Johnny and Daniel and thematic journeys. Daniel vs the monster and Johnny vs the self.
This rant was inspired by a discussion with @arabianflowers on this post.
TV is a visual story-telling method, so lots of hugs/smiles/closeness in one dojo vs lots of solo practice in another dojo is a quick visual short-hand for telling the audience something about the environments/priorities within those dojos. Cobra Kai is trying to tell us something about these two men by framing it this way.
Season 4 makes it clear that these two need to blend their approach and have a lot to learn from each other. Johnny teaches with more physicality and Daniel teaches with more philosophy and the kids need both.
Short answer; I think this plays into the red-oni/blue-oni, hot and cold, red and blue thing they have going on with Johnny and Daniel. Johnny being a warmer sensei vs Daniel attemtping to be coolly logical and philosophical ties into this red/blue theme.
(I do not at all think this is deliberate or intentional on the part of the characters at all. Can you imagine Johnny’s reaction to being told he has the cuddliest dojo and he’s the snuggly sensei?)
Longer answer -
This actually ties into something thematic in their overall arcs so far.
Daniel is on a daniel vs external foe (and evaluating how to fight that foe. eg examining his connection to and understanding of miyagi-do, what he is willing to sacrifice to win, price of victory, nature of evil, what is justice etc etc. All good moral and juicy questions that the show is in the process of answering.)
Johnny however is on an internal quest. It’s Johnny vs Johnny all the way down. Can he overcome his toxic masculinity, overcome his past, and learn from his mistakes? Can he build successful relationships despite past failure. Can he atone? Can he have an improved relationship with his son? Can he break the cycle and be a better teacher/male role model than what he had as a youth?
Daniel’s story is about overcoming a seemingly insurmountable obstacle. Johnny’s story is by nature more interpersonal, so that is why there is probably a greater focus on his interpersonal relationships as a result.
Caveat - it’s much easier to analyse stories when they’ve been completed and you see where all the loose threads end up. Cobra Kai is still in progress, so predictions are all just based on my best guesses.
So yeah, it’s hard to predict where this is going to end up - but two thematic journeys are taking clear shapes.
Johnny and Daniel are mirror characters and foils for each other but they are on very different thematic journeys.
Daniel vs the Monster -
Jee, for someone who idolises a pacifist, Daniel does love to provoke and escalate fights, doesn’t he?
But that is kind of the point.
From season 1, Daniel’s driving action has been geared towards trying to defeat external enemies. First Johnny, then Kreese and now we are entering a new and probably final Daniel Vs Terry arc.
Terry is the ultimate big bad for Daniel.
Terry is the monster lurking in the traumatic shadows of all the things Daniel has suppressed. Terry and the experience of everything that went down in Cobra Kai III are behind Daniel’s trust issues and his less noble actions. Terry is the undertow that pulls him towards escalating conflict.
In season 1, Daniel sees an instant enemy in Johnny NOT when he comes into the dealership. (There, faced with the man himself, Daniel can be magnimous and generous and tactful and kind). No - the second that Daniel decides that Johnny is his ENEMY is when he sees the Cobra Kai sign.
Daniel is really fighting the snake - but it leads him to seeing enemies in people like Johnny and Chozen, when the real monster is just lurking off to the side.
And it’s so interesting that Chozen and Johnny and Daniel are all going to work together in season 5. I’m so curious as to how this dynamic will play out.
The two people who seemed so bad and terrible to young Daniel will actually be his greatest allies and assets if he can learn to work with them. We know that as soon as Daniel stops seeing them as enemies and starts seeing them as people, he can be the open and generous person he is in his heart. He enjoys their company and has fun with him. (We don’t get much carefree daniel). And as of season 4, he’s acknowledged that there are things he can learn from both of them.
Daniel sees that Johnny and Chozen were messed up kids who were subjected to toxic idealogy when they were younger, and not inherently bad people or monsters.
he’s not a monster. he’s just a guy with a lot of demons.
He is much more forgiving of them as individuals - but also much more strident about his mission in ridding the valley of Cobra Kai.
But how much is Daniel willing to sacrifice to win and how far will this take him away from the Miyagi principles?
We see Daniel really lose sight of Miyagi principles in season 4 when he proceeds to do the opposite of what Mr Miyagi would do - all to beat Cobra Kai and Terry Silver.
(And I am predicting that season 5 will take us further down this rabbit hole.)
but this has been a building theme since season 1. Daniel drives all the escalation in season 1 and 2. Aside from the dick graffiti, Johnny doesn’t instigate any of the drama and is much more reactive to Daniel.
