Every time Kreese fiddles with his wedding ring, it’s when he’s thinking of Terry. @mochisquish made aware of the time he does it in S2 and it had me thinking. This has to be an acting choice by Martin, right? Or I’m I just going insane😭
now i am not sure if the ck writers meant to imply that what happened w terry silver is the actual real root of daniel's anger at johnny for opening up cobra kai again in s1 and also the general dislike of his fighting style up to s4 but i am sure getting these vibes
#like. LIKE IT MAKES HIS CHARACTER MAKE A LOT MORE SENSE#think about how daniel gave johnny an actual hug in the first episode but then once johnny opened up ck it was downhill from there#the thing is i dont think daniel fully registers this . he Thinks hes mad at johnny but the reason behind it all isnt actually bc of him#he doesnt hold a grudge against johnny himself he holds it way more against silver and by extension ck and by extension johnny's style#bc it's very hard for him to separate silver from anyone else who fights the same as him#i like how s4 starts daniel off on his 'maybe johnny's karate style isnt cringe' character arc w them training each other#he has a lot of fun learning karate from johnny i think partly bc its fun and partly bc it's so clearly different from what he went through#but then silver comes back and that IMMEDIATELY causes daniel to panic and regress back into 'i think johnny's karate is cringe' mode# @aq2003
I do fully think it's intentional??? Like... it's gotta be right??? (clown shoes disclaimer)
Like you say in your tags
1. Daniel hugs Johnny and offers to fix his car for free (and not in a smarmy "look at how much better than you I am now" kind of way, he's being legitimately nice) the first time he sees him - it's Johnny's POV that makes it seem in any way insidious, like Daniel is just living his life
2. the reason it seems like it's surface-level about Johnny or even "about Cobra Kai" is that we don't get any proper mentions about Silver until midway through season 2!!!! and even then he's not mentioning Silver by name (someone with better memory than me, when is the first time Daniel says Silver's name out loud on this show? is it... season 4???)
3. your other excellent point about "it's very hard for him to separate silver from ayone who fights the same as him" - I think this is shown multiple times in various ways, not just through fighting but through like... general character things that happen post-Cobra Kai opening that just affirm all of Daniel's Fears - multiple posts have talked about this before + that reddit post I can't find right now sorry, but examples:
- Kyler dating Sam "I've known a lot of men who seemed nice, but were pieces of crap behind the scenes" (paraphrased) (s1)
- His reaction to Johnny saying Kreese is dead + later reaction to finding out that Kreese isn't dead (s1+s2)
- His reaction to discovering that Robby had lied to him about being Johnny's son (s1)
- His reaction to finding out that Sam is at Johnny's place without him knowing about it (s2)
4. I made another post about Daniel's trauma trigger moments (basically every time something triggers him on the show it leads directly to his making some of his most reactionary decisions and/or emotions), but there are several other things that are direct call-backs to Silver long before he's a glint in Kreese's "I should call up my ex again" eye
5. Season 3 calms down on these callbacks for the most part, because Daniel is off doing hot-girl shit in Okinawa with Chozen, and by the end of that Kreese decides to call up Terry -
the way I read that at the time was that Terry is like. The Big Bad. He is badder than Kreese. He will be so bad that Kreese will be horrified by him (oh hey, I was right) -- Terry is like. Cobra Kai's Biggest Bad Guy, and Johnny doesn't know who the fuck he is - the reason we know he's a bad guy is because we know what he did to Daniel
Of course, if you haven't seen TKK3 you... don't necessarily know that? The Things He Did to Daniel haven't actually been talked about or shown yet, so that's where the clown shoes come in: I think this is a deliberate choice, because he is (to reiterate) The Big Bad, and you don't want to overplay your "all the bad shit this guy did" card if you're trying to get six seasons out of it
6. Small six, but I'd also want to add that - while he was bullied badly in TKK1, he was also beaten up several times and almost killed in TKK2 and he was so ready to let that go without any problem - on its own TKK1 doesn't really carry a narrative on Daniel's side that's incomplete (in the same way that leaving Johnny in a parking lot feels a little incomplete)
Daniel's unfinished business is TKK3, or the movie where he was manipulated and abused and then it ended
and this is all pre-s4 stuff (s4 which feels like a prelude to s5 in my opinion, which is where once more, my clown shoes enter the picture). Once Silver arrives Daniel tanks his relationship with Johnny (with - like your point said - Johnny's help, because he's got a lot of easily pushed buttons), which is probably a big reason why they don't win the tournament. And Silver wins. (the end, lol can you imagine)
TL;DR Everything Daniel does comes back to TKK3, which has caused him to conflate Cobra Kai and anything or anyone affiliated with it, with Silver. There are several scenes that directly correlate with Silver's treatment of him in TKK3. The reason it seems more disputable (for now) is that the show hasn't explicitly told us this, vs the 1000 flashbacks to explain every one of Johnny's emotions (love you Johnny)
#they don’t want it to be over that’s the thing because finishing things means not being in each others lives anymore#and they don’t even know how to breathe like that anymore#reuniting was the most exciting thing that happened in their lives in 30 years and they are addicted to it#they are ADDICTS (via @murphycooper)
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