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 Season 5 is a showcase of the best elements of the series, despite a bit of roughness around the edges. The latest installment features some big laughs and impressive fights but also sheds a light on what's to come without feeling like it's just a set-up for the next season.
Call-backs to the movie are as ample as fans would demand. At the same time, the show refuses to wallow in the past, preferring to drag it screaming into the present. Cobra Kai will continue to thrill Eighties kids. But it is no museum piece and viewers insufficiently ancient to appreciate the totemic significance of phrases such as “wax on/wax off” will still get kick from it.
The young actors do a fine job in their vanilla “West Side Story” universe, but it’s the adults who pack the biggest punches in “Cobra Kai.” ... Finally, we have a Johnny Lawrence worth rooting for.
The new season has flaws in its efforts to give its story new dramatic underpinnings, and those flaws at times really bugged me. The new season is also the closest creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg have come to evoking the actual tone of the original franchise.
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.
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.