappointing, I think to use the character death.
Speaker 4: Yeah, to be clear, I agree with all that. I'm
Speaker 4: not saying that I was upset by the mother dying.
Speaker 4: I know as someone who got told by a lot
Speaker 4: of people that I was having the wrong reaction to
Speaker 4: my own mother's death. It was them stopping the fight
Speaker 4: that we upset me. But yeah, I do you totally agree.
Speaker 4: I think that we would have sympathized a lot more
Speaker 4: with her and maybe felt that moment more if we'd
Speaker 4: had all the stuff you guys are talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and to your point, Matthew, like I think
Speaker 3: if they found out ahead of time, like having a
Speaker 3: conversation would have been a good idea before the fight
Speaker 3: for sure, you know, the same way like you actually
Speaker 3: before a fight, like lay out the ground rules, who
Speaker 3: restate the rules? You know, I want to clean fight,
Speaker 3: blah blah blah blah, stuff like that. And as a
Speaker 3: ref as someone who has Center refed martial arts fights
Speaker 3: non you know, continuous fighting there, especially with like the
Speaker 3: heavyweight red belts, Like there's this point where people know
Speaker 3: enough to really hurt each other and don't know enough
Speaker 3: to not hurt each other. You know, there's power, but
Speaker 3: there's no control. Right. It's like someone who can throw
Speaker 3: a one hundred and three mile an hour fast, but
Speaker 3: they have no idea where it's going, right, shout out
Speaker 3: in nukloosh and like there is a very real like
Speaker 3: you know, stop like I want, like we need control, right.
Speaker 3: And the thing is either Johnny should have stopped the
Speaker 3: fight because Tori was out of control, or they should
Speaker 3: have let the fight go on because Tori was in control.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, feeling they tried to show something like that
Speaker 5: when like she got a clean hit and got the
Speaker 5: point and then did like a secondary hit after that, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, something like that. And and that is a legitimate like, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can stop a fight because that's going on, and
Speaker 3: you can give a warning and whatever, right, And but
Speaker 3: like you can't stop a fight in the middle because
Speaker 3: you think maybe someone's mentality might be compromised, you know,
Speaker 3: like that's that's not the time to do it. Like
Speaker 3: once the fight's going, the fight's going, and you have
Speaker 3: to observe the behavior. And like she looks like not
Speaker 3: super in control, but she wasn't like super out of
Speaker 3: control either, you know. Like when Johnny said stop, she stopped, right,
Speaker 3: And like that's that's the that's the litmus test for me.
Speaker 3: So like that's just like bad martial arts, you know.
Speaker 3: And yeah, and obviously when it comes to like what
Speaker 3: you feel in response to the death of a loved one,
Speaker 3: like that's that's you, right, that's no no one can
Speaker 3: tell you how you're supposed to feel. There's no supposed
Speaker 3: to it's just what you feel, you know. And then
Speaker 3: there's how you process that, how you deal with that.
Speaker 3: People can be supportive, people can listen, People should be
Speaker 3: supportive and listen, but like shouldn't be telling you what
Speaker 3: to feel and and so yeah, I deeply agree with that,
Speaker 3: and and that whole thing was just like but also
Speaker 3: to me that was the like the writers not really
Speaker 3: being super interested in their own characters in terms of like,
Speaker 3: what's this character feeling? Like, what's really like? It was
Speaker 3: to me it felt like, no, this is how we
Speaker 3: want to write it, so we get to this point,
Speaker 3: how do we get hurt at Cobra Kai. That was
Speaker 3: what it was, And it was like, it's that same
Speaker 3: thing so many times, and it's it's a little exhausting,
Speaker 3: but the episodes are only like thirty five to forty
Speaker 3: some minutes long, so it's less exhausting than if they
Speaker 3: were an hour. I guess, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the thing is that we're in season six
Speaker 5: and you said you went back to season one and
Speaker 5: it was better, And I think that that resonated with
Speaker 5: me because I also think like season one and maybe
Speaker 5: two are the best ones. Yeah, And part of the
Speaker 5: problem is that subsequent seasons are just rehashing the same conflicts,
Speaker 5: and they're resetting the characters every season to like a
Speaker 5: now we kind of hate each other again, when if
Speaker 5: you look at the arc of the characters and what
Speaker 5: they've done, they should be closer than that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like Johnny isn't really allowed to grow is one
Speaker 4: of the big frustrations.
Speaker 3: Resets, right exactly.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think another part of it is And
Speaker 4: in this way, I'll say I do like this season
Speaker 4: a lot more than last season. For example, one of
Speaker 4: the reasons why I like shows about teenagers is that
Speaker 4: their perception of the stakes is really really, really high,
Speaker 4: but the actual stakes are not very high, and so
Speaker 4: I get to watch people be super dramatic about like
Speaker 4: is Johnny going to take me to the not I'm
Speaker 4: saying Johnny in general, is this boy going to take
Speaker 4: me to the prom? Or you know, does this person
Speaker 4: have like, you know, more attention from this paournal figure, Like,
Speaker 4: you know, those things matter, and they really matter when
Speaker 4: you're seventeen. But at a time when in our own
Speaker 4: world there's a lot of things with a lot of
Speaker 4: high stakes happening pretty frequently, it's kind of a nice
Speaker 4: escape to watch that. And so when at the end
Speaker 4: of last season, this kind of fun show about people
Speaker 4: who fight each other because they're upset at each other
Speaker 4: and sometimes it goes too far and like we've already
Speaker 4: seen that, we pull back. Now becomes adults trying to
Speaker 4: kill each other with swords. Oh yeah, like whoa, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 4: This is not the show I signed up for. And
Speaker 4: so this season it being much more about like, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: we're going to settle this in the fighting ring, not
Speaker 4: in the school yard. Right, So, yeah, like I like
Speaker 4: that they're loaning the stakes, but I do agree that.
Speaker 4: I think like that's part of I like so much
Speaker 4: about seasons one and two is the stakes were fairly low,
Speaker 4: particularly from the teenager protagonist side, and this time it
Speaker 4: just seems like, yeah, I have no idea what they're trying.
Speaker 5: To do, but if we're to believe them, the stakes
Speaker 5: of this tournament are pretty high. Right, Like, Miguel got
Speaker 5: deferred from his early admission for Stanford and he believes,
Speaker 5: and we have no choice but to believe that this
Speaker 5: is possible, right, that him winning this tournament will elevate
Speaker 5: his status in the eyes of the admissions.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well here's the thing.
Speaker 3: You're rolling your eyes at that, but like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 5: Like the show has introduced this as a premise, and
Speaker 5: I really we have no choice but to believe it.
Speaker 4: Let me just clarify my side. I do believe that
Speaker 4: having a big achievement like that would matter in the
Speaker 4: eyes of a university.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: My sigh is more that like most shows that talk
Speaker 4: about kids trying to get into college, we have either
Speaker 4: the IVY League and the IVY League equivalents like Stanford
Speaker 4: and you know, m I T or we have your
Speaker 4: local community college where people just get drunk and have
Speaker 4: dumb frat nights. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And are you saying there are other universities?
