Well, you\'ve certainly done a good job of writing this review from Daniel\'s POV.
Just for fun, I\'ll play some devil\'s advocate.
\"Pretends he\'s doing something noble\"? Johnny\'s just trying to pull himself out of rock bottom by recreating the one place that brought him happiness as a teen. He only got the idea once he decided to teach his young neighbor Miguel how to defend himself from vicious bullies. Eventually, Cobra Kai becomes a haven for teenagers being bullied who just want to learn how to make it stop. That is a genuinely noble thing.
Unfortunately for Johnny, he only has his own past experiences as a foundation for his training. He never had Mr. Miyagi\'s sage advice, only Kreese\'s brutal no-mercy tactics, which he imparts on to his students. Johnny is learning from this just as much as the teenagers, hence his surprise at how vicious they become.
This is a show that runs on Reality Ensues, meaning that it tries to play the tropes of the original Karate Kid movies in a more realistic setting, decades later. Grey and Gray Morality is in full effect. If you want to paint Johnny as a complete villain, you have to ignore his good intentions, his desire to reconnect with his son, and the steps he takes to sort out his students in the second season. If you want to paint Daniel as a complete hero, you have to ignore his irrational hatred of Cobra Kai, his scheme to jack up the rent on the strip mall where it\'s located, and his escalation of conflict with Johnny by starting Miyagi-do. Neither side is completely right or wrong, and their grudge blinds them to the disaster that comes when their respective students erupt into all-out war.
Also, how come he grew up looking like Matthew Broderick? You know that\'s the same Ralph Macchio from the original movies, right?
Yeah, Johnny definitely isn\'t a villain, his \'racism\' amounts to two throwaway cracks about Miguel being an illegal immigrant and referring to ancient Chinese as \'Chinamen\'. He later corrects Kreese on how Miguel is Ecuadorian and not Mexican and even makes a Hispanic dinner of the Diazes when he has no inclination to do so. He\'s also a pretty lousy misogynist as he has no problem training girls, develops a healthy relationship with Carmen, and even points out that \'no means no\' when \'things are getting physical.\' His training never actually injures any of his students and he\'s never cruel for the sake of cruelty (unlike Kreese), and once he realizes how corrupting Cobra Kai\'s philosophy is he starts teaching his students differently.
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Quite an interesting villain story
Cobra Kai makes more sense if you see it as a Villain Protagonist story. At the end of The Karate Kid (1984), it looks like Johnny is starting to see that Miyagi's philosophy is the better one, but it looks like it didn't take.
We open with Johnny in the modern day, having grown up physically but not emotionally; he's a racist, misogynist loser whose toxic personality makes it hard to hold down a job. Even all these years later, he holds a grudge against Daniel for ruining his life by beating him at the tournament and "stealing" Ali, and even keeps his old high school karate trophies. Daniel, meanwhile, has a lovely wife and a family, a successful business, and generally a pretty great life.
When Johnny hits rock bottom, he decides to fight back. He takes the last money he can get his hands on, rents a building, and decides to re-open the Cobra Kai dojo, to teach a new generation the Way of the Fist. He tries to make it look respectable, calling it life lessons about working hard, etc, but... it's not fooling anyone, especially when the training itself is a long string of physical and emotional abuse that would get any real-world dojo shut down and also result in criminal charges. (Especially when the victims are underage!)
Daniel is understandably horrified to see Johnny resurrect the philosophy of the Cobra Kai and start teaching it to kids at his daughter's high school, but enough time's passed that none of the folks active in the local karate scene remember Kreese & co, so his warnings fall on deaf ears.
Johnny pretends he's doing something noble, taking bullying victims as his students and teaching them to stand up for themselves, but it's still the same no-mercy philosophy that previously led him and his gang of thugs to try to murder Daniel. He Who Fights Monsters is in full effect here as his students learn karate without also learning restraint and wisdom, leading up to the climax where his prize student, eager to win this year's tournament no-mercy style, ends up injuring his opponent, who just happens to be Johnny's son. Only now does Johnny seem to notice what a big mess he's created.
The best parts of Cobra Kai are the parts without any Cobra Kai. Daniel and his interaction with his family, his mentoring of Robby, the students' interactions with one another at school, the car dealership... this is pretty good stuff. Though it's a bit weird seeing grown-up Daniel. As a kid, he didn't look like Ferris Bueller, so how come he grew up to look so much like Matthew Broderick? But watching him struggle with how to effectively resist an evil he's powerless to stop, without abandoning the principles that made him into a good person, that part actually makes for good TV.
It's just a shame so much of the story is centered around the villain's POV.