 Okay, so The Karate Kid is my absolute favorite movie and the TV show I think is a fantastic continuation and those of you who love the channel know how much I love to analyze it, possibly obsessively. I have to give some serious credit to the writers of the show and the showrunners for finding all the great narrative threads and reconnect them in a new, fresh way with new characters and new generation while tying up all the old loose ends and keeping the show fresh and fun. However, there seems to be a tiny discrepancy within the timeline of the tournaments and that's what we're going to talk about today. And fair warning, we're going to get nerdy on this one, so consider this your... Okay, once again, spoiler alert. So if you have not watched the movies or the shows, specifically season 3, go do that before watching this episode. We're going to be talking about some story elements. So if you don't want to be spoiled for you, pause, go watch, come back and resume. Yes, it's just a movie. Yes, it's just a TV show. For those of you who are saying it doesn't really matter, you're not wrong. But I don't care. I enjoy it and I love doing these deep dives and it seems like some of you seem to appreciate them as well. So that being said, let's take a look at the tournament timeline. Now we're going to look at the timeline they said it is, then we're going to talk about the timeline that should be, and then we're going to talk about what it really should be. Before we get to all that, first let's understand the timeline we're working in in general. And once again... So the original Crytekid film takes place in 1984 and as they established the beginning of the school year, we're assuming it's probably right around the beginning of August timeline, roughly. And it goes until Wednesday, December 19th, which was the day of the tournament. Yes, I looked that up. The Crytekid 2 picks up right where the first one left off and then we time jump to the summer of 1985, which is their trip to Okinawa. So the whole film takes place roughly during that summer. Crytekid 3 takes place at the end of summer in 1985 because they're talking about Daniel going back to college and it goes up against the next tournament, which is also December. So overall, the movie series takes place in a time frame of approximately a year and a half. So Cobra Kai Season 1 starts off roughly around September, October in 2017 and it goes all the way through May 19th, 2018, which is the day of the tournament. Which is about eight months, which is a lot more believable for Miguel to have eight months of training and perform well at a tournament compared to the annuals approximately a month and a half. So Cobra Kai Season 2 follows suit with Crytekid 2 in that it picks up right where the first one left off and takes place over the following summer, which in this case is the summer of 2018. And Cobra Kai Season 3 takes place roughly about two weeks into the school season and goes up into the round Christmas time. So again, roughly around the same time frame as Crytekid 3. So it's interesting that the Cobra Kai first three seasons fall within a very similar time frame as the movies, again roughly about a year and a half. And based on where they left off, we can assume that Cobra Kai Season 4 will take place roughly from that point on up into the tournament in May again. So what discrepancy are we talking about with the tournament timeline? Well, in Season 3 when Robbie's doing research on John Crease, he comes across two articles and if you pause it, you can actually read those articles and get some interesting information out of it. So the article is basically covering Johnny's win of the 1983 All-Valley Tournament in which he beat Tommy for first place. Now we knew this in Cobra Kai Season 2 when they're talking about it. And then the article goes on to say that Bobby beat Daryl Vidal for third place. Okay, the first problem I have with the timeline is Daryl Vidal wind up in fourth place. No way, he was much better than that. The other thing though is the article mentions that Vidal was the 1981 All-Valley champion. Okay, so now we have some dates to work with. Vidal won 1981, Johnny won 1983 and we know Daniel won 84 and 85. So the question is, what about 1982? It's pretty easy to figure out. The article says that Johnny's 1983 win was his second straight title, which means he won 82. And this falls in line with what Johnny's telling Miguel in Season 1 that he won a couple of tournaments. Okay, so there we go. Vidal 81, Johnny 82, Johnny 83, Daniel 84 and 85. So what's the problem with this timeline? Well, specifically the part where in Crotty Kid 3 when Daniel wins and beats Mike Barnes, the announcer says, winner and the first ever to win two years in a row. So