Speaker 5: I am, yeah, should just go to a state school
Speaker 5: for two years, Like from the cost perspective, it.
Speaker 4: Might happen to live in the state in this in
Speaker 4: the state that has arguably the a state school system
Speaker 4: in the nation.
Speaker 3: I will say though, that the whole bit with Kyler
Speaker 3: and then being like being like like, I didn't realize
Speaker 3: that there were other options that I could have, like
Speaker 3: tried to get into a really great party school.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that was fun. It was fun.
Speaker 3: I kind of like that, and like his sort of
Speaker 3: rehabilitation a little bit mm hmm.
Speaker 4: Like that was a more one of the more fun
Speaker 4: side quests. We wanted right right, right right, I just like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean they established that stake for Miguel. It just
Speaker 4: to me if I doesn't feel as much as I
Speaker 4: love the high school drama, the two plot lines I
Speaker 4: hate the most are will I get into the perfect
Speaker 4: college because there's no other choice? And the love triangle? Right,
Speaker 4: it does seem like we're finally, finally, finally, finally, finally
Speaker 4: done with love triangles, which makes me really happy. Robbie
Speaker 4: and Sam are the captains, so they might go back there,
Speaker 4: in which case I'll throw things at my television again.
Speaker 4: I hope we're not doing that, but yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 4: agree that, but there are serious consequences for who can
Speaker 4: do what depending on who wins this tornent.
Speaker 3: And like there are real world championships of various martial
Speaker 3: arts right, Like there is a World Karate Championship, there's
Speaker 3: World Taekwondo champion championships, there's Olympics, right, and there are
Speaker 3: age groups in various ones and that you know where
Speaker 3: maybe a seventeen year old, eighteen year old you know,
Speaker 3: might win as oppose if they're fighting twenty two to
Speaker 3: twenty three year olds, like probably not, Like you don't
Speaker 3: see a lot of eighteen year olds in Major League Baseball, right,
Speaker 3: every now and then you get like a Dwight Goodin,
Speaker 3: a Bryce Harper like every now and then, but like,
Speaker 3: by and large, like the absolute best of the best
Speaker 3: in pretty much any athletic endeavor is not going to
Speaker 3: be super young, right, because there's gonna be somebody of
Speaker 3: similar talent level who just had a few years of
Speaker 3: extra training, a few years more muscle development, bone growth, like,
Speaker 3: and they're generally gonna smoke the similar, the younger version
Speaker 3: of themselves, you know, speaking of who should or shouldn't
Speaker 3: get smoked and rooting for Cobra Kai.
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's talk about this guy, Brandon h Lee.
Speaker 3: Wow is the.
Speaker 5: Actor playing the Kwan Himry antagonist at this point? I
Speaker 5: guess yeah, Kwan jay Soon is the character's name.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Wow, I mean he's for real, he's this guy, Paul.
Speaker 5: You had the resume what this guy has done, so
Speaker 5: you know he's an actor and a model, but also
Speaker 5: a fifth degree black belt in taekwondo as like me, right,
Speaker 5: but I think he probably does more of a WTF
Speaker 5: world taekwondo.
Speaker 3: I didn't take that deeply. His father is an eighth
Speaker 3: degree taekwondo grandmaster who runs a school and Brandon also
Speaker 3: is on the web page, is like teaching at the school.
Speaker 3: So like he's a martial arts professional. Probably more or
Speaker 3: lessons birth is my guess. Also, his name is Brandon Lee,
Speaker 3: which is a lot to live up to. Right. To
Speaker 3: be clear, he's Korean American. Brandon Lee is or was.
Speaker 5: In terms of Hollywood, he was a stut double for
Speaker 5: Simoul Liu in so he's got that credential.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean this, The martial arts in that
Speaker 3: movie were very good.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he doesn't I will say, you guys can
Speaker 4: speak to his martial arts nest, which like I don't
Speaker 4: really notice, but I definitely thought he looked good. You know,
Speaker 4: he doesn't get much to do acting wise. He's playing
Speaker 4: your kind of traditional rebellious bad boy, but he plays
Speaker 4: that part perfectly. Like I thought, I really believed him
Speaker 4: as the like you know, I don't care about this,
Speaker 4: and you know, he he's the sith apprentice who overtakes
Speaker 4: the master. You know, while the he he's the like actually.
Speaker 3: The other apprentice really is what he's.
Speaker 4: He's the like if Luke killed Vader and then Palpatine
Speaker 4: was like yes, excellent, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, or if Anakin killed Dooku.
Speaker 4: And yeah, that's a better example. Yeah, but this time
Speaker 4: was still alive and still fighting and now right.
Speaker 3: Right, right, he's not just standing there. Yeah, but yeah,
Speaker 3: it's he's he's legit good at martial arts.
Speaker 5: And the standout stunt, at least in this portion of
Speaker 5: the season. He does a board break, he does a
Speaker 5: jumping kick to break a board and does three rotations
Speaker 5: in the air he does ten eight. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: which I didn't even know that was possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean there's there's ones where you do. He's
Speaker 3: got one on like his Instagram, Like he's got Instagram
Speaker 3: reels of ridiculous, you know. Stunt taekwondo basically, which is
Speaker 3: it's like a whole genre of like taekwondo of like
Speaker 3: at demonstrations and stuff, but where you break three boards
Speaker 3: going up, like spitting and kicking three times as you're
Speaker 3: going up, and it's like pop pop pop. And I
Speaker 3: mean these boards are like they're the little boards that
Speaker 3: are like demonstration boards, you know. But I mean I
Speaker 3: wouldn't be surprised, you know, like several boards like suspended
Speaker 3: or whatever. But like, yeah, the it's it's extremely acrobatic taekwondo,
Speaker 3: which is you know, not tongue pseudo. It's like it's
Speaker 3: super clear that like he's just doing taekwondo, you know,
Speaker 3: and is is very good at it. So yeah, there's
Speaker 3: there's that. I mean that too in a way, like
Speaker 3: all that was kind of like the highlight of the
Speaker 3: show for me was like and then then there're c
Speaker 3: s Lee as the the as the like Master Kim
Speaker 3: grand Master grand Master, but like and not that it's
Speaker 3: all great, but it's like it there's a familiar to me,
Speaker 3: you know, like as being you know, growing up in
Speaker 3: Korean martial arts basically and hearing them counting Korean and
Speaker 3: say start and stop and now, and you know, but
Speaker 3: then when they say sense it like breaks the spell.
Speaker 4: It's because that is specifically a Japanese word that would
Speaker 4: not necessarily be used in taekwondo.
Speaker 3: Correct.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so you were saying that there's no way that
Speaker 5: any of these miagido kids should be able to stand
Speaker 5: up to Brandon or the character Kwan, right basically, Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean like everything they display is like very TV
Speaker 5: martial arts and he's just doing the real thing. It's like, oh,
Speaker 5: this is different.
