Emmy Catch-Up: Cobra Kai

Every year, I watch the six submitted episodes of every series I don’t regularly watch that’s up for one of the Emmy series prizes. Last year, I started watching the entire season of each show to get a better idea of the quality I missed, and I’ve decided to continue that this year.

Cobra Kai: Season 3, Episode 6 “King Cobra” (B)

This episode delved a lot into Kreese’s background and the roots of his complicated morality in his wartime flashbacks featuring Terry Serpico from “The Flight Attendant” and “Army Wives” as his own unforgiving drill sergeant. Bringing in outsiders so that Hawk could show them that they couldn’t mess with him was just his latest questionable teaching practice, one that involved violence and kids getting hurt without much regard for safety and any standards of acceptable behavior. What I didn’t quite buy was that he would file a restraining order against Amanda since that it feels like something that he would consider an unacceptable admission of weakness rather than the shrewd move it was to make Amanda look like she was in the wrong. His tactical stance quickly turned violent again when the eviction plan didn’t pan out. Johnny had mixed success again with Miguel, further injuring him in truly irresponsible ways, but then their activities turned to trying to make Johnny look like a productive member of society, and of course he ended up ignoring all their hard work scripting the perfect message to send a casual hello instead. I’m looking forward to seeing Elisabeth Shue – she was the star of a film I got to intern on years ago before I decided to start writing about movies instead of working on them, and I’ve always been a fan of hers from another famous 80s movie (or rather, two movies): as Jennifer in “Back to the Future II” and “Back to the Future III.”