Cobra Kai V TV Review

Plot: Following the shocking results of the All Valley Tournament, Season 5 finds Terry Silver expanding the Cobra Kai empire and trying to make his “No Mercy” style of karate the only game in town. With Kreese behind bars and Johnny Lawrence setting karate aside to focus on repairing the damage he’s caused, Daniel LaRusso must call on an old friend for help.

Review: After getting two seasons of Cobra Kai in 2021, the fan-favorite series is set to return with an all-new season only nine months since the divisive events of the most recent All Valley Tournament. With Terry Silver firmly in charge of Cobra Kai, John Kreese behind bars, and the rest of the characters left in various subplots, Cobra Kai‘s fifth season brings more cameos, more martial arts action, and more melodrama to the ongoing successor to The Karate Kid feature films. While I have found each successive season of Cobra Kai to be a fun excursion into a beloved 1980s movie trilogy, this latest season is the most inconsistent run to date. While the first half is overlong and stuffed with what ends up feeling like padding, the second half showcases some of the most intense and entertaining episodes the show has had yet.

The fifth season of Cobra Kai, again consisting of ten episodes, picks up immediately in the aftermath of the season four finale. Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) has supplanted his friend John Kreese (Martin Kove) as head of Cobra Kai and is rapidly expanding the dojos from a single location into a franchise across the region. With his eyes set on global expansion, Silver enlists multiple senseis to usher in his monopoly on martial arts training. At the same time, Miyagi-Do has closed its doors in accordance with the bet made by Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio). While Johnny frantically heads to Mexico to find Miguel (Xolo Mariduena) who is looking for his father, Daniel, and Chozen (Yuji Okumoto) continue to try and bring Silver and Cobra Kai down. At the same time Tori Nichols (Peyton List) struggles with knowing that Silver cheated in her fight against Sam (Mary Mouser), Robby (Tanner Buchanan) regrets turning Kenny (Dallas Dupree Young) into a bully, and the rest of the characters deal with the ongoing rift between the two karate schools.

For the first half of the season, there is a focus on the various subplots mentioned above, most of which take up far too much time and could have either been excised completely or condensed into fewer episodes. The excursion to Mexico takes up multiple episodes and serves mainly to take Johnny, Robby, and Miguel out of the main narrative long enough to put focus on the alliance between Daniel and Chozen. The episodes also focus a lot on how the ensemble cast is dealing with Cobra Kai reigning supreme in the Valley and creating a false sense of tension between the characters. Cobra Kai very often repeats the same structure in these episodes of having two characters disagree, fight, learn a lesson, and reconcile. Season five is no different with this happening across several relationships, both familial and romantic. I was getting a little tired of the redundancy until Cobra Kai finally brought everyone in the cast back together midway through the season.

While the entertainment value of the first half of the season was very underwhelming, the second half may be the best run of episodes Cobra Kai has had to date. Thomas Ian Griffith is a far stronger and more menacing presence than he was last season. The character’s resources alone make him a formidable opponent in a way that John Kreese never was. This season also features two big additions to the cast from The Karate Kid Part III, one of which is shown in the trailers and the other which adds a major element to the Miyagi-verse I did not see coming. The back half of the season ties up multiple plot threads from prior seasons despite still being mired in the now all-too-familiar structure of showdowns, competitions, and tournaments. What does work well is that many rivalries that have been going on far too long are once and for all put to rest this season which allows the story to finally head in a potentially different direction in the sixth season.

Interestingly, Cobra Kai‘s fifth season has many moments that make it feel like it could work as the final season of the story with so many elements reaching closure in the finale. There are also enough open storylines that could fill the sixth season that producers Josh Heald, Hayden Schlossberg, and John Hurwitz it seems like a foregone conclusion that a much different season is on the horizon. What I appreciated most over this season is that while there is still a focus on the teen characters, this is also a season of substantial growth for the adult characters, too. William Zabka continues to transform Johnny Lawrence from a villain into a hero, but also from a loser into a well-rounded person. Ralph Macchio gets to channel the darker elements of Daniel LaRusso’s life, echoing his character’s arc in The Karate Kid Part III. There is also a nice amount of character building for Yuji Okumoto as Chozen, another villain with a redemption arc. Courtney Henggeler gets to do more as Amanda LaRusso as does Griffin Santopietro as Anthony LaRusso. Thomas Ian Griffith is definitely the MVP of this season with an intense performance as Silver while Martin Kove’s arc as Kreese is going to certainly get some fans up in arms.

The new season of Cobra Kai definitely is worth watching and each episode has enough moments that will keep fans of these characters entertained, but you could skip the first five episodes and not miss a beat of the storyline. You would miss some fun cameos and some creative f-bombs, but not much more. As a whole, Cobra Kai V delivers another solid entry into the new generation of The Karate Kid saga despite some bumps in the first half that don’t really warrant as much screen time as they are given. Still, the final half of the season features several moments where I was worried about the fates of certain characters and cheering for the good guys to defeat the bad guys. Overall, Cobra Kai‘s fifth season is still a welcome and fun season of a surprisingly good show that falls a little short due to the inconsistent first and second half of the season. But, like Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang, sometimes different styles can come together to create something special.

Cobra Kai V premieres on September 9th on Netflix.

Cobra Kai

GREAT

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