Speaker 3: Right exactly. And I mean there's more to fighting than
Speaker 3: just than just being able to do technique in a vacuum. Right,
Speaker 3: we also see him fighting and being a crap out
Speaker 3: of like three highly trained, you know, members of his school,
Speaker 3: and and you know that's the thing is like, that's
Speaker 3: clearly these are people who have been training for like
Speaker 3: their whole lives more or less, and then you have
Speaker 3: the miagy.
Speaker 5: Do after school kids.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, and it's like that's just not the same, right,
Speaker 3: I mean having I didn't start super young, right, I
Speaker 3: mean I trained a little bit when I was like eleven,
Speaker 3: then I started again when I was seventeen, Then I
Speaker 3: started again when I was twenty, and then I went
Speaker 3: from like twenty to like thirty something, and like, I
Speaker 3: trained super hard. But there are people I knew who
Speaker 3: had started as kids, and there are certain things that
Speaker 3: they just had a facility with that is extremely difficult
Speaker 3: to gain a facility with when when you start older,
Speaker 3: or when you don't do a heavy amount of training younger.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying it's impossible. I'm just saying the people
Speaker 3: who are generally the best of the best generally started younger, right,
Speaker 3: and that doesn't mean you can't wire great skill. You can.
Speaker 3: It doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. The point of martial
Speaker 3: arts in general, of modern martial arts is to try
Speaker 3: and improve your own ability, right, It's not to compare
Speaker 3: your ability to someone else's. That's not like the purpose
Speaker 3: of it, right, Like we're not generally training for real
Speaker 3: world fighting all that much, right, Like, hopefully the hope
Speaker 3: is you're not actually going to use this very much,
Speaker 3: So there has to be some other benefit that you're
Speaker 3: getting from training besides just being able to use it.
Speaker 3: You do want to be able to use it, and
Speaker 3: like if it's necessary, right, And I think somebody with
Speaker 3: the amount of training is these after schools kids do.
Speaker 3: I think it's very realistic that they'd be able to
Speaker 3: defend themselves or aggress effectively against people who are somewhat
Speaker 3: more physical of their own age group, who are completely untrained.
Speaker 3: I think that's reasonable, right, Like, I think you can
Speaker 3: learn a lot in six months to two years or whatever,
Speaker 3: but like it kind of defies belief that you would
Speaker 3: then be able to Like if these kids kept training
Speaker 3: super hard until they're like mid twenties, late twenties or something.
Speaker 3: I could see them being really good, but like to
Speaker 3: get outstanding at martial arts, it's a matter of decades,
Speaker 3: not years or months.
Speaker 4: Well, and not to mention that there's a general level
Speaker 4: of athleticism that a human can have or not have.
Speaker 4: And so like, you know, you were talking about, like
Speaker 4: how you like people who are like eighteen and very
Speaker 4: good at one sport or something like that. You know
Speaker 4: a person who is starting in age twenty or starting
Speaker 4: at age sixteen, whatever, and has been already doing an
Speaker 4: athletic pursuit of some long time switching sports. To me,
Speaker 4: that makes a lot more sense than someone like I
Speaker 4: think his name is Brandon, I'm not sure, the nerdy
Speaker 4: kid who's Hawk's best friend to me, Dmitri, Dmitri, thank you.
Speaker 4: He's a great character. I really like him a And
Speaker 4: to me, the idea that like he learns enough to
Speaker 4: stand up to the people who've been bullying him and
Speaker 4: like get in a good shot every now and then,
Speaker 4: that's a totally believable story. The idea of this person
Speaker 4: who just was not an athletic person in any way,
Speaker 4: shape or form, which is there's nothing wrong with that. Like,
Speaker 4: I think that's a great you know, I certainly was
Speaker 4: that in many ways, could all of a sudden go
Speaker 4: to being a you know, martial arts expert enough that
Speaker 4: he gets to go to this tournament just really beggars belief.
Speaker 5: Right, He's he's a skinny nerd who got into Mit
Speaker 5: on his academic record, so pretty much solely, right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: that's where we're at and that. But now he's also
Speaker 5: been invited to the World Championship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if he trained like super hard for five
Speaker 3: to ten years, maybe you find out what his potential is.
Speaker 3: But like the idea that he's reached anything, Like the
Speaker 3: people who are competing at some World championship should be
Speaker 3: somewhere near their potential, right, Like there's you know, there's
Speaker 3: a learning curve, and like at a certain point it
Speaker 3: starts to level off, right where it's hard to actually
Speaker 3: improve beyond the point you've gotten to. Not impossible necessarily,
Speaker 3: but like where you get close to whatever your potential is.
Speaker 3: And for different people it's going to take a different
Speaker 3: amount of time. But like it's just probably not like
Speaker 3: a one or two year thing for even for like
Speaker 3: a great athlete, right, I mean, you could probably get
Speaker 3: really good pretty fast if you're just a phenomenal athlete.
Speaker 3: And it was interesting watching the first episode. There's a
Speaker 3: picture on Johnny's fridge of young Robbie, like when he's
Speaker 3: like a little kid with a soccer trophy. So it's
Speaker 3: just like a little thing basically telling us that, like
Speaker 3: Robbie as a little kid was one at soccer or whatever. Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it doesn't necessarily mean he was great, but I think
Speaker 3: we're meant to believe like he's a naturally athletic kid
Speaker 3: who's done a lot of athletic things. Soccer involves kicking.
Speaker 3: Martial arts involved kicking, you know, it's like and honestly, like,
Speaker 3: actually people who are like soccer players like gymnasts, Like
Speaker 3: there are certain sports that cross over better with different
Speaker 3: martial arts, right, And yeah, and I mean I think
Speaker 3: athleticism really plays a huge role early on and then
Speaker 3: further on, like it'll kind of determine a lot of
Speaker 3: maybe what your absolute peak might look like, and it'll
Speaker 3: also tell you a lot what you'll look like early on.
Speaker 3: You get in there a little further and it's like
Speaker 3: really hard work is gonna be a whole lot of it, right,
Speaker 3: But like kind of your floor and your ceiling, I
Speaker 3: think kind of your athleticism are gonna determine a lot
Speaker 3: of that. But then it's a lot of hard work,
Speaker 3: and it's hard work over years and then maybe decades. Right, So,
Speaker 3: like I feel like anybody with like less than I
Speaker 3: don't know, less than ten years training, like, really you're
Speaker 3: gonna add a world championship, Like unless it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: so you did gung fu for like ten years and
Speaker 3: now you've done karate for two years, Okay, you could
Speaker 3: probably be pretty good.
