hi hello. i’m back to cornplate aka do what i do best which is to complain about the fashion and hairstyle choices on cobra kai. my victim today? samantha larusso step to the stand again please.
sam is generally one of my biggest offenders, since the costuming team seems to have either forgotten she is a teenager or they sincerely struggled to adapt to mary’s body type and potentially her weight gain due to her diabetes. (WHICH!! to make it clear, i am not shaming mary in anyway and will not tolerate it on this post please and thank you.)
so as a result, a lot of sam’s outfits are cute, but they read as a kid playing dress up in adult clothes on the best of days or flatout childish on others. the outfit im scrutinizing today reads more like the first than the latter. so welcome sam in S5EPS8/9, this is your day on trial.
this outfit honestly isn’t that bad. sam’s wearing a rebecca taylor pink wrap dress that originally retailed for about $390 based on what i found thru google, and a pair of pink chuck taylors that are clearly every day shoes. it’s an outfit which you would expect a teenage girl to wear, especially to a house party. i think honestly, it fits sam, especially where she is in her storyline thus far.
my biggest grievance is that it looks like she’s trying to emulate her mother (which again, fits for who sam is rn) and that her hair in this scene makes me want to commit crimes. multiple.
so lets start with what is in my opinion, the worst offence. her hair.
mary mouser has gorgeous curls. if i were to type them, i’d say they fall between 2b and 3a, with some curls falling closer to the former than the latter as shown in the below images.
you can see that she has a mostly wavy curl pattern but there’s a few curls which imo fall more into a ringlet shape, especially in the picture on the left where her hair is a shorter length. for whatever godforsaken reason, for whatever crimes against diet coke that mary committed, they have her hair in this scene do the most odd bump? hump? idk what the hell it is.
it’s ugly and i hate it. it seems like it calms down thru the scene as she walks into the diaz-lawrence apartment, but mary’s hair in this scene is just… mind boggling.
like what is happening here. continuity be damned i guess.
so pearl, you may be asking, what would you do to sam’s hair in this episode? GREAT QUESTION!
i'd go for an updo to counteract the casualness of the dress. something like the following images (a mix of hairstyles mary herself has done plus a few from pinterest)
any of these imo would be better than whatever they did to her hair in this ep. personally, i think the pigtails or space buns (either version) are my fav choice.
now onto the dress. again, it's not a bad choice. sam has worn wrap dresses before as evidenced multiple times in s1/s2 like here:
the wrap dress works for her. but i think it makes her look... how do i say this. like she's playing dress up in her mommy's clothes. this may be bc amanda also frequently wears wrap dresses as shown here
are they the same dress? no. but the similarities are there enough for me to feel meh about it.
so what would i have sam wearing? i'm glad you asked! going off the fact that season 5 of cobra kai takes place roughly summer 2019 i had to go look into my middle school pinterest boards to see what i feel like sam would have worn.
something flowy and still summery but more teen girl!
overall, of all the seasons, s5 actually has the least offensive sam outfits for me. it’s still fun to critique tho
cobra kai spent six seasons emphasising that there was a difference between cobra kai while johnny was in charge and cobra kai while kreese, silver or the two together were in charge, including demonstrating that johnny realised early on that kreese's mentality doesn't work (and was something he was constantly unlearning), that cobra kai needed to change and taught his students to be tough but merciful and honourable while he was running cobra kai (in s2 btw which most people like to erase) and helping people and showcasing that kreese was teaching (and treating) his students that they were soldiers in a war and other teenagers were the enemy who needed to be destroyed at all cost and it was this, not cobra kai but kreese's teachings (and his approach to "no mercy") specifically that was always going to end up getting someone killed one day and that's exactly what happened and it was what finally woke him up to what he's actually been doing, what he's been teaching and how poisonous, destructive and harmful it is and that's also what finally made him realise that johnny was right, that cobra kai needed to change because kreese's mindset, that teaching doesn't work and it never did and how badly he screwed everything up because he couldn't accept or handle what johnny wanted cobra kai to be.
