By Geno McGahee
The highly anticipated fourth season of COBRA KAI was just released on Netflix and we get to see another familiar face. Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) from KARATE KID PART III, is back and it’s the highlight of the new season.
There’s a quick recap of what brought us to this point and what’s at stake at the All Valley Youth Karate Tournament. Miyagi-Do Karate, led by Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), has teamed up with Eagle Fang Karate led by Johnny Lawrence (William Zabke), and they will be going head to head against Cobra Kai, led by Kreese (Martin Kove) and the losers leave town, more or less. It is high stakes and the relationship between Johnny and Daniel is a rocky one that keeps on going off the rails as the two personalities collide.
As the two dojos team up, Kreese tries to reach out to his old friend, Terry Silver, to bring back Cobra Kai to the days of old. Silver has gotten away from the martial arts lifestyle and has been ignoring Kreese, but when he shows up at his mansion unexpected, Silver begins to realize that he’s been ignoring who he really is. The monster has been awakened and now Cobra Kai is a two-headed snake with two bad guys running the show. The star pupil is still, Robbie (Tanner Buchanan), who is also the son of Johnny.
The divide between Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang is big and they eventually separate, but Samantha (Mary Mouser), Daniel’s daughter, finds some rebellious joy in working with Johnny. Miguel (Xolo Mariduena) is finding the same with his work with Daniel, and he is trying to win over the father of his girlfriend as well. These two teens are further complicating the strained relationships between the dojos.
Anthony LaRusso (Griffin Santopietro), the teen son of Daniel, is starting trouble at school, bullying the new kid, Marcus (Jaden Labady), mercilessly. They do a good job of painting Anthony as an entitled pompous prick and show the building blocks of how he became that way. Daniel and his wife, Amanda (Courtney Henggeler), gave him too much and he’s never worked for anything. Despite his family’s karate background, Anthony has no interest. He only wants to play video games and heckle others at school, but he creates a monster when Marcus has enough and joins Cobra Kai.
Robbie takes Marcus under his wing and starts to get into a serious relationship with, Tory (Peyton List). Tory and Samantha are still feuding and Amanda gets involved, getting Tory fired but then befriending her, causing more conflict. This series has so much conflict but it’s intertwined very well and there has been a lot of thought put into this and plenty of fan service.
The most interesting battle going on is the one between Silver and Kreese. Kreese keeps trying to bring out the evil side of Silver, but he gets more than he bargained for. Daniel called Silver a psychopath and now he’s an uncontrollable one that wants to bring pain to every enemy of Cobra Kai and wants to correct what went wrong in 1989. Kreese continues to try to maintain control of the Dojo, but he’s got a loose cannon working for him now and one that has a lot of money.
The charm of the season comes from Johnny, as usual. His inability to get out of the 80s and how he deals with the new “woke” culture brings a lot of laughs. The series does a great job of showing that there needs to be middle ground between the crude 1980s approach of Johnny and that overly sensitive population that we have now. It pokes fun at both and rightfully so. This is why the series is so popular. It’s not afraid to upset anyone.
The fourth season of COBRA KAI is the weakest so far without question, but there is enough really good stuff here to make it worth the watch. Thomas Ian Griffith is the star of the show as he was in KARATE KID PART III and in EXCESSIVE FORCE and VAMPIRES too. The guy has presence and I was really happy with how he evolved in this and how he ended up. I won’t give away the ending, but it’s awesome and it gives a hint that we will see the return of Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan).
The good outweighs the bad, but there was some stuff I didn’t like for the first time in Cobra Kai history. The dance fighting that Tory and Robbie were doing as they took on Samantha and Miguel poolside was just bad. It was a fight sequence that just sucked and wasn’t realistic. The character, Stingray (Paul Walter Hauser), was total unbelievable shit. I get it that he was comedic relief but we didn’t need it and when he’s in a scene with Kreese, it’s like they are from two different shows.
COBRA KAI: SEASON 4 is good, but the series seems to be running out of steam. I look forward to seeing where they go with this and it’s still a binge-worthy series.