Speaker 4: Well that's why I'm just still so lost in this
Speaker 4: idea that like three different schools from the valley in
Speaker 4: the valley, right, you know, Yeah, there's a lot more
Speaker 4: we can say about this, but one or two other
Speaker 4: issues that I want to, MA sure we touch on,
Speaker 4: and unsurprisingly for the three most winded guests that we
Speaker 4: are people we ever have on myself included, we're going
Speaker 4: pretty long already. But I want to talk about race
Speaker 4: a little bit because I think the show is trying
Speaker 4: to be a very kind of like multicultural, diverse show,
Speaker 4: and in some ways it's getting that right. I kind
Speaker 4: of always loved the Miguel storyline, particularly the way like
Speaker 4: they've played off Miguel and Robbie and Robbie being the
Speaker 4: white kid, but also a little bit more like kind
Speaker 4: of disadvantage in some ways the Miguel but not in
Speaker 4: some other ways. But both with the Kenny storyline and
Speaker 4: also with this idea of like we're playing so much
Speaker 4: attention to Miagi Do is like pure and right and good,
Speaker 4: and that's from like the original Karate of Okinawa, and
Speaker 4: then Cobra Kai is from Korea in this place where
Speaker 4: like you have to go like survive a snake bite
Speaker 4: and like maybe get sent to your death, and it's
Speaker 4: all very like siff like it feels like there's a
Speaker 4: messaging going on there, and I'm curious kind of what
Speaker 4: you guys are picking up on either of those storylines
Speaker 4: or in other directions as well.
Speaker 5: I mean, at last we get to have our revenge,
Speaker 5: by which but the we I mean Japanese, not that
Speaker 5: we've been like super downtrodden, but I think we're gonna
Speaker 5: talk about it mon later and the way that they
Speaker 5: portray Japanese people and not understandably from like the history
Speaker 5: of that franchise, like what it's depicting. But I needed this,
Speaker 5: I needed a little bit of no no, no, like
Speaker 5: Japanese people can be like a guy, right, No, but
Speaker 5: it's it's to your point, Matthew, it's weird, Like I
Speaker 5: don't get it, especially because this show already, in my opinion,
Speaker 5: has done a poor job of representation of Asians. For
Speaker 5: you know, Asian martial arts theme show. Pretty much all
Speaker 5: the main characters are white. You get a little bit
Speaker 5: of chosen sprinkled in, but none of none of the kids.
Speaker 5: I guess Devin might be like half right.
Speaker 4: I would. I would say none of the kids except
Speaker 4: Mede Devon are Asian. I do that like Miguel is
Speaker 4: one of the main characters and he's yeah, you know, Latino,
Speaker 4: but yeah, I hear what's saying from the Asian representation.
Speaker 5: And you get into these questions of you know, what
Speaker 5: is enough representation or like what is correct representation. There's
Speaker 5: no easy answer for that, But I feel like an
Speaker 5: easy answer for a show called Karate Kid is you
Speaker 5: have to center it a little bit more on Japanese
Speaker 5: culture and characters than they have done, and then to
Speaker 5: bring in this major evil faction as Koreans. It's just
Speaker 5: it's just kind of like comically bad to me, right
Speaker 5: in a way that I seriously, like question whether there's
Speaker 5: a cultural consultant on this show, like in terms of
Speaker 5: like Asian matters, because there are other things where there's
Speaker 5: been like Japanese writing on some of you know, the
Speaker 5: Miyagi Doo stuff that's just like not not good. So
Speaker 5: I I wonder what's going on behind the scenes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's interesting because I think the villains
Speaker 3: being Korean goes back to the origin of the series
Speaker 3: of the Karate Kid, where the what's his name, Caman,
Speaker 3: I forget his whole name. I keep thinking Michael came in,
Speaker 3: but it's definitely not my Robert Mark Cayman. Apparently he
Speaker 3: took tom Sudo, which is who was he? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: the the the writer of the original Karate Kid.
Speaker 4: Okay, so he he.
Speaker 3: Took tog Sudo and did not enjoy the experience, found
Speaker 3: it too kind of cobra kai for his liking. And
Speaker 3: then he took Gojiu, which is what Miagi Doo really is,
Speaker 3: and enjoyed it, you know, and basically wrote a movie
Speaker 3: where the villains were tong Sudo practitioners and the but
Speaker 3: called it, you know, karate right, they didn't call it Tongsudo,
Speaker 3: which honestly is kind of authentic, right, Like I saw
Speaker 3: Cobra Kai at some point I think they described described it,
Speaker 3: maybe Johnny did as like American karate, which I think
Speaker 3: is a thing, right, That's like, that's the thing where
Speaker 3: and like Crease being an American soldier who learned martial
Speaker 3: arts while in Asia and then brought it back and
Speaker 3: then taught it with his own, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: American machismo kind of thing. Like I feel like there
Speaker 3: is something legitimate to that story, like it actually rings true.
Speaker 4: I mean, in any ways, it's very similar to to
Speaker 4: you know, I think it's the last or one of
Speaker 4: the last Ipman movies. Yeah. Four, we get a similar
Speaker 4: dynamic of like that karate as Americans understand. It might
Speaker 4: be a melding of a number of martial arts, but
Speaker 4: also has this very American very like raw raw, We're
Speaker 4: gonna win, there's no such thing as losing kind of thing.
Speaker 4: And I felt like some of the middle seasons of
Speaker 4: Cobra Kai were more of that, were of like Cobra
Speaker 4: Kai is very Americanized in some not good ways, and
Speaker 4: that's what's weird to be. Oh no, no, but all the
Speaker 4: problems actually go back to.
Speaker 3: Korea, right, right right, and Crease who was in Iman.
Speaker 4: For by the way, Oh was he okay, that's cool.
Speaker 3: Yes, there's there's a scene. It's just an easter egg.
