No Surrender Cinema: Cobra Kai (Season 5)
September. That time of year where the kids are back in school, NFL teams take the field, and women everywhere go buck wild for pumpkin spice anything. While those might be important milestones in everyday life, September 2022 will go down in the history books as having stepped its game up, because this is the year where September meant a new season of Cobra Kai! The fifth season premiered on Netflix earlier today (as of this writing), and per tradition I’ve dedicated a No Surrender Cinema entry to my coverage of the smash hit series!
WARNING: SOME SPOILERS AHEAD. DON’T READ ON UNLESS YOU’VE SEEN ALL OF COBRA KAI SEASON 5!
When Season 4 came to a close, Terry Silver had usurped John Kreese as the head of Cobra Kai after framing his old friend for a crime he didn’t commit. After a victory in the All-Valley Tournament, one that came thanks to a corrupt referee, Silver is enjoying the rejuvenation of the Cobra Kai brand. He’s using their championship status as bait, hoping to lure more kids in and creating multiple locations in hopes of becoming a global phenomenon. With his reputation as a man of wealth and status masking the insanity we’ve come to know and love from him, it’s going to take the combination of Johnny, Daniel, and Chozen, plus all of their students, to take Terry off his pedestal and crush Cobra Kai once and for all.
Before we get to that though, we’ve got to go down to Mexico, because in case you forgot, Miguel has fled there in search of his birth father. This was a cliffhanger that I thought would play out throughout the season, or at least for several episodes, but the resolution felt quite rushed. It did lead to a few of the most fun scenes of the new season, like Johnny and Robby bonding by kicking the crap out of some small time hustlers. It also led to one of the goofier storylines of the season, where the man presumed to be Miguel’s father just so happens to have an underground fight club and somehow mistakes Johnny and Robby for FBI agents because of their