Who, precisely, is Cobra Kai for? If it’s adults who grew up with, and continue to adore, The Karate Kid films, it’s difficult to understand why they would want to endure a ceaseless barrage of tween drama, pitifully choreographed martial-arts combat, and lame humor barely fit for a TGIF sitcom. And if it’s young kids who want some cheesy Disney Channel-grade action, it’s impossible to fathom why they would care about the proceedings’ infatuation with all things ’80s. The show’s melding of the juvenile and the nostalgic appears to be an attempt to target two separate audiences, yet its childish corniness is so eye-rollingly rampant that it primarily comes across as a series designed for Steve Carell’s character in The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
While Karate Kid fandom is Cobra Kai’s stock and trade, there are almost no fond feelings for the film franchise’s third installment, which bombed with critics and audiences alike in 1989, and whose reputation rightfully hasn’t been revived in the years since. Nonetheless, the YouTube-turned-Netflix series’ fourth season (Dec. 31) revolves in large part around that terrible sequel’s villain, Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith), who arrives in town to help John Kreese (Martin Kove) do battle with the now-merged dojos of Daniel (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny (William Zabka). Those precious few individuals who love The Karate Kid Part III will no doubt be thrilled.
For the rest, Silver’s participation is merely the latest throwback twist for what remains the dorkiest show on TV. Picking up in the immediate aftermath of last season’s finale, it finds Johnny and Daniel now reluctantly joining forces against Kreese and Silver, the latter of whom is convinced by his old master to ditch his lavish lifestyle of beachside parties (full of posh phonies and tofu appetizers) to rejoin Cobra Kai. Comrades-turned-enemies Johnny and Kreese embody the material’s idea of manliness as old-school rugged and violent; they drink Coors, not Blue Moon (as Daniel does). This retrograde mindset may not be embraced by Daniel, but it’s in keeping with Cobra Kai’s overarching belief that maturing is for sissies. To be a real man, one has to set aside all grown-up concerns and fixate on what matters: namely, forever perpetuating pointless high school karate beefs.
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Everything important in Cobra Kai has to do with yesterday; Daniel, Johnny and Kreese’s inability to let go of the past is exactly why they spend every waking hour training, hanging out with, antagonizing, and weaponizing teenagers. They’re man-children endlessly reliving their glory days, and the show inherently celebrates their stunted adolescence. At the same time, it’s consumed with the idea of surrogate parenthood, which is a role that Daniel, Johnny, Kreese and now Silver want to play with every kid in their vicinity. The only person who receives more love and attention from these adults than Daniel’s daughter Sam (Mary Mouser) and son Anthony (Griffin Santopietro), Johnny’s biological son Robby (Tanner Buchanan) and his girlfriend’s son Miguel (Xolo Maridueña), and furious Cobra Kai fighter Tory (Peyton List), is the late Mr. Miyagi, whom Daniel brings up every five minutes in over-the-top reverential tones, and after whom Daniel’s dojo and martial-arts style, Miyagi-do, is named.
Cobra Kai’s fourth season’s same-as-it-ever-was story pivots around Johnny and Daniel’s testy alliance. The crux of their problem is that Daniel’s harmonious Miyagi-do preaches defense, while Johnny’s gung-ho Eagle Fang prizes offense. The idea of combining those two elements—defense and offense?—is treated as some sort of revolutionary, quasi-mythic holy grail, which will be news to anyone who’s ever played soccer, or football, or basketball, or any other sport. Such is the sophistication of Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg’s trifle, whose plotting and performances are never less than crude, typified by an array of cartoony reaction shots, and led by Macchio and Zabka, whose acting is almost as wooden as their fighting skills (seriously, the 60-year-old Macchio looks like he couldn’t beat up a torn paper bag).
Operating with all the cleverness and subtlety of a roundhouse kick to the face, Cobra Kai can only be enjoyed ironically. The weird, latent homoeroticism of Johnny and Daniel’s obsession with getting physical with high school boys provides some unintentional humor, as does Daniel’s incessant talk about how karate is “cool.” Everyone agrees with Daniel on this count, and it’s said so frequently that Hurwitz and Schlossberg appear desperate to validate their saga as awesome. Alas, there’s no actual evidence on display to back up those claims; the martial arts presented here is laughably bad. So too are the occasional “topical” jokes, most of them involving caveman-ish Johnny grappling with modern ideas like feminism and proper pronoun use.
Also focused on Anthony’s middle-school conflict with new-kid-in-town Kenny (Dallas Dupree Young)—which keeps the show moving backwards toward the crib—Cobra Kai’s fourth season mixes and matches the allegiances of its protagonists, who are in a constant state of flux about who they have feelings for, who they view as their father figure, and what kind of good/evil person they want to be. The introduction of Silver as a conniving villain who may or may not be Kreese’s lap dog adds a bit of new color to this ongoing tale, albeit not enough to alter the bedrock formula of soap opera-ish over-emoting and melodramatic cliffhangers. Characters occasionally comment on the lunacy of being this involved in teenage karate rivalries; in reference to terrorizing Daniel in The Karate Kid Part III, Silver remarks, “It sounds insane, just talking about it.” Despite paying lip service to the obvious, though, Cobra Kai contends that Daniel, Johnny and company are only their true selves when they’re working to make their dojos king of the hill—which, in this fourth season, means champions of the All Valley tournament, an event popular enough to nab a music superstar as a guest performer.
Cobra Kai’s overt nostalgia is of a simplistic dudebro variety, marked by Johnny’s neanderthal attitude and routine references to the likes of Rocky III, Bloodsport and Top Gun. Yet more objectionable is its regressive sitcom form, which reduces its comedy and romantic/familial/peer dilemmas to a fourth-grade level. For a season or two, that might have lent the show a quaint charm. At this point, however, it’s just a sign of everlasting immaturity.