Speaker 3: But the guys like drop and give me fifty, mister Crease,
Speaker 3: and it's like clearly around, it's awesome to Crease from
Speaker 3: from the so so, which is funny because obvious the
Speaker 3: movies do not cast the Japanese as the protagonists, but
Speaker 3: also don't you know, also don't cast the Americans as
Speaker 3: a protagonist or the British if you watch this, I
Speaker 3: think the second one. But anyway, it so I feel
Speaker 3: like there is this and there's a legitimacy to the
Speaker 3: lineage actually being Korean, you know, and and there is
Speaker 3: a realness to like the brutality of some Korean martial
Speaker 3: arts and as far as forms of karate in Japan
Speaker 3: that are also very kind of brutalistic. At least one kyokushin,
Speaker 3: which I mistakenly thought is what this was based on,
Speaker 3: is was founded by a Korean Japanese person, right, I
Speaker 3: mean because he moved to Japan and lived there from
Speaker 3: maybe age fifteen or something, so I don't know exactly
Speaker 3: like how Masoyama identified. But but the point being that,
Speaker 3: like this isn't just like totally made up and oh,
Speaker 3: let's just make like the Koreans the villains, because right,
Speaker 3: But like that doesn't mean obviously that like all Korean
Speaker 3: martial arts are like that, or like all Japanese martial
Speaker 3: arts are like Miyagi Doo. Like It's it's super weird though,
Speaker 3: because it's like they took two real world styles and
Speaker 3: then made made up styles based on those real world styles,
Speaker 3: and then they have not a lot of representation of
Speaker 3: people from the countries and cultures that those styles originally
Speaker 3: came from. Yeah, and it takes place in southern California,
Speaker 3: which last I checked, there are like a few Asian
Speaker 3: Asian American people in Southern California, you know, like the
Speaker 3: demographics of the show don't feel quite spot on, although
Speaker 3: obviously different areas are different. But like, you know, most
Speaker 3: martial arts schools have Okay, I shouldn't say most, because
Speaker 3: I haven't been everywhere, but like in New York in California,
Speaker 3: you often get a fair number of like Asian students, right,
Speaker 3: Like that's just pretty common and not necessarily like you know,
Speaker 3: Japanese Americans taking karate and like Chinese Americans taking kung
Speaker 3: fu print whatever like combinations. But like the point being that,
Speaker 3: like I definitely agree with what what you're saying, Riki,
Speaker 3: where it feels like they don't have a they're not deliberate,
Speaker 3: and they're not I feel like they're not very cognizant
Speaker 3: of how their choices kind of look like overall, and
Speaker 3: and sort of which characters have more of a voice
Speaker 3: and which ones don't. And in a way that I
Speaker 3: feel like the I mean, it wasn't great in that regard,
Speaker 3: but like I feel like Miyagi was by far the
Speaker 3: most interesting character.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think one of the fundamental problems that
Speaker 5: this show has from the get go is that unfortunately
Speaker 5: Pat Maurita passed and could never be a character on
Speaker 5: the show. So they have to constantly have like these
Speaker 5: callbacks and references and play a little Shami san music
Speaker 5: when they're thinking about him. But they there's like not
Speaker 5: a very good viable replacement for how central Miyagi was
Speaker 5: to the original franchise, and they brought in Chosen m
Speaker 5: But unfortunately the problem there is that the actor is
Speaker 5: a third generation Japanese, so he does he actually doesn't
Speaker 5: speak Japanese. Japanese, yeah, usually Okamoto so and that's not
Speaker 5: his fault. Like he was cast in a movie in
Speaker 5: his twenties and was like told to be Japanese and like,
Speaker 5: all right, like this is the role I.
Speaker 3: Can get, right right, Hollywood?
Speaker 5: And I think they have done the best they can
Speaker 5: with his characters and his limitations in terms of like
Speaker 5: what he says and how he speaks. But it's just
Speaker 5: it's not it's not very authentic, and unfortunately it does
Speaker 5: disservice to the story to not have like an authentic
Speaker 5: Japanese character imparting, you know, the ethos of Miyagi. Though
Speaker 5: I feel like.
Speaker 4: Well, it's funny. I hadn't thought of it until this moment,
Speaker 4: but it feels like we're almost definitely going to get
Speaker 4: flashbacks to a younger Miyagi.
Speaker 5: Yeah right, the second because the we we just got
Speaker 5: the reveal that he was in a sei tai kai
Speaker 5: and has a bloody bandana.
Speaker 3: Right, Like, I'm not crazy about that storyline, but like,
Speaker 3: and I don't love prequels, but like, I don't know,
Speaker 3: I'd watch a story about a younger Miyagi if it
Speaker 3: wasn't bad. I don't trust them. I don't trust them
Speaker 3: and not make it bad. But like I don't know here,
Speaker 3: I don't know because then no, I mean, because then
Speaker 3: you would be centering his character.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I mean see that, And I do
Speaker 4: feel like it could fit into one part of the
Speaker 4: story that I want, because I do feel like overall,
Speaker 4: Danny Lusso is in the wrong in terms of the
Speaker 4: things that are happening, and I think one of the
Speaker 4: things that he's doing wrong is how much he has
Speaker 4: mythologized Miyagi and Miyagi to the point where the idea
Speaker 4: that he has any kind of a hard past really
Speaker 4: upsets him. And given that the original premise of the
Speaker 4: show is that people can grow beyond their pasts, with
Speaker 4: people like Johnny and Robert and Tory, I think there
Speaker 4: could be a very well done story about Danny coming
Speaker 4: to understand that Miyagi was this wonderful person who had
Speaker 4: a troubled past and maybe he should stop judging all
Speaker 4: the other people around him because of their past. That
Speaker 4: could be a very good story. Do I trust these
Speaker 4: writers in this situation that right? Absolutely not?
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 4: And I think one example of that is just really
Speaker 4: building on something I think Griegy, you said that doesn't
Speaker 4: seem like there's a cultural consultant, And I think Paul
Speaker 4: you were saying that it feels like they're not uh
Speaker 4: doing enough to uh, you know, be thoughtful about the
Speaker 4: things that they're uh that are happening. Also, Daniel Berry
Speaker 4: some Sports Highlights, says uh Stubb Dan and uh says Dory.
Speaker 4: Tory rejoining was predictable. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, good comment. I
Speaker 4: think that you know, it just it felt like they're
Speaker 4: going back and back and back. Let's talk about Kenny,
Speaker 4: because Kenny again started out last season May it's two
Speaker 4: seasons ago, but as another inching story of the kind
Speaker 4: of kid who gets bullied, learns to fight back and
Speaker 4: grows up into the bully himself. And I think that
Speaker 4: itself is an interesting story and can be told from
Speaker 4: any racial background. But the way that they've taken him,
Speaker 4: especially in terms of like him being this very street note,
Speaker 4: you know, very kind of like street wise, you know,
Speaker 4: hard nosed kid who just wants to fight at every
Speaker 4: opportunity and doesn't want to listen to anybody. Even though
Speaker 4: I think I feel like his anger at Robbie is
Speaker 4: completely justified, it not feel the most racially aware portrayal
Speaker 4: of that character.
Speaker 5: Well, both of them. So Anthony LaRusso was the bully,
Speaker 5: right and then and then Robbie took took Kenny in
Speaker 5: to Cobray when it was still reasonable and then left
Speaker 5: when I think Chreas came back or Silver showed up
Speaker 5: and left Kenny there, and then that that's what poisoned
Speaker 5: to Kenny to the point he is at the start
Speaker 5: of the season. Yeah, I really I hate it. I'm
Speaker 5: going to say, I mean, he's the word hate, which
Speaker 5: I try not to use, but I hated the scene
Speaker 5: where the four of them, the power couples, are trying
Speaker 5: to convince Kenny to come back to Miagido, you know,
Speaker 5: against his will and against his brother's will, and they're like, yo,
Speaker 5: leave us alone, and they're like no, no, no, like
Speaker 5: you have to come with us, like it's for your
Speaker 5: own good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I hate that they ended up being right.
Speaker 5: Right, like, yeah, yeah, it is what he needed, but
Speaker 5: that's not the way that that should have been done. Yeah,
Speaker 5: very uncomfortable for me.
