"Johnny Hit and Kick Bullies" Cobra Kai as a Primary Source w/ Adam of Raised on Film

Reboots, sequels, prequels and reimaginations have been all the rage of late, and there’s plenty of reasons for the trend, most notably the power of nostalgia. Cobra Kai arrived in 2018 and seemingly out of thin air. As far as I can tell there wasn’t a widespread call for the Karate Kid storyline to continue, especially from a different perspective than the original series of movies from the 1980s. Nostalgia for Daniel LaRusso’s saga certainly wasn’t a noticeable component of pop culture through the early 2010s.

Adam Galloway, the host of the Raised on Film podcast, a program on which I had the pleasure of being a guest to discuss another martial arts production, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1990), joined me to take a closer look at Cobra Kai and decide how the TV series acts as a reflection of the time period in which it was made.