If you love Dirty Dancing, you will love Cobra Kai

I was nine years old when Dirty Dancing was first released in the theatres. A hot and sweaty Johnny Castle was one of my earliest fantasies. His soft brown hair and dark eyes looking back at me from a giant 1980’s TV screen. Sporting that black tank top with tight black pants that held his perfect ass in place. My first glimpse at a dancing bad boy and the young girl whose ideals changed his ways.

That bad boy image stayed with me throughout my twenties and would later lead to countless bad decisions in dating. How I dreamed of working at Kellerman’s, where the vacationers were rich and mean and the hired help were heroines.

There is nothing more exhilarating than watching those double doors fly open and witnessing an underground dance party filled with flesh and sweat. The dark room with red lights, where a dancing Johnny Castle busts in and grabs the nearest beer from an admiring coworker. He takes a swig and begins to share his gyrating pelvis with a number of ladies. After that scene, I was hooked.

Baby starts as an awkward Daddy’s girl and transforms into a love-struck dirty dancer with a mind of her own. Every great movie has a hero, and in this case, it’s the unconventional bad boy.

Johnny Castle serves as her personal tight pants-wearing, beer-drinking, fist-fighting sex god. A man who Daddy doesn’t approve of because he is so misunderstood. He takes her from “Baby” to “Francis” in ninety minutes. Perfection.

And in the end, they save each other. Johnny rescues Baby from “the corner” of life and leads her to center stage where she belongs. In the last scene, he begins with a heartfelt dialog about the kind of person she is, and the lessons she has taught him. In turn, Baby transforms Johnny into the “kind of person he wants to be.”

So, he changes, but not so much that he isn’t hot anymore. A bad boy who turns it around just enough to be in a relationship is every girl’s wet dream. Or maybe just mine.

Fast forward another twenty years and now I’m in my forties. I married nice instead of dangerous. I’m happy. But truth be told, I still hold a sweet spot for the villains. I root for the underdog, always.

Give me a guy who can shotgun a beer, has a perfectly placed scar, drives a fast car, and gets in some trouble. Breaking the rules and giving the world the middle finger is thrilling.

Instead of living with the gut-wrenching heartache that consumed my twenties, I get my bad boy fantasy fix from binge-worthy shows on Netflix.

It’s 2018 and in walks yet another Johnny. This time a blonde-haired, fist flying, ass-kicking bad-boy who turns out was so misunderstood in the eighties. Cobra Kai, now on Netflix is a brilliant Karate Kid where are they now series that isn’t that cheesy and I can’t get enough of it.

Here, we get to see “the bad guy’s” side of the story and fall in love with the “Sweep the leg, Johnny!”, that audiences loathed in the Karate Kid classic.

The show opens with down on his luck Johnny Lawrence who resorts to handyman hell to get by, drinks day-old beer, and settles for gas station pizza. For the first half of the show, he’s not hot at all. Until his neighbor, nerdy and sweet Miguel finds himself in some trouble.

In enters the typical high-school gang of douche bags. I love bad boys, but not bullies. Often fueled by an abnormal number of emotions (water sign!), my heart hurts watching unjust violence. So, when Miguel is humiliated outside a gas station by this gang of four, I want these kids to get their teenage asses kicked.

Johnny Lawrence sits on the sidewalk eating his slice and trying to ignore the painful exchange. When his Thunderbird is in jeopardy and he gets pushed by a mean and mouthy shitbag, Johnny decides to show these kids who’s boss.

As this unfolds, I think “Surely, this blonde man in his forties won’t fight these high school kids.” Wrong! Starting with a kick to the gang leader’s face, this guy takes all four kids down! And just like that, Johnny Lawrence went from a sad sack to a piece of ass!

As the show progresses, Johnny starts his own dojo and we get to witness the transformation in Miguel and an entire crew of high school misfits. Opposite of the Johnny Lawrence we once knew, he attracts a band of geeks who need his help, and together, they form a Cobra Kai like we haven’t seen. And just like in Dirty Dancing, this Johnny needs them too.

While a viewer my age doesn’t mind getting a little sweaty watching a forty-something kick some ass, there is some teenage eye candy involved too. So, the younger viewer is not subjected to a bunch of old dudes doing karate. Cobra Kai makes karate cool again and makes it okay to root for the bad guy.

Although real-life bad boys usually treat you like shit, there is something about an oh so bad Johnny on screen that makes us feel alive. Thank you, Netflix, for picking up a series that we can be “bad” with for thirty minutes at a time, without ruining our actual lives.

“Being bad feels pretty good, huh?” – John Bender