#amanda larusso

Which, yeah, I love Kumiko and had they gone that route (or the one with Ali) I would have been fine with that and I would've happily overlooked the improbability of it all. But they didn't. Instead, they made a character original to the series. A move that is often divisive and difficult, because you've got to introduce this character to a bunch of old time fans (who are at that point, your most guaranteed audience) that already have preconceived notions that overrule said character.

Moreover, the character of Daniel is a cultural behemoth. He is THE karate kid. Even when the show doesn't revolve around him, it still revolves around him. Cobra Kai has frequently stumbled into this problem as well, because no matter what happens to the other characters, no matter what they do, Daniel always overshadows them by default. So to then have to create a character (a female character no less) that is able to step up and feel like an equal to Daniel rather than an afterthought is HARD in terms of writing and in terms of acting. It would have been so easy for Amanda to disappear into the background and not have a personality of her own, to just be the nagging wife or the mother of the kids or whatever. It still sometimes happens in CK, but overall Amanda feels like Daniel's equal in this. Like a real lifelong partner with her own opinions and her own goals and ambitions.

Courtney Henggeler, Ralph Macchio and the writers all did a spectacular job of making Amanda really feel like Daniel's wife and partner. By the time the second episode ends (the first time we're introduced to her character), we're not questioning her role and place as Daniel's equal anymore. In the same way that we don't question Sam and Anthony as being Daniel's kids. That's just who they are.

Amanda feels like a real person, not a background decoration. She's the driving force behind the dealership, She's not afraid to call out Daniel when he's back on his bullshit (and there was A LOT of bullshit) and she moves around as an independent agent within the story. Amanda makes her own choices, and she's all the better for it.

Her actions with Tory are exemplary of this, because despite Tory being a raging bull at that point, she is still a teenager and one that is in severe distress. Amanda being able to step up and recognize that Kreese has a point even though he's clearly unhinged and even though Sam and Tory have a habit of beating the shit out of each other, makes her the adult in the room. It makes her a better character overall, and it offers a plausible reason for Tory to start her redemption arc in full.

This is definitely in contrast to Carmen in the later seasons (she doesn't start out this way) who becomes a trophy and a yes-man to the men in her life. Had the show been willing to give Carmen her own personal arc in processing and forgiving Robby for what happened between him and Miguel, she would have been worlds better off for it. Instead, her opinions are always dependent on how Miguel and Johnny feel at any given moment. But that's a clusterfuck for another post.

I'm not sure that giving her a more concrete backstory would've done much for her, tbh. It's pretty solid as it is. We know she was bullied as a kid, we know what her family looked like, we know that she reacted to said bullying with uh, a certain joie de vivre, and we know that she built up her and Daniel's dealership from the ground up while raising two kids. It's not the most extravagant of backstories, but not every character needs to be extraordinary to be interesting.

She serves as the Watson to all of the karate war bullshit. As the one who (mostly) responds to the madness like a normal, ordinary person would. That's an important role that shouldn't be discounted. Especially not in a show like Cobra Kai. Adding more padding to her when CK is already a super-crowded show with several flashbacks wouldn't have done much good to the overall flow and pacing. It would've felt tedious and to the detriment of Amanda's effectiveness in the here and now. Amanda has nothing to prove on that front, she doesn't need to play 'catch up' to Ali or Kumiko; She's great the way she is.

So, that's all the good stuff about Amanda. She, like Sam and Tory, is one of the more complex female characters in Cobra Kai, and I'm glad that we got her on our screens, instead of the CK writers picking one of the OG love interests to fill that role.

However, you're not wrong in saying that at various points she is used as a way to undermine some of Daniel's very relevant and legit points about the violence and the mess that Cobra Kai (and particularly Johnny) brings into their lives. Yes, if someone had defaced and humiliated my husband's face on a massive billboard, I don't think I would find that funny. If for no other reason than that it probably cost a fuckton of money for the dealership to put up that billboard. Nor would I feel comfortable with having a deeply unstable man like Johnny show up at my doorstep to fight my husband at regular intervals.

Having said that, this is Cobra Kai, and everyone does weird, wacky stuff. Amanda is no exception to that. Johnny is given leeway waaaayy too many times from all directions, and I don't know if it would've made Amanda stronger or less strong as a character if she had not gone along with it. The amusement she gets from Johnny helps endear her to those fans who are more about the FUCK YEAH MANLINESS COBRA KAI SHIT and reduces the hatred she might receive if she doesn't go along with it. Sam, for example, gets a metric fuckton of hate for not finding Miguel's behavior in season 1 and 2 charming, and the fans have been vilifying her for it for, oh, eight years now.

So I can, to an extent, get the positioning on that, and while the conversations between Amanda and Daniel skew towards the 'Johnny is right and Daniel is not' mentality a little too often, it's a good way to let Daniel voice his thoughts and feelings, which again, makes Daniel a more central, grounded character as a whole. In fact, I would say that those little disagreements between them actually makes both characters better.

Where it gets really dicey, though, is when Amanda starts breaking the trust between her and her husband in order to give Johnny the upper hand. When she informs him of Mr. Miyagi's 'dark past' even though she knows without a doubt how close Daniel holds Mr. Miyagi to his heart and how much of a struggle this revelation is for him. She also knows and has direct experience with Daniel and Johnny's fights. She knows that the trust between them is tenuous at best, and that it can get out of hand at a moment's notice.

Despite all of that, she passes on this very sensitive information to Johnny, and he, true to form, uses it against Daniel in the heat of the moment to lash out at him when he is having big feelings about the death of Tory's mother (which becomes about the death of his own mother, because he has not processed that trauma at all).

That is the point where Amanda put Johnny before her own husband, which comes across as naive at best and very callous at worst. The fact that this is never addressed again as a mistake or as something that Amanda should apologize for makes the bias towards Cobra Kai and Johnny more pronounced. Had they not included this scene, and had they, for example, let Chozen divulge this information, it would've felt more realistic. After all, Chozen has less experience with Johnny and is still in the process of learning Daniel's triggers. Had they done it that way, then Amanda's and Daniel's marriage would've looked healthier as a whole, and Amanda's writer mouthpiece status would've been a lot less noticeable.