Bizarrely, Johnny strike-first Lawrence is also more likely to be the one who reaches for de-escalation. eg the season 2 dojo confrontation and the season 4 battle both have Johnny attempt to diffuse the situation without violence. He’s unsuccessful, because this is not his strong suit, but it is so interesting that the attempt is there.
Anyway, a pattern is forming.
In season 1 Daniel tries to fight Johnny indirectly through various means and close his dojo.
in season 2 he tries to out-karate him and open his own dojo to show everyone a better way.
(teaching karate is almost secondary to the goal of destroying cobra kai though ‘showing them a better way’, which is why Daniel’s storyline is more geared to that, and has more philosophy etc. The focus isn’t on the interpersonal relationships, but on daniel as a teacher.)
In season 3, Johnny is no longer the enemy and new villian has taken centre stage. Kreese is running the dojo, and Daniel tries to fight kreese indirectly and get the dojo shut down through various means.
Season 4, Daniel tries to fight Terry and Kreese by out karate-ing them at the AVT,.
I’m predicting season 5 will have Daniel once more trying to fight Terry through various means, rather than direct karate confrontations. But in each season, the stakes get higher and the villians get stronger/badder/more evil, and Daniel has to make more compromises with himself and his values to confront them and the toll it takes on his family and his life gets bigger.
Daniel is driven to fight the snake, often against his better judgement.
Daniel’s story is all about exploring how to be a pacifist in a violent world with violent foes, and what is the true meaning of justice and honour and mercy?
Daniel fighting an external foe means that he has his eyes on that goal and he loses sight of the bigger picture. Which is why he can use children to further his cause but justify it to himself as being for their own good.
Because Cobra Kai is terrible and Daniel will save them from it by using what saved him.
Miyagi-do.
and Miygai-do is a solo practice for self-betterment, it’s for defense only, it’s good.
and cobra kai is bad.
so the ends justify the means.
I mean, that’s clearly where we are at right now. Daniel is going to be obsessed with taking down Terry next season, and I’m just wondering where that obsession will take him.
I am so fascinated by both Daniel and Sam’s black and white thinking and how it affects their choices. Sam has been able to grow through hers because all the kids are wiser than the adults, and I hope Daniel will follow her footsteps. I am hopeful that through the course of fighting Cobra Kai we will see Daniel eventually reconnect with himself and rediscover a more complete understanding of Miyagi-do.
Daniel’s story is about our connection with our own values and how this is tested by external circumstances.
Daniel’s story is driven by his need to defeat an evil, and that is why we get such a focus on his devastated face at the end of season 4. Because evil won, and he lost and now a snake is going to coil all around the valley and a new generation of vulnerable young people are going to be indoctrinated with poison.
But how does Johnny react to this same loss?
They are on the same team with the same goals at that point, after all.
While Daniel is devastated by this horrendous defeat and what it means for the big picture (Cobra Kais all over the valley and generation lost to a toxic idealogy that he knows destroys lives, Mr Miyagi’s legacy trampled into dust)
... But Johnny’s son is looking sad and lost even after his dojo winning, so you know, Johnny’s much more pre-occupied with that. Plus he’s had a falling out with Miguel, so that’s weighing on him too.
His biggest stake in the AVT are all mostly personal; a knee-jerk desire to get back at Kreese, and prove that he’s equal to Daniel and get Robby out of the crazy dojo are all personal motivations.
He DGAF about the All Valley or the nuances of karate philosophies in a general sense, he only really cares what is going on with the people close to him.
Because Johnny’s story is about connections with people.
Johnny vs Himself
Johnny, at the start of the series, is a very isolated character, but it seems to be largely self-inflicted. He pushes people away. He’s estranged from his son. He has no immediate close bonds with other people.
He’s a trauma-ridden mess. an alcoholic. a loser.
Johnny struggles to genuinely connect with people because he hauls so much baggage into every interaction. But through the simple, surprising state of being NEEDED by Miguel, Johnny begins to change.
(I will also argue that Johnny, even though he didn’t realise it at the time, needed Miguel just as much as Miguel needed him - and that’s a big part of why their relationship has always been on more equal footing than Robby and Daniel’s).
Miguel needs something very simple from Johnny - karate instruction. And karate is something that Johnny feels confident in giving. He is able to give Miguel this piece of himself and it goes well. He isn’t rejected. he feels like he’s helping the kid. and it feels kinda nice, to have someone to help and a reason to get up in the morning. Teaching Miguel becomes a big priority for him.
and once again, karate is kind of secondary.