Might be a hot take, but I’ve always thought that Johnny is Kreese’s weakness, and Daniel is Terry’s. Like, I know some people think Terry’s weakness is Kreese (and to some extent, yes), but Daniel seems to be his absolute obsession, his total undoing. Kreese at least had the best friends/comrades in arms thing, but the Daniel thing is just plain weird from any side. This once 17 year old brat has such a hold on Silver that the man threw away 30+ years of peace at the mere mention of his name. It was never about Cobra Kai. It was always about Daniel.
YES. I completely agree. And as more time has gone by since Season 4 came out, I've noticed even the more casual fans have noticed. Someone took this screenshot from YouTube, but I've seen similar comments on reddit too.
And Kreese, being another master manipulator, knew exactly what he was doing when he brought up Daniel to Terry again in 4x01...
There was literally no reason for Kreese to bring up Daniel LaRusso unless he knew that Terry would care. Why would Terry care. 👀
Kreese knows how to get people to come to him. How to dangle something that they want in front of them that only he can seemingly give.
When no other tactic worked on bringing Terry back into the fold, Kreese brought out the big guns and dropped Daniel's name.
Not to take away at all from the love and friendship that Terry felt towards John. But it became nostalgia and obligation, ultimately ruining their bond.
Little side note-- the fact that we watched Kreese make others do what he says in order to get what they want for three seasons made the prison scene in 5x07 even more satisfying:
AND the first person to play the uno reverse card and use this tactic against Kreese was Daniel. Terry's student. You gotta love it.
There's always been a little Cobra Kai in you...
I mean, we could speak at length about the parallels between Kreese and Terry and their star students Johnny and Daniel. The narrative mirrors and foils. But it's precisely their respective relationships with their students that is more compelling.
Anyway. I'm going to quickly list examples of Daniel's hold on Terry and then focus on the meat of the issue.
Terry falls apart and goes ALL IN on everything Cobra Kai only AFTER Daniel rejects his apology.
Terry gives Daniel multiple warnings to not interfere but never tries to gets rid of him like Johnny or Kreese after no warnings at all.
Terry dated a woman who looked a lot like Daniel with similar values.
Terry treats Kenny near identically to Daniel as a student but in the sincere way he wishes he had with Daniel.
Terry loses his cool when Daniel wants to surrender and walk out of his life.
Terry tells Chozen he considers Daniel his only rival. As in Equal.
I'm sure there's plenty I'm forgetting but you can find posts in the silverusso tag about all these topics and more. x.x
Now, let's get to one of the most important and defining scenes for Terry's arc. And again, it's a direct result of Kreese's manipulation:
Kreese, knowing what makes Terry tick and how to get him further on his side, comments that Daniel really knows how to hold onto a grudge. As if he doesn't. Anyway, it's twisting the knife into Terry again when he's clearly already low.
You don't think Kreese noticed how hurt Terry was at the rejection?
He notices everything. He learned in Vietnam from his Captain how to use love against someone as a perceived weakness. Many thoughts on that.
Anyway
The way in which Kreese says, "So... what now?" Tells me that he told Terry this was going to happen. You also have to remember their conversation leading up to the garden scene:
Terry was damn near close to defending Mr. Miyagi and Daniel over Kreese's own personal grudge. To the point where Terry was rolling his eyes and sighing over his friend being overdramatic about what happened in the past.
He was tired of hearing about it.
I'm sure Daniel told Terry the truth about that Halloween night. And look who Terry seems to side with...
Kreese wanted violent retribution and Terry was the one that talked him down. It was Terry's idea to apologize to Daniel and we'll just allll get along. Easy peasy. Surely, Daniel would forgive him.
But, Daniel proved Kreese right in Terry's eyes. As I'm sure Kreese hoped would happen. Couldn't have worked out better. I bet on the car ride over to Miyagi-Do, Kreese was complaining how this was a waste of time and LaRusso isn't the sweet kid you remember etc.
From that day forward, Terry is determined to prove Daniel wrong. About him, about Cobra Kai, about everything. Terry is going to make Cobra Kai work and help kids and he'll be the best sensei ever and Daniel will be sorry!
You'll be sorry you weren't a part of it!
I firmly believe that Daniel is Terry's true weakness and he didn't even realize it. But Kreese did.
And if Daniel had seen it, then he could've had Terry eating out of the palm of his hand.
The one movie quote they haven't used in the show yet is, "For person with no forgiveness in heart, living even worse punishment than death."
