Cobra Kai’ Review: ‘Karate Kid’ Sequel Series Is Still the Best Around at Channeli

Starring the now middle-aged Billy Zabka and Ralph Macchio, YouTube Red’s reboot is sentimentaland ultimately rewarding for the fans of the film franchise.

Remember when Ralph Macchio crane-kicked Johnny Lawrence, Billy Zabka in his face as martial arts wunderkind Daniel LaRusso. It’s been 30-something years since the release of The Karate Kid and Macchio, reprising his role in the new YouTube Red original series, and now Netflix Cobra Kai, he has hardly aged. And the same of the movie’s premise, which is more or less reconstructed piece-by-piece in the reboot.

There are copious flashbacks to the original film, references both subtle and overt to the sage-like Mr Miyagi, and a throbbing 80s soundtrack including Poison and the Human League. And Cobra Kai hopes the music operates as a kind of sonic time machine to a certain audiance’s past, if of course, you are the right age. 

Lawrence, the brutal antagonist of the original film, got what he deserved: he’s now an angry, hapless middle-aged drunk living in a ramshackle Reseda apartment.

In the opening minutes of the pilot, written by Jon Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg and Josh Heald, he loses his job as a handy-man after insulting a client and has his Pontiac nearly wrecked by a group of teens. Things lock into place, though, when he sees his immigrant neighbor Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) getting bullied outside the local corner store, leading him to beat the absolute crap out of the teen bullies and take Miguel under his wing.

From here on out, Johnny will be known as Sensei, and Miguel as his pupil. On the wall of his dojo, the karate studio he opens without a license, famous lines from The Karate Kid paint the wall: “Strike First. Strike Hard. No Mercy.” You get it, yand you may think good olf Johnny’s gonna turn his one and pnly student over to the dark side!

Over in Encino, LaRusso lives is now Mr Big Shot. He’s now a wealthy luxury car salesman with a happy family. His face, seen frequently in hokey local TV ads where he karate-chops the prices of automobiles in half, haunts his old nemesis Lawrence.

A series of plot points contrive to bring the two together, like the nearly totaled car, which finds Lawrence at LaRusso’s shop, and the fact that Miguel attends school with LaRusso’s popular teenage daughter, Samantha (Mary Mouser), ostensibly building to a rematch of that All Valley Karate Tournament, fought this time, perhaps, with teenage proxies, oh, and of course Johnny’s son, who takes up training with LaRusso is now in the good corner, finally squaring off against his father’s pupil.

The second series picks up directly with the cliffhanger from last season, when the original battle-hardened sensei John Kreese (Martin Kove) shows up at the Cobra Kai dojo that’s been resurrected by his old student Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka). Fresh from a victory over childhood rival Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and his protege at the All-Valley Karate Tournament.

“Life’s not black and white. More often than not it’s gray. And it’s in those gray areas where Johnny Lawrence’s Cobra Kai sometimes shows mercy.”

Johnny intends to usher his own students toward a more ethical way of karate to make up for the brutal ways he learned from Kreese.

As Johnny struggles with entering the 21 century – both technologically and socially – Daniel is realizing that he’s not a natural teacher like his mentor, the late Mr. Miyagi (Pat Morita). Nevertheless, he’s determined to get his Miyagi-Do Karate dojo up and running to take on Cobra Kai.

While it’s nice to see the return of the one-time Hollywood teen heartthrob Macchio to the spotlight, the real star of the show is Zabka, who, given a second-chance at essaying his originally fairly one-note villain, grabs it with both hands.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

You don’t have to be a fan of the Karate Kid to enjoy the YouTube revival, but the creators’ affinity for the source material is once again demonstrated throughout the season. By focusing on one of the original movies’ bad guys and the fallout from the franchise’s climactic moment, this smartly written and poignant drama is a surprisingly compelling watch.

Netflix has 20 episodes for ‘80s fans, in particular, to binge on, with a third season currently in the works.

Let’s hear the chant, “Cobra Kai, Cobra Kai, Cobra Kai.”

5/5 STARS