Speaker 3: I feel like making it clear that he's welcome and
Speaker 3: has a place there, and if he comes to the
Speaker 3: point where he decides he wants to do that, like
Speaker 3: that they will be happy for him to come join
Speaker 3: them there, but like then.
Speaker 5: But instead they like to fight because it.
Speaker 3: Right, But we're going to fight you to show you
Speaker 3: how much you care, how much we care that you
Speaker 3: don't learn the wrong things about fighting from oh.
Speaker 4: Especially yes, we're gonna fight your brother because clearly he's
Speaker 4: the bad influence and we're the good one.
Speaker 3: Well, and then it was so weird how he was,
Speaker 3: how the brother was so against them, and then all
Speaker 3: of a sudden, he just like spun on a dime.
Speaker 5: And it was like but the way that they fought
Speaker 5: was very defensive and carry it or something like that.
Speaker 3: Right right, right, They could have hurt you, but they
Speaker 3: did it. Just it felt very not real. And to me,
Speaker 3: I don't know if it was like super stereotype whatever stuff,
Speaker 3: but I feel like some of this is just what
Speaker 3: happens when, you know, when you only have like three
Speaker 3: or four black characters, like if you know, I feel
Speaker 3: like almost any choice is fine for any one character.
Speaker 3: But the problem is, like I mean, it's a show
Speaker 3: that has a lot of characters. They've gone through a
Speaker 3: lot of characters, you know, and and I think it's
Speaker 3: medium in terms of representation, in terms of like at
Speaker 3: least diversity of people on screen, Like it's reasonable. It's
Speaker 3: kind of like Hollywood's improved, and I feel like it's
Speaker 3: improved with Hollywood, but it hasn't. It's not on the forefront,
Speaker 3: but it's also kind of not at the tail, you know.
Speaker 3: But it certainly isn't great in that regard, and it's
Speaker 3: like it's just, you know, the the characters who are
Speaker 3: centered are I mean, they're not all white or they're
Speaker 3: not all all white or whatever, you know, but it's
Speaker 3: like it at first, like I kind of thought it
Speaker 3: was interesting that there weren't a lot of Asian characters
Speaker 3: early on, right, and like that the one main Asian
Speaker 3: character was kind of like a bully. But then there
Speaker 3: was like another one who was like you know, sort
Speaker 3: of like the god figure of Miyagi or whatever, but.
Speaker 4: Like he wasn't even like he was a bully for sure,
Speaker 4: but also he was not interested in martial arts, not
Speaker 4: interested in like he didn't want to eat sushi, He
Speaker 4: want to eat fingers.
Speaker 5: Like right, right, to talk about Kyler in season Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: I feel.
Speaker 4: Like that was fun, but especially but not if that's
Speaker 4: the only Japanese kid.
Speaker 5: You have zactly like right right. It was a funny subversion,
Speaker 5: but then that was the only Asian character we got
Speaker 5: in season one.
Speaker 3: I think, yeah, more or less, I think, yeah, so
Speaker 3: you know, and again like you're in southern California, you know,
Speaker 3: and it's.
Speaker 5: Like you're southern California running martial arts schools Asian just around.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I mean there was like at the Aul
Speaker 3: Valley whatever, Like I think there were schools that had
Speaker 3: more asianies and like maybe not a ton of Asian
Speaker 3: students are going to like be like, yeah, I'm going
Speaker 3: to go train with that guy, you know, like Johnny Lawrence. Right,
Speaker 3: But like I don't know.
Speaker 4: I will say, just going back on the Kenny point
Speaker 4: of it, Daniel also brought the point that I think
Speaker 4: is right. He wrote, Kenny may join Cobra Kai again,
Speaker 4: And honestly, I feel like that would have been the
Speaker 4: much better reveal, like not to have Tory go do
Speaker 4: this again, Yeah, because the idea that Kenny never really
Speaker 4: left Cobra Kai, that he still kind of believes a
Speaker 4: lot of it, yeah goes back. That would have made
Speaker 4: much more sense, right.
Speaker 3: Right, especially if he found out that he'd gotten you know,
Speaker 3: poisoned basically with the laxatives.
Speaker 4: Yeah, oh god, yeah, we haven't even talked about that part.
Speaker 5: Right, right, But there's a weird thing going on with
Speaker 5: the girls a lot of the times, right, Like with
Speaker 5: Tory Increase, it's it's obviously like very uncomfortable. Yeah, that
Speaker 5: slumber party like that was was Johnny really like.
Speaker 3: With three? What are you doing? Man?
Speaker 4: It was?
Speaker 5: How How's I know it's a TV show, but come on,
Speaker 5: sometimes you got to be like, no, not like this,
Speaker 5: this is how I feel.
Speaker 4: Well and just it also because his idea of that
Speaker 4: they need to be they need to hate each other
Speaker 4: in order to fight well, right, I mean again, it's
Speaker 4: like the Sith ideology of like fight from your hate.
Speaker 4: It's just all over that, which is kind of fun.
Speaker 4: But even more so, it feels to me that the
Speaker 4: emotional place you need to be in in order to
Speaker 4: fight versus compete in a fighting sport are very different.
Speaker 4: And I and maybe it's not, but I feel like
Speaker 4: getting me to want to beat up my friend is
Speaker 4: gonna be a hard thing to do. Getting me to
Speaker 4: want to score points on my friend in a way
Speaker 4: that we are both trying to hit and kick each other,
Speaker 4: knowing the others trying to do it to us too.
Speaker 4: I'm not someone who knows anything about this world. I
Speaker 4: know something about it from like tackling, like you know,
Speaker 4: so my best friends, I would be happy to get into,
Speaker 4: like you know, tackling matches with you know which we're
Speaker 4: gonna do some real harm to each other. But that's
Speaker 4: very different, felt like than fighting. But that's not martial
Speaker 4: arts at all. Paul, you're making a face. What do
Speaker 4: you think?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I I soft agree with you, like
Speaker 3: I do feel like there is a I feel like
Speaker 3: their problem wasn't that they didn't hate each other, it
Speaker 3: was that they felt that their reconciliation was tenuous, yep.
Speaker 3: And so I feel like they didn't feel like they
Speaker 3: could go hard against it. Like there's two ways that
Speaker 3: you could really go hard against someone. One is you
Speaker 3: hate them and you want to call them harm, and
Speaker 3: two is that you respect them and respect that they're
Speaker 3: going to defend themselves properly and that they're not going
Speaker 3: to take it personally when you were doing the thing
Speaker 3: you were there to do right.
Speaker 4: Like money and chosen resolving their differences, but still wanting
Speaker 4: to fight feels very much like that second thing for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we're now buddies. We resolve our conflict, but yeah we
Speaker 4: want to fight. We're both good at this and we
Speaker 4: want to see who's better.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean my friends. Yeah, it was Yeah,
Speaker 3: I love that.
Speaker 4: That did.
