I liked Cobra Kai in the first few seasons when Johnny Lawrence had a lot of personal growth. His story and his character development were very interesting, especially considering that Daniel LaRusso was the bad guy in Johnny’s story. These days, I’m just disappointed with how Daniel LaRusso seems to have no growth whatsoever in the series and exists as a benchmark by which to measure others. Case-in-point, and spoilers for the most recent episode ahead…
When Tory’s mom dies, she ends up back at the dojo fighting (acceptably in karate practice) her nemesis-turned-friend Samantha. She’s giving it her all when all of the sudden, Daniel stops the fight because “Her mom died.” Johnny, being a guy who has actual concern for these kids and understands personal difficulty, wants to let her work things out and continue fighting while Daniel makes some stupid comment about “karate is not about anger”. Are they just sending her home to an empty house? Her mom dies and to add insult to the injury of her mom being taken way, Daniel takes away karate from her, the one thing she might still love at this difficult moment. Karate is about balance and being able to have some amount of control might help balance her life a bit when Tory has little to no control over anything else. Daniel was just there to be anti-Johnny. I would rather have seen Johnny convince him that fighting will help her emotionally and that not everything is about Daniel having karate sit securely on it’s pedestal. Daniel needs to learn that sometimes, karate is just fighting, and it isn’t really the grandiose glorious thing he worships.
I would just like to see a little character growth from the other characters. Even Johnny is repeating things from the first five seasons. He has moments but they are getting fewer and farther between. I’m glad they are going to end this but I will certainly miss those many early moments when Johnny discovered adulthood and did his best to live up to it.