Summary30 years after the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) is running a successful car dealerships business while his old rival Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) is seeking to turn his life around by reopening the Cobra Kai dojo.
Summary30 years after the 1984 All Valley Karate Tournament, Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) is running a successful car dealerships business while his old rival Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) is seeking to turn his life around by reopening the Cobra Kai dojo.
Cobra Kai doesn’t live in the past; instead it hits viewers with bursts of nostalgia endorphins, leaving us giddy and defenseless against the next emotional wallop. ... Cobra Kai remains more entertaining and well-executed than it has any right to be.
Flawed as this second round may be, “Cobra Kai” remains worthwhile viewing with a slew of conversation starters, though perhaps not the ones that made the series worth recommending the first time around. But it remains entertaining enough to merit a sequel, even if only to find out whose way wins out in the end.
One could wax on (wax off) about these representation issues, but the show’s strength is also its weakness. “Cobra Kai” is simply too accurately a product of that specific ‘80s franchise. Sure, it could change, but why should it? The series remains entertaining despite its flaws, and fortunately it has a hero that negotiates this disconnect between retro mindset and contemporary consciousness.
Season two is content to repeat many, or even most, of the beats from the first season, only without the freshness and genre-upending sense of surprise. The second season of Cobra Kai is too much of the same made with the expectation that the series can be an underdog forever.
It’s not until the second-to-last episode that anything approaching the goofball charm and wit of its freshman season arrives, and by then the entire narrative is so weighed down with the baggage of its sudsy dramatics that the show feels less like a witty relaunch of a beloved film, and more like a 2019 version of Beverly Hills, 90210 (but not, you know, the 2019 version of Beverly Hills, 90210), complete with hokey music sequences and soap opera-level plotting.
There was a pleasantly surprising window where Cobra Kai felt like it was retelling those old stories in a new enough way. The novelty’s gone by now, though.