Speaker 3: Like the whole thing leading up to it, I could
Speaker 3: have done without, but that that was another thing where
Speaker 3: I felt like they got the resolution right, even if
Speaker 3: the conflict itself felt you know, goofy. But like, you know,
Speaker 3: my friends and I used to get together every Sunday
Speaker 3: and just beat the crap out of each other and
Speaker 3: like but like within certain rules of this is what
Speaker 3: you do, you know, and like at the end of it,
Speaker 3: we're still friends. Maybe we're better friends than before. It's
Speaker 3: like it's there's like there could be like a bonding
Speaker 3: thing of just like beating the tar out of each other,
Speaker 3: because that's what you're there to do. You're practicing fighting.
Speaker 3: How do you practice fighting well by fighting? Right? But
Speaker 3: like you know, we're not We're not trying to break
Speaker 3: each other's knees or noses or like various things. And
Speaker 3: so if if there's a weird dynamic, it's just going
Speaker 3: to be hard to do that, right, because that dynamic
Speaker 3: is going to be in the way. So I think
Speaker 3: Johnny was right that there was a dynamic in the
Speaker 3: way that wasn't working, but he was wrong that the
Speaker 3: dynamic had to change back to what it was before.
Speaker 3: It didn't, and it actually it worked. His plan backfired
Speaker 3: and worked because it backfired. And I kind of like
Speaker 3: that except for what the actual plan was in the
Speaker 3: first place, Like I think them just having it out
Speaker 3: and then actually reconcile in a like okay, we we
Speaker 3: cleared the air. We didn't just kind of say, okay,
Speaker 3: we'll go with each other, like we actually cleared the
Speaker 3: air and now we can now we can fight, like.
Speaker 4: Well especially felt it felt like also it was mostly
Speaker 4: an excuse to be able to say, yes, Johnny has
Speaker 4: gotten better about women enough that he can hold down
Speaker 4: this relationship, that the mother of his girlfriend really likes him,
Speaker 4: that he's much more accepted in these ways. But isn't
Speaker 4: he still kind of a laughable misogynist with all of
Speaker 4: his silly ideas about girls, right right? And that just
Speaker 4: felt awful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think they just want to hang on
Speaker 3: to things like that, And speaking of Carmen, like she
Speaker 3: had what like three lines this season or something like. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I feel like they really leave a lot of characters
Speaker 3: just kind of like.
Speaker 5: For you know, well, they introduced too many.
Speaker 3: Yes, they introduced so many, but they want to keep
Speaker 3: their run times short, and they want to have this
Speaker 3: maximization of like conflict and action and those things. You
Speaker 3: just can't you can't do all those things and then
Speaker 3: actually keep up with all your characters and have them
Speaker 3: all feel real, all right.
Speaker 4: Which is why apparently there wasn't a single adult who
Speaker 4: wanted to step in at the batting cages when the
Speaker 4: kids started fighting each other.
Speaker 3: All right, well, there's no adults in that world. We've
Speaker 3: discussed this. We know there's adults and stuff.
Speaker 5: There's always the Gulf.
Speaker 4: Right exactly, The frat parties always you know, get into
Speaker 4: fist fights and stuff.
Speaker 5: Yea, all right, I'm ready for my brand. Oh kay
Speaker 5: about Okay, So the.
Speaker 4: Daniel had said, imagine if Robbie and Sam get back together. Daniel,
Speaker 4: I know you're kind of new to this podcast. It's awesome.
Speaker 4: I've already given my personal rant about love triangles and
Speaker 4: how I'm so glad we're not going back there. So
Speaker 4: I'm glad you're here, please stick around, bite your tongue anyway, Riki,
Speaker 4: you were saying.
Speaker 5: The is bs and no like okay. So the word
Speaker 5: saiki tyke i literally means world tournament, and that's it.
Speaker 5: So again we don't know if it's kate, is it
Speaker 5: all martial arts makes martial arts? Like? What is this tournament?
Speaker 5: I looked up the logo. Actually it does have the
Speaker 5: Japanese characters saiki tyke i, like very small in the middle,
Speaker 5: but like up across the top big in English. Across
Speaker 5: the bottom it says best of the best in English,
Speaker 5: and then it's got like twenty flags around this circle
Speaker 5: with Japan at the top, right. But I don't understand
Speaker 5: this tournament and this organization and what is it supposed
Speaker 5: to be like again, like a lot of the stuff
Speaker 5: on this show, it feels too too much like it
Speaker 5: was written by white people because of just like the
Speaker 5: way that they named it, the logo, the the director
Speaker 5: or whoever this guy is, like is a European bond
Speaker 5: villain I called him, Yeah, And it's not like an
Speaker 5: international organization, and I like, you can have it doesn't
Speaker 5: have to be an Asian person. But given everything else,
Speaker 5: that this show has done. Probably should have made it
Speaker 5: an Asian person and probably should have gone to Japan
Speaker 5: and not Spain. Like I did not understand those choices
Speaker 5: at all, Like yeah, like it's a good thing, like, ah,
Speaker 5: we've seen a rise in martial arts in Europe, that's great,
Speaker 5: but you haven't done enough with Japan.
Speaker 4: I guarantee you. That's because Barcelona gave them some really
Speaker 4: good rate.
Speaker 5: On Oh yeah, yeah, no, absolutely, I mean yeah, tax breaks,
Speaker 5: tax breaks, although it's obviously because you know, Miguel speaks
Speaker 5: some Spanish and his dad's going to be there and
Speaker 5: have you know, a language advantage. And I forgot about
Speaker 5: that story.
Speaker 3: Either that or they thought there would be some like
Speaker 3: really nice second unit photography.
Speaker 5: But yeah, and that when they walked into that hall,
Speaker 5: it just looked very cheap, Like, Matthew, you and I
Speaker 5: have been in a lot of like convention centers, and
Speaker 5: that just looked like generic convention center dressed up with
Speaker 5: a few banners. It just didn't it didn't look good.
Speaker 3: That's how most martial arts tournaments are, Like.
Speaker 5: I know, I know, yeah, I know, especially what it's
Speaker 5: supposed to be right.
Speaker 4: The way they did it, as though, like Look, here's
Speaker 4: every team taking part standing in different places of the
Speaker 4: Matt right. I don't mean to keep harping on this
Speaker 4: three teams from the Valley thing, but like, if there's
Speaker 4: three teams from one part of the United States and
Speaker 4: there's like fifteen teams in this thing total, that sounds,
Speaker 4: you know, like the way they're figuring it out. I
Speaker 4: thought this was gonna be like two hundred teams, you know,
Speaker 4: and some kind of like you know, you know, Final
Speaker 4: sixty four kind of thing around robins or whatever. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I think you're right now. It feels like it's written
Speaker 4: by people who don't have martial arts experience, who don't
Speaker 4: have cultural experience of the things they're writing about, and I
Speaker 4: think that goes true for both the Asian stuff. I
Speaker 4: also know that the first Reasons of Miguel and his family,
Speaker 4: there was a lot of Latino and La Tina commentators
Speaker 4: who are really unhappy with it. That apparently has gotten better,
Speaker 4: but that also felt very much like written by white people,
Speaker 4: especially the idea that like they would tolerate Johnny for
Speaker 4: a second given the horrible racist things he was saying.
