The Top 10 Hunks of Cobra Kai, aka Karate Kid: The Next Generation

June 22, 1984:  Karate Kid premieres.  Diminuitive, baby-faced good guy Danny Russo, wearing pure white and mellowed by Taoist wisdom, clobbers the snarling, black-clad, bullying, hulking Johnny Lawrence.  Purity defeats corruption, light defeats darkness, good scores a definitive win over evil.  The audience cheers.

Forty years pass.  We are older but not wiser.  The world has grown cold and dark.  Homophobia, transphobia, racism, fundamentalist screaming, evils that we thought long-banished grow stronger and stronger.  Every day we thought "It can't happen here -- can it?" Then we realize that it already has.  We need a new hero, a new baby-faced warrior in a white robe who can definitively defeat the Darkness.

May 2, 2018: The Youtube series Cobra Kai reunites Danny and Johnny.

Except Danny is no longer a bastion of purity, and Johnny is no longer a sneering, bullying Dark Lord.  Both do despicable things, while the younger generation tries to find its way.

Johnny (William Zabka old photo)  is middle-aged, unattractive, and poor, working at odd jobs, dreaming of his glory days.

2. One day Johnny saves a neighborhood boy, Miguel (Xolo Maridueña), from some bullies, and is inspired to re-open Cobra Kai, the karate dojo full of black-robed miscreants that bedeviled Danny Russo a generation ago.  Oddly enough,his teaching method involves bullying.

Johnny also starts dating Miguel's mom until she starts dating someone else, and he attacks the competitor.

3. Miguel enlists some of his bullied friends to join Cobra Kai, including the disabled Hawk (Jacob Bertrand, left).  Hawk goes over to the Dark Side of the Force after his girlfriend Moon comes out as bisexual and briefly dates a girl.

4. And the nerd Demetri (Gianni Decenzo).  Fans expected him to come out and start dating Hawk, but the spineless showrunners just queerbaited him.

5. Meanwhile Danny (Ralph Macchio), who beat Johnny all those years ago,  has had nothing but good luck.  Karma, I guess.   He's still teen-idol hot, and he has achieved the heterosexist trajectory of job (car dealership), house, wife, and kid (daughter Samanta).

When he discovers that Cobra Kai is opening again, Danny is livid with rage, and tries all sorts of dirty tricks to shut it down or otherwise harass his old nemesis.

More after the break

Dynasty 2017: For Fans Only

Rebooting classic series is tricky.  You have a built-in audience of aging fans of the original, but after the initial nostalgia, they will get bored and leave -- unless you give them something to make the show stand in its own right.  After all, the original is still available on DVD, right?  And new fans want more than a retread of a show from dinosaur days.

Dynasty (1981-1989) was the quintessential 1980s show, a glitzy, trashy escape from the horrors of Reagan's America, about the scandals, schemes, backstabbing, and power-plays of a super-wealthy Denver family:  brutal patriarch Blake Carrington, his trophy-wife Krystal, his socialite ex-wife Alexis, and the scheming, catfighting, problem-of-the-week beset younger generation, notably Fallon (who falls in love with every man she sees) and Steven (who struggles with being gay...er, straight...er, gay...er..."confused").

It was all the rage in West Hollywood. There were Dynasty nights at the local bars. Drag queens would perform as Alexis and Krystal. We would bet on whether Steven was gay or straight in this episode.  But will a 2010's reboot work?

1.  The 2017 cast is much younger.  John Forsythe (the original Blake Carrington) was actually only five years older than Grant Show (left), and Joan Collins (the original Alexis) was younger than Nicollete Sheridan.  But we have gyms now, and nobody eats transfats, so the entire cast looks like twinks.

2. In the original, Fallon just went shopping and dated, leaving the business to the men. In 2017,she's a vice president of something or other, and is scheming to become CEO.  She still sleeps around, though.

3. In the original, Steven was closeted, conflicted, guilt-ridden, harrassed by his homophobic Dad, and constantly dating and marrying women (which was common on tv in the 1980s; audiences were rooting for the gay guy to "be cured").  In 2017, being gay is no problem.  Dad sets Steven (James Mackay, top photo) up on dates.  And Sammy Jo, one of the women Steven marries in the original, has become a guy (Rafael de la Fuente, left).

3. The cast is considerably more diverse.  Blake's competitor, Jeff Colby (Sam Adegoke) has become black. So has Michael Culhane (Robert Christopher Riley), the chauffeur Fallon is sleeping with. Trophy wife Crystal is Hispanic.

But is Dynasty 2017 worth a watch?  In a field overcrowded with soap operas about glitzy rich people, does anything make it stand out?

I don't think so.  Most of the fun is for fans of the original: "Look what they did with the Fallon character!  Look, Michael Culhane is black!   Look,Steven is not 'confused!"

Which is good for about an episode.  Then it gets boring. 

Then we pop in a DVD of the original and relive those golden days in West Hollywood when the drag queens all dressed as Alexis, and we bet on whether Steven was gay or straight this episode.