Daniel teaches karate to fight Cobra Kai.
But Johnny teaches karate to build connections.
In Johnny’s lessons, we get a much bigger focus on the interpersonal relationships between everyone in the dojo, but especially on Johnny’s role as a teacher and how he develops this relationship with his students.
We see him initially copy kreese exactly, but very quickly he learn to soften the drill-sergent nasty stuff and he reaches out them as fellow losers, and take pride in their achievements and stand up for them at all valley committees, and it’s all part of his journey towards being a better sensei/better mentor than the one he had.
He clearly wants to be better than kreese.
And there’s the rub, and the tension.
Because try as Johnny might, he has so many toxic and embedded patterns from his time with Kreese - and sometimes he is not even aware of them until it is too late.
Johnny’s biggest struggles mostly boil down to him trying to break his toxic cycles, move past his inter-generational trauma, and be better that any of his father figures.
And when he succeeds, it’s great. (Back half of season 2, Johnny kicking kreese to the curb because he could see what a negative effect the man had on the kids. the fact that he could do for the kids what he couldn’t do for himself and was finally able to stand up to his abuser because he thought they were being mistreated. Johnny fully breaking with his indoctrination and fumbling to try and show his students a better way, more merciful way - that was peak Johnny for me. A real high point in his journey.)
And when he fails, it’s tragic. (The downward spirals, the season 4 insecurity leading to all manner of poor life choices, and the way his inability to overcome his trauma affects the younger generation, especially Robby and Miguel. These boys both want him, and Johnny wants to rise to the moment and meet both their needs but he often fails and then hates himself for failing and withdraws. but that doesn’t do anything to help either boy.)
This is why Johnny’s biggest foe isn’t an external enemy.
Johnny’s biggest enemy is himself.
His inner kreese, the voice that whispers ‘you lost, you’re worthless, you’re nothing’. The insecurity and toxic masculinity and the need to be tough and the aversion to showing an vulnerability, the hyper-vigilance to threats and the overwhelming need to over-compensate for any weaknesses are all things Johnny learned from Kreese alongside Strike Hard- Strike First - No Mercy. (A philosophy that no doubt has had an irreparably negative effect on Johnny’s life).
Whilst Mr Miyagi gifted Daniel a path to inner peace, what Johnny received from his Sensei was inner turmoil. He needs to constantly fight his inner demons and he doesn’t always win. And listening to his inner kreese causes some of his biggest mistakes with the kids.
But Johnny’s mistakes as a sensei can’t hold as candle to his mistakes as a father.
Robby and Johnny’s desire to connect better with his son has been driving the action in Johnny’s story since we first met the kid back in season 1. I would say most of Johnny’s narrative drive is centred around him trying to improve himself and build better relationships rather than fighting external foes.
Final thoughts:
so yeah, because Daniel’s story is all about how to fight and enemy bigger than yourself and how to stay peaceful in a world of violence and how to find balance - his teachings are much more philosophical to mirror that sort of journey.
But because Johnny’s story is all about moving past inner demons/past experiences to build meaningful connections with others, his dojo has a much heavier emphasis on those interpersonal relationships and more found family vibes - because that is the sort of story that is going on there.
It also leads to this wonderful dictomy, because Daniel is teaching more pacifist teachings whilst engaging in fighting external foes. He’s got a much more active and aggressive character journey. Daniel is much more rigid in his approach to most things, and his attitude to his students is no exception. He needs them to meet the Miyagi ideal because Daniel is fighting a war, and Miyagi- method is the weapon he is sure will win.
(Oh Daniel, what a wild ride this season will be for you!)
Whilst Johnny teaches assertiveness, he’s actually far more passive in his personal life and has to work up the courage to reach out to people. He’s more likely to question his own actions and second guess himself and change his approach depending on the circumstances. He’ll respond if provoked, but we very rarely see him instigate fights (and will only really do so if he has some personal stake. like, the only example I can think of is beating up the sleazy dude who was trash-talking Carmen back in season 2 and the bikers who insulted Tommy). He’s less invested in the karate war as a battle of ideas and much more focus on the people.
Season 5 has set up Johnny taking a break from the karate scene and peacing out from the drama so he can focus on Robby and Miguel, whilst Daniel goes down the fighting-terry rabbit hole.
And I’m excited to see where the rabbit hole goes.