if that's true, Johnny couldn't be the victor of 82 and 83. He couldn't have won two years in a row. They even make the point in the show to constantly refer to Daniel as the two-time champ. The two-time champ. He shows up at the tournament committee and they're all fawning over him. Now it's possible that they give him the attention because he's probably been involved all this time and Johnny obviously went off and fell into his rut, but something's not lining up here. And honestly, I'm actually, believe it or not, not the only one who's drummed this up. When I started doing a little bit of research on this, I found other people were bringing up the same comments and the actual writers of the show addressed this and they said that it's apparent that the journalist in 1983 didn't fact check when they wrote the article. So that's actually kind of a fun way to kind of acknowledge the mistake and write it off in an acceptable manner. The only problem with that though is John Crease reinforced this timeline. When he's talking to Robbie in the jail, he tells Robbie that Johnny lost his first match in 81-2 Vidal. So according to Cobra Kai, the show, they're telling us Vidal 81, Johnny 82-83, Daniel 84-85. What it probably should have been is that Johnny won in 81, Daryl Vidal in 82, Johnny again in 83, and Daniel 84-85. That retains the whole statement of Daniel being the first two time in the row winner, but Johnny still being a two time champion, just not consecutively. And just as a side note that the 1984 tournament was Johnny's last year of eligibility. It is the under-18 All Valley tournament, so he competed in 81, 82, 83, 84. So he was at that point after the tournament when he graduated, he was 18 years old. So how is Daniel eligible to compete in 1985 tournament and Johnny's not? Basically by little clues that we see in the movie. They pretty much came right out and told us that Daniel's birthday was the day before the tournament in the first movie. And you can either assume he's turning 16 or 17, he just got his driver's license, but you know some people get that at a later age. His birthday is right before the tournament, which was December 19th. If he had just turned 17 for the following year for the 1985 tournament, it's possible the tournament was held a week or two earlier, it could have been a certain weekend or a certain date in December that Daniel turned 17 after that. It still fits within the timeline, so Daniel was still eligible, Johnny was not at that point. And for some reason now in the Cobra Kai TV series, the tournament is now being held in May instead of December, so at some point things shifted. So what happened? Did the journalists in the story make a mistake writing an article? Did John Crease lie, or is he remembering it wrong? Is there a continuity error? Did the announcer at the end of the credit get three wrong information, or am I just reading too much into this? Nah. So for being truly honest, the real timeline should be 81 Vidal, 82 Vidal, 83 Vidal, 84 Vidal, and 85, whoever this dude was that Mike Barnes beat because Daniel wasn't going to compete and Barnes wouldn't have been there without Daniel. So yeah, Mr. Vidal, I'm sorry dude. If you're watching, you got robbed, so we would like to present you with this award. I know it's not much, but you earned it. So here's the fun question. The article also said that Cobra Kai Studio had won four overall tournaments, which was a lot for such a young dojo. So my question is, well how old is this dojo and what years did they win? Was it 78 and 79? We do see a 1979 trophy in the Cobra Kai dojo in the first movie, but then again there's other trophies in the mix, such as Johnny's 1981 receipt of semifinal second-place trophy and the second-class first-place trophy, whatever tournaments those happen to be. So here's my question to the writers. If anyone from the show is watching, we're curious, let us know. When did Cobra Kai open? We know it had to be at least as early as 1978 in order to accommodate a minimum of four wins, but we also see a picture on the wall where John Creese competed in the Army from 1970 to 1972. So we have to assume it's somewhere between 72 and 78. So I'm actually appealing to the writers and showrunners of the show. If any of you happen to be watching whatsoever, I know Season 4 is about to start filming. If there's any way you guys can slip in any information as to when the dojo opened or what other tournaments the Cobra Kai won, you would make me one of the happiest cry-to-kid nerds on the planet. So thank you so much for watching. I hope you got the geek out on this as much as I did. I know we kind of got really a bit of some geek custody here, but this is honestly what happens when you lock me inside for a year.