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!
So much for a relaxing summer of mai tais by the pool. Daniel’s wife (Courtney Henggeler) is not happy about any of it. Why is this still happening, she asks? “Kreese even went to jail — it’s a karate miracle! This should be over.”
The show does itself no favors falling back on the nagging housewife trope, but what it does exceedingly well is extracting old business from those “Karate Kid” films of the ‘80s and making it new. Terry is one of many returning characters from the original franchise who shows up here, played then and now by Thomas Ian Griffith. There’s something giddily satisfying in the way “Cobra Kai” seeks out the same actors to reprise their roles decades later. (I admire the commitment to retaining Terry’s slicked-back ponytail.)
Blasts from the past keep coming when Daniel brings in a ringer from Japan who is yet another “Karate Kid” alum and former rival-turned-ally: Chozen Toguchi, played by Yuji Okumoto, who first returned in Season 2. Each time out, the show’s creators (Jon Hurwitz, Josh Heald and Hayden Schlossberg) have reincorporated these familiar faces in ways that usually make some kind of narrative sense. Weirdly, that feels less successful with Chozen, whose presence is under-explained (does he really have nothing better to do than get pulled into this small-time suburban nonsense?) but Okumoto’s deadpan performance is a terrific addition, so no matter.
If anything, I wish “Cobra Kai” took itself less seriously. It has that B-movie quality of a fight breaking out every other minute — it’s funny! — and I almost wished the show leaned into that cheap sensibility a little more.
It consistently strikes the right balance when it comes to Johnny, who is both ridiculous and believably human. In need of extra dough, he starts driving for a ride-share app. “Hey, can you play some Billie Eilish?” asks one of his passengers. “Hells yeah!” he responds, legitimately pumped, and puts on … Billy Idol. Johnny is a very funny, very thrilling combination of playful writing and a canny performance of doofus-tude. Zabka’s proven to be such an underrated comedic actor, why aren’t we talking about him more? He’s been bafflingly overlooked by the Emmys, which I can’t explain at all except to stare into his eyes, virtually but meaningfully, and advise him: No mercy!
You have to embrace the cheese in “Cobra Kai” because that’s half the fun. And to be clear, the show is enormous fun. There’s a “Top Gun” spoof! So why does everything become almost painfully earnest whenever the focus turns to the teenage contingent? If you asked me between seasons to recall the names or faces of the show’s younger characters — the very kids who keep pulling Daniel and Johnny back into this mess — Miguel (played by Xolo Maridueña) is the only one who stands out. There’s nothing wrong with the kids (as characters, or the actors playing them), they’re just blandly rendered. A waterslide race between opposing factions begins with the challenge: “Whoever wins gets the park!” That’s a perfect line and … a dud of a sequence.
The editing can feel nervous and impatient. Scenes become chopped-up jumbles — taking us back and forth between different locations — which means moments rarely get a chance to just play out minus any interruptions. It’s a mistake to keep Daniel and Johnny on separate trajectories for the first half of the season. Once they’re back sharing the screen time, the show finds its groove again.
There’s a joking/not-joking observation you commonly see on social media that goes something like this: You know you’ve reached a certain stage in life when you throw your back out simply by getting up off the couch. The characters in “Cobra Kai” never stretch and it’s amazing they’re all walking upright, but bless these middle-aged actors and the many bags of ice I’m sure their knees and backs endured each day after filming. No one leaves anything on the floor except stage-managed blood, sweat and tears. Those fights go all out.
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'COBRA KAI'
3 stars (out of 4)
Rating: TV-14
How to watch: Season 5 premieres Friday on Netflix
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