The End of The Guilty Pleasure

 

Or is it?   Hmmmmm...

Back in these pages circa October 2020, I told the story of how I came to find...and enjoy immensely "Cobra Kai."  This reboot of the old 1980s "Karate Kid" franchise managed to sneak up on me during quarantine and it was so welcome that I zoomed through three seasons faster than you could say...Hiya!

Indeed, "Cobra Kai" started on a You Tube channel but became so popular that Netflix, starved for product that was delayed by COVID-19, booked it for another two seasons.   That takes it up to five and the fifth just dropped last week.   And, despite my opposition to binge watching anything, I chopped my way through it all in a week.

Of course, since it was a YouTube show, you can see how increased budgets from season to season opened the story and widened the cast to the proportions that you see above in the poster.   Plus they seemingly had qualms about paying expensive music rights as well.   By Year Five, this was one lush...and expensive-looking show.

Add to that the penchant the producers had of mining all the characters from the original three movies and carving out stories for them.   In virtually all cases save for the late Pat Morita, the original actors were available and ready to be embraced like an old sweater.  Villains were still villains.  Good guys were still good guys.   And there wound up to be lots of kids in the cast.

So i karate-kicked my way through 10 episodes of Season 5 and made another notation.  This year was indeed the most violent of any previous years.   Now nobody dies or gets really hurt.  But there is a lot...A WHOLE LOT...of Kung Fu fighting.

But it all paid off for a grand finale where virtually every character and storyline had a happy ending.   I figured that "Cobra Kai" was having its series finale.  Everything was closing nicely together like the buttons on that old sweater.

So I looked on-line and saw that the producers are planning down the road for a Season Six.   And Len thinks that, as much as he loves this guilty pleasure, "Cobra Kai" might be going one year too far.

And how many times have we seen that happen to our favorite TV shows?

Dinner last night:  Leftover eggplant Pecorino.