Cobra Kai Season 4

In an era of legacy sequels and film-to-TV continuations, Cobra Kai stands head and shoulders over it's competition. While last season was good, I was worried that the flaws of Season 3 would prove to be ever-growing cracks in the show's formula. Luckily, my fears were allayed after watching the fourth season, which for my money is the show's best season since the first.

Johnny and Daniel's rocky relationship is the show's main foundation, so their inevitable team up makes for exciting drama. As they try to find a way to make their new arrangement work, Johnny's student and surrogate son Miguel grows closer to Daniel, while Daniel's daughter Sam picks up Johnny's "Strike first" mentality and seeks to gain independence from her father. Watching these new relationships helps revitalize a storyline that is in danger of being repetitive, as Johnny and Daniel struggle and are ultimately unable to work together, leading to the midpoint of the season where they split their dojos once more and jeopardize their chances of winning the tournament.

Cobra Kai is an extremely ridiculous show when you look at it fully. The dueling dojos storyline is a prime example of that, and Season 4 seeks to inject some adrenaline into it by reintroducing Terry Silver, played by Thomas Ian Griffith. The main antagonist of The Karate Kid III, Silver was easily one of the film's worst aspects, a mustache-twirling villain that made Kreese look subtle by comparison. Here, Silver is a man who has put the past behind him and has seemingly moved on, only for Kreese to dredge up old wounds and compel him to return. The relationship between Silver and Kreese is fun to watch, as well as giving Kreese some depth after last season's mostly failed attempt at flashbacks.

One of my main complaints about Season 3 was how it gave certain characters the short shrift, making them either unsympathetic or making their arcs feel unearned. Season 4 rectifies that by giving two characters much need development: Tory and Hawk. After last season depicted her as a one-note psychopath, Tory is depicted with much more sympathy here, as she deals with helping her struggling family and ends up receiving some unexpected aid in the form of Amanda LaRusso (Courtney Henlegger finally gets to do more than dryly comment on the absurdity of the situation her husband has landed her into). Hawk meanwhile, struggles to earn his friends' forgiveness for his previous actions as well as what his identity is after an attack leaves him scarred both physically and mentally. Peyton List and Jacob Bertrand give their best performances and their characters' storylines pay off in spades in the finale.

Cobra Kai works best when it deals in shades of gray, and this season does so in a way that hasn't been seen since the first season. New character Kenny is a bullied middle-schooler thar joins Cobra Kai and gains a mentor in the form of Robby, Johnny's son and Daniel's former protege. What could've felt like a retread of Season 1 instead proves to be a brilliant inversion of the first film with the revelation that Daniel's son Anthony is one of Kenny's bullies. This subplot is an excellent commentary on the cyclical nature of bullying, while finally integrating Anthony into the main story after serving as comic relief for the first three seasons.

All of this sounds extremely heavy, but as always, the show has a large amount of humor and heart. Scenes like Johnny Googling "How do I tell my student I'm banging his mom?" and attempting to recruit female members into his dojo by pretending to be a feminist is as humorous as always and the relationship between him and Miguel continues to be the heart of the show even as their bond is strained. Cobra Kai always straddles the line between seriousness and levity, and this season may be it's best effort yet.

The show has always excelled when it comes to its finales and Season 4 is no different. The two-episode finale is an emotionally charged pair of episodes that pay off several relationships and storylines while teasing new ones for Season 5, as well as including a cameo that nearly had me whooping with joy. Cobra Kai is a show that always runs the risk of running out of steam, but this season proves that it's still got some wind left in it's sails.

Cobra Kai Season 3

Cobra Kai is one of those shows that sounded like a terrible idea when it was first announced, only to quickly become an overnight sensation. Originally airing on Youtube Red before moving to Netflix for it's third season, the show's basically The Karate Kid: The Next Generation, focusing on the main villain from the original film Johnny Lawrence as he tries to rebuild his life by resurrecting his old dojo and facing opposition from Daniel LaRusso, who believes that Johnny is trying to start up the dojo's bullying creed and creates his own dojo in honor of the deceased Mr. Miyagi. The show quickly won over fans thanks to it's fantastic lead performances in William Zabka and Ralph Macchio, as well as it's solid writing and deconstruction of the original film's black and white morality.

Season 2 ended on a pretty bleak cliffhanger, with an all-out brawl erupting between the Cobra Kai and Miyagi-Do students that left Johnny's star pupil and surrogate son Miguel Diaz paralyzed by Johnny's biological son Robby, while John Kreese has taken over the Cobra Kai dojo. The opening episodes of the season do a good job at emphasizing the severity of the fallout, from the entire community being in an uproar over the brawl to Sam's PTSD following her fight with Tory. As Daniel and Johnny try to deal with the damage their feud to has done to their loved ones, Kreese starts to mold his remaining students into the violent mindset he instilled into Johnny back in his youth.

Cobra Kai is pretty ridiculous when you step back and think about it. Two middle-aged high school enemies reliving their old rivalry feels like fodder for a crappy sitcom, but Season 1's writing and performances were good enough for it to feel grounded in reality. While Season 2 suffered flak for it's overemphasis on the show's teenage cast as well as a heavy dose of melodrama, Season 3 smartly turns it's attention back to the adults (for the most part) and their attempts to salvage their ruined lives as well as those that they care about. Scenes like Johnny's attempts to use social media with the aid of Miguel and Daniel's trip to Okinawa work primarily because of the foundation laid in the previous seasons.

That's not to say that this season doesn't have it's flaws. While the elements that make the show work are given ample screen time, certain characters and their storylines are given the short shrift, particularly Robby and Hawk, both of whom undergo character transitions by the season's end that should've been given more breathing room. The gang war between Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai reaches new levels of ludicrousness, to the point that there's no good reason why none of the kids or adults ever involve the police. The Sam/Tory feud is a double-edged sword, giving Sam a compelling arc in overcoming her PTSD while robbing the rivalry of any nuance or shades of gray by portraying Tory as a one-dimensional psychopath. The flashbacks depicting Kreese in his Vietnam days feel like they're from another show altogether, a poor attempt to humanize a character who is otherwise a complete sociopath.

But when the show works, it can be insanely fun. The way the characters bounce off of each other is as compelling as ever to watch and there's a large amount of humor in this season, despite the heavy subject matter. The finale is an insane, balls-to-the-walls smorgasbord that perfectly sets up the fourth season. Season 3 of Cobra Kai might not be perfect, but once you give into it's charms, it's like nothing else on television.