Speaker 4: But it also just felt like it's, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 4: exactly what the plot needs it to be. It's the
Speaker 4: world's biggest thing, but it's only twelve teams because that's
Speaker 4: going to look really good for that reveal moment with Tory.
Speaker 4: It just none of it makes sense, I am.
Speaker 5: I'm also I'm not even sure that they're actually filming
Speaker 5: in Barcelona. I think they just like took the wide
Speaker 5: shots of the tourist attractions that you would know, and
Speaker 5: they like walked into a convention center in California.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's pretty standard. Like what would you
Speaker 3: go to a convention center like a sound stage in Barcelona,
Speaker 3: you know. I mean maybe they'll have some you know,
Speaker 3: on location.
Speaker 5: I really hope. So they need to do something to
Speaker 5: make us actually believe that they went to Barcelona.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean just architecturally, it's it's it's beautiful, right.
Speaker 4: So, I mean, all right, Well, in our bonus member section,
Speaker 4: we're gonna be talking a little bit more about the
Speaker 4: wider Cobra, the wider karate Kid universe, and what we
Speaker 4: might be seeing in the future. But for everybody else,
Speaker 4: thank you all so much for listening. Uh Riki and Paul,
Speaker 4: do you have last comments?
Speaker 3: I mean, the last thing I was going to bring up,
Speaker 3: I'm going to bring up after the thing, so definitely
Speaker 3: become a member. But overall, like I guess, I still
Speaker 3: enjoy the show, not enough to like rewatch episodes aside
Speaker 3: from I was like rewatching the first episode of the
Speaker 3: series kind.
Speaker 5: Of for.
Speaker 3: Research purposes, you know, to be like kind of reground
Speaker 3: myself and like, okay, what what exactly where did we
Speaker 3: come from here? You know, how do we get here?
Speaker 3: I feel like the show is true to itself in
Speaker 3: you know, it wants some fun fights, it wants a
Speaker 3: lot of drama. It wants characters to learn and grow
Speaker 3: and reset and learn and grow and reset and like it. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I guess like I enjoy it, but I don't. I
Speaker 3: don't like it that much. And I wish there were
Speaker 3: more series that captured the things that I do like
Speaker 3: about the series without the things that I really don't
Speaker 3: like about the series. I think that would be cool.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it would be interesting, Like, are
Speaker 3: we going to get some other like martial arts kind
Speaker 3: of series that's like, I don't know, maybe a little
Speaker 3: bit better with representation, both in terms of culturally and
Speaker 3: in terms of you know, and racially and and and
Speaker 3: in terms of like martial arts culture. Yeah, it's not
Speaker 3: the queen's gambit of martial arts. You know.
Speaker 4: I think what you said about enjoy it, but not
Speaker 4: like it's perfect and it even it wasn't the podcast,
Speaker 4: I wouldn't watch it if I didn't have people to
Speaker 4: talk about it with, like I do. Think it makes
Speaker 4: me think about things. I enjoy our conversations about it,
Speaker 4: and for that I enjoy watching it. But if like
Speaker 4: no one else knew was watching it, I probably wouldn't
Speaker 4: watch it. Yeah, I would just get people to watch.
Speaker 3: It, right right, you did, That's what you did.
Speaker 5: My last thing is I genuinely hope that some of
Speaker 5: these kids, you know, they're they're young adults now, but
Speaker 5: some of these kids from this show become huge stars
Speaker 5: because they deserve it. Like, you know, we can talk
Speaker 5: about how quote unquote fake the martial arts is, but
Speaker 5: they're still doing like a reasonable enough job. And some
Speaker 5: of the acting is very good from the kids, especially Cholo,
Speaker 5: who was a Beetle right, like, yeah, I really have high.
Speaker 4: Hopes for him in the yeah Blue Beetle unfortunately, like
Speaker 4: he was very good in it, And there are parts
Speaker 4: of it that are very good. It was not a
Speaker 4: good movie, which I think is too bad because yeah,
Speaker 4: I think he's perfect as a superhero.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well he was the greatest Blue Beatle. Blue Beatle
Speaker 3: wasn't great. But yeah, yeah, I totally second what you're saying, Riki.
Speaker 3: I feel like I feel like the acting exceeds the writing,
Speaker 3: which is a hard thing to do, I think, you know,
Speaker 3: and I think the martial arts are very good for
Speaker 3: non professional martial artists. Yeah, you know. And the thing
Speaker 3: is then when someone like Brandon each Lee shows up,
Speaker 3: it's just like, oh, right, that's what like a real
Speaker 3: martial artist looks like doing martial arts. And I respect
Speaker 3: that the show has the actors doing a ton of
Speaker 3: their own stunts. I think that's great, but I think
Speaker 3: it shows because they're not on people, you know, they
Speaker 3: are actors who have learned some martial arts.
Speaker 5: I agree with Paul. I think that's what elevates the
Speaker 5: fight scenes, is that they are able to like be
Speaker 5: on their faces and show them doing these things. Make
Speaker 5: gives it that realism, even if it's not like realistic fighting.
Speaker 3: Right exactly, Well, it looks like good Hollywood fighting.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And like when it is the kid. You know,
Speaker 4: the actors I think have got have had enough time
Speaker 4: in trading, athleticism and all these kind of things that
Speaker 4: they can get something equivalent to, you know, a kid
Speaker 4: who's been taking martial arts once or twice a week
Speaker 4: after school and so like in the early seasons, that's
Speaker 4: what the actors were at about that level. But yeah,
Speaker 4: now they're going up against world class people, and you know,
Speaker 4: from the Korean team, some of the actors are world
Speaker 4: class martial artists as well as good actors. I do
Speaker 4: definitely think that guy who's playing the young Sith. You know,
Speaker 4: if nothing else, he is beautiful, he is good at
Speaker 4: martial arts, and he's good at being a bad boy.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 4: He's definitely gonna get some some some starring roles soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we will see.
Speaker 4: All right, Well, thank you all so much. Thank you
Speaker 4: to our listeners who are schiming in. We're gonna start
Speaker 4: putting the times and topics of this on our website.
Speaker 4: We've got a couple of things to figure out to
Speaker 4: make it happen. I just need to sit down and
Speaker 4: do it. But we're gonna start doing that because we
Speaker 4: love people who sit and kind of jump into the
Speaker 4: chat with us, and watch us as we're streaming. It
Speaker 4: is another way to get the free bonus content everyone else,
Speaker 4: though you do have to become a member. For our members,
Speaker 4: we'll have some more bonus content for you fose who
Speaker 4: aren't very sick of our voices by now for everyone else,
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