I'm hoping they'll use this with Daniel realizing he can help heal himself, and Terry, by forgiving him. Of course, Terry will have to do something more to redeem himself. I'm just saying.
And then maybe Terry can see that Daniel was his weakness all along, but there's still time to make him a strength.
One could argue that he already felt that way while he was being arrested. The way he was looking at Daniel... That awe. Daniel LaRusso got the best of him, again, all because he couldn't let him go.
Here's to hoping that Season 6 ends our suffering lmao.
I mean, who else has ever given Terry Silver goosebumps?
I actually cannot tell where my headcanons of sam end and real critique of the show begins lol
like yes future-soft-butch-sam-larusso-who-gets-her-first-buzz-cut-over-torys-sink is definitely coming from my noggin, but also sam-larussos-identity-as-expressed-through-clothing-is-very-vague-and-she-has-more-connection-with-tory-than-her-love-interests is not untrue, so she's very open to interpreting through the lens of the kind of girlhood that is put on her, rather than chosen by her
I keep thinking of who she is at the beginning of the show, when she's trying to fit in with the cool gang. she dresses "more sexily" and more femininely, and it's clearly a bit of a surprise to aisha, but then once she's excommunicated from that group, she seems stuck between blandly cutesy girl-clothes and callbacks to what her dad wore in the karate kid, and out of the two the latter seems more true to her character with her far more intense in-your-face-to-the-point-of-being-central-to-conflicts (just like her dad was, but that's also one of the Things about her -- to what extent do sam and daniel overlap and how does she distinguish herself from him)
and of course she's the only girl in a sea of boys taking karate, while obsessing over the rival girl from the other karate place, so how do those said-cutesy-girl-outfits fit in with the identity she's trying to form for herself as sitting between all these constraints of:
with all of this the expression to me feels like something that is asserting something bland on purpose. She Is A Girl. this distinguishes her from her dad, from the boys she trains with, even - perhaps (going wahaaay into hc territory again - from homosexuality, because the girl she is presenting as is a cute understated heterosexual-girlfriend-bring-home-to-your-parents-good-girl-definitely-doesn't-start-fights-with-girl-she-obsesses-over
of course she can't pretend for long, her personality is so intense, it breaks through any don't-notice-me personality-less clothing-and-expression she attempts
and then of course there's the fact that this isn't meant to be thought about that deeply in the show text. but this was the choices it went with, so I must poke at them, and I have to conclude that this is a smith college girl in the making (metaphorically, idk where she'd want to go to school in actuality, but she'll be circling the lgbt alliance for sure)
Something that struck me about the new Cobra Kai versus the Cobra Kai in the films -
Nearly every Cobra Kai member they focus on in the series is underprivileged. Hawk is disabled. Miguel is a poor boy whose family are immigrants. Tory is a fatherless poor caretaker of a sick mother and younger brother. Kenny is a poor black kid picked on by a bunch of rich white kids. Yes, there's Parker, but did he ever get his own episode? Aisha is a bullied black kid, though she's rich (which got her booted off the show).
The Miyagi Do's are the rich ones, the stable ones (no one we know of among them, other than Robby, has much hardship to overcome). Beautiful dojo and everything.
But that wasn't what the films were selling! The Cobra Kais were a group of mostly white preppy rich kids ganging up on one new poor kid, who, to some people in that Encino club, might still have counted as not-quite-white (if Aly was born around 1966, her parents will have been born around 1930-1940, and to those people, Daniel LaRusso would have been called a swarthy wop, guinea or dago by some people they grew up with, if they're too polite to use such language by 1983). Daniel definitely takes pains not to seem other to his environment even in 2018.
Sorry, but if your message is: "Cobra Kais are people too", why can't you simply try to win sympathy for preppy white kids? Why make Johnny into a blue collar worker? Nothing in his background suggests that. Why not make him a divorced, washed up, bankrupted investment banker? Why have Eli not simply be the vaguely Jewish kid who has trouble making friends? Really, if your whole raison d'être is "shitty rich kids are people too", why are you making it so that your protagonists are always fighting the rich kids? Who... aren't even shitty? Who did Samantha LaRusso ever hurt? And maybe there's Anthony, but he's barely in the show for three seasons.
Teaching poor kids to fight dirty because life can do you dirty is borderline justified. But The Karate Kid was about rich kids being taught to fight dirty and then taking all their advantages out on poor kids, because might makes right. Johnny, with his bike, and his preppy clothes, laughing at Daniel who has to sneak in through the kitchen to see his uptown girl. Chozen, the strong henchman to his insanely rich uncle, ganging up on the poor foreign boy. Terry Silver, making business deals with career fighter Mike Barnes. Humanise that all you like - but we also see what that looks like in the films, and that's Aly. The rich girl who really likes this new sweet kid, and doesn't care his mother is probably too outspoken for her parents' liking, and doesn't care her girlfriends don't much care for him. Aly, who is nothing but polite to Mr. Miyagi (compare that to Terry Silver's openly racist taunts), and only breaks up with Daniel when he jumps to conclusions (once about the class difference, another time when he was openly jealous about her talking to other guys). Show why, as taught by Johny, Cobra Kai 2.0 is good for those kids, or indeed show Johnny figuring out why it isn't and trying to make a change.
Because a poor kid learning "No Mercy" because they're trying to survive in a world that is trying to crush them is a very different setup than teaching a rich kid with all advantages in the world how to go around and pick on people, which is what Kreese was doing. The closest we get to that in the show is Hawk. It indeed isn't pretty and his redemption is entirely rushed, but even Eli, vaguely Jewish kid with a scarred face and trouble understanding social cues, had it much harder than, say, Tommy, who simply liked to win fights with his friends, if that meant nearly beating a young Newark boy to death after a school dance.
As horny as I am for silver and larusso (and them together obvs.), I just want to state for the record that if ck still had S1 quality (which still had real characters), the show would be building up to Daniel forgiving Silver, (and for Johnny to ask Robbie for forgiveness, etc, though ofc Johnny never did anything wrong ever), because the only way to defeat him for real and to truly honor Miyagi's legacy would be actually to choose the path of forgiveness. Because while the movies have nonsensical karate tournaments, it took the characters seriously. Johnny told Daniel "you're alright", Sato repented and realized he was wrong when Chozen challanged Daniel to death, and Daniel turned away from Silver and Miyagi took him back without hesitation--and Miyagi and Daniel won every time. Idk if I'm making any sense and I'm sorry for ranting, but I guess the summary of this is: Cobra Kai has become a caricature of itself, and it sucks, because there are things still to be resolved and they won't be. Not on the same level as S1.
No, I think I get what you're saying. The movies for sure had a sort of formula that they went by. And that's not a bad thing. The very basic concept of the movies is pacifism, reaching out to people, trying to find common ground. That toxic masculinity is dangerous, and that force should be a last resort. That fighting was for honor, to protect themselves or others, when they were given no other choice.
The fight scenes in s1 and s2 seem more plausible. (School wide smack down excludes) They make more sense in the story.
But I think what happened was that when the show got bigger, and the budget got bigger, and the scope got bigger, and the new fans were wanting something exciting, and johnjoshhayden wanted to revel in badassery.
But amongst the spectacle and the Netflix money they lost the point of the story they were trying to tell, which was about the personal relationships affected by CK. It was a very small, private story.
It was Daniel and Johnny. Dealing with the legacies of their mentors. How their teaching shaped them in various ways.
And with the shift in s3 things became more about this sort of theoretical war between good and bad. And it seems obvious given the original media who the "bad" would be. And they started with that, and then dropped it. They never actually say who is good or bad. And moral ambiguity is not a bad thing for the story, and could have been done in a smart, empathetic way.
But johnjoshhayden have always related to Johnny and thought he was badass. And Johnny was CK. Which meant that CK was bad ass. And so they didn't want to commit to the whole "good/bad" dichotomy.
And so the show went from a character study to an action/comedy show. But also it started getting progressively more mean spirited towards Daniel and miyagi-do, for the sake of "shades of grey."
The problem is that's not the story of the TKK movies. That's not their message.
Like, johnjoshhayden can make whatever show they want to, but that's not just their show. it's connected to a franchise that already has a set universe, a set ethical code.
They already answered the question "is CK bad?" And the answer was yes.
And so, in a way it's sort of revisionism. Like. That feels like a big word for a silly karate show but that's the best I can think of.
Specifically I am thinking of how they brought Ali back in s3 and had her very vocally say "you were both equally bad. And also some of it was my fault."
When in the movie it could not be more clear that it was unprompted aggression.
They don't seem to be interested in redemption anymore because they think he did nothing wrong in the first place.
They have created a world where violence is in fact the answer, and they're writing around it to try to make it work within the logic of a famously pacifistic franchise.
I'm not sure about what alternate universe Daniel and Terry would do. If Daniel would work to forgive him if Terry learned from his wrong doings and repented. But I doubt it would involve dog cages. (I actually like that part because I'm a twisted fucking cycle path babey)
make note i only used the colors of the original MMPR seasons (red, blue, black, yellow, pink and the options green and white). based on both of my posts with CK characters (TEENS) (ADULTS)
RED: usually, in PR lore, red is team leader. while this fits miguel to a tee, it might not johnny, but CK is about johnny’s journey to become a leader. most seasons of PR have someone who is impulsive and rash, maybe selfish who grows into a team leader, which is johnny’s arc. both miguel and johnny are brave, dedicated, high-spirited, stubborn, sometimes too impulsive or irrational, passionate. they also the characters who have the most growth from beggining to end as the shows dedicate reds a lot of time.
BLUE: blue rangers are often two things; one butt heads with reds for leadership or ideas, and/or second in command. they are loyal, focused and a source of conscience, they are experimental and they are highly adaptable. both daniel and hawk had shown to adapt easily to different styles and had grown to be second in command of their respective teams. while miguel and hawk never butted heads per say, they did had a fall out when they alligned in different dojos. and daniel and johnny, we all know the deal. blues are also some of the characters who have the greatest spiritial growth.
BLACK: black is mysterious. while in our concept black is associated with void, darkness, in power rangers, black rangers are often those who dare to be different, cool, confident, determinated, and well, masculine in the traditional way. mike barnes fits all of those bills, specially the barnes we meet in season 5. and he is still mysterious, because we haven’t seen him in a long time. they might not get the credit they deserve but PR has some famous black rangers who stand up by their uniqueness and growth (zack, adam muah.)
YELLOW: yellow rangers are often both cheery, the stand out, smart, creative, and the ones to motivate the team when they are down. they represent sometimes the struggle to go from one side to the other and mantain their strength, sometimes they might struggle with their place in a team. amanda and tory are both that, which is why amanda took such kindship to tory in s4. amanda is a motivator, in the dealership and in season five. tory is smart, creative and a stand out, but struggles with her place in the world.
PINK: we associate pink with feminism. it’s beyond that, as we have rangers who are more bold and less feminine in the traditional sense (muah jen from time force). but pink rangers represent sweetness and sensitivity, kindship, loyalty too, due to their more feminine nature, they might struggle with a place in a group of fighters but they chose to fight their fights in less conventional ways. pinks are also voices of reason to their teams. guidence nature. both kumiko and sam had shown to be that to many people as well being fierce warriors each in unique ways, kumiko was ready to fight chozen in tkk2 and defend daniel and sam is all of the above.
WHITE: sometimes as sixth rangers. last resort, a wild card at times, a complementary force to make the team stronger when in time of need. chozen is exactly that. it’s a color of freedom and liberation. in canon the first time we saw a white ranger was the unique transformation of tommy from green to white, from a color associated with the evil side to white, a light. first time we see chozen in CK he had gone through his own green-white arc, a path of honor and to defend those. white rangers are unique as there isn’t many as the sixth ranger varies in color by team. but they are always there to make the team grow which chozen does.
GREEN: like white rangers, they are often the sixth ranger. more often than not, specially in the example of the first green ranger, tommy oliver, they are powerhouss of characters, both in strength and in audience grip. robby is both, we have seen him as one of the best fighters from the kids side. sometimes second in command of their teams like in MMPR, they go through tremendous hardhips to earn their spot as part of the team. tommy had his evil green arc before he became part of the team and robby had his s3-s4 arc as cobra kai before he became miyagi-do again and became to redeem like tommy did.
i could honestly write so much more, and i guess, if i had to add more colors to other muses, demetri might be blue too or maybe purple. but i was going with the original color alignment.
anyways, thank you for coming to my ted talk, hope i didn’t bore you.
