If smooth-talking evil mastermind Terry Silver gets his way in Season 5 of Netflix’s “Cobra Kai,” independently owned mom-and-pop dojos will be a thing of the past: He plans to turn his business into the Starbucks of karate. If you want to learn to fight, it’ll be Cobra Kai or nothing. “Every kid in the valley will be forced to choose!” is a line that’s actually uttered and the over-the-top hyperbole is wonderfully hilarious because, in the world of the show, every kid in the valley lives and breathes karate.
To be fair, Terry is thinking bigger — he wants to go global, and if you squint there are vague fascistic undertones to what he’s proposing — but the series has always been smart about avoiding the kind of “Fast and Furious”-style screenwriting affliction that raises the stakes to absurdist levels with each new installment. Instead, “Cobra Kai” has always found enough drama — and comedy, my word the comedy — in keeping the focus on the denizens of this sunbaked but very intense SoCal suburb.
I watch mainly for the oddball chemistry between Daniel LaRusso and Johnny Lawrence, aka the one-time underdog karate kid (Ralph Macchio) and his reformed bully (William Zabka) who are still in each other’s lives all these years (and kids, and marriages) later and now actually friends somehow. I love their mismatched energy and their shared hatred for John Kreese (Martin Kove), the sadistic sensei now locked up in prison. This turn of events means that Terry, with his dreams of corporate domination, is now their prime antagonist. It’s a battle for the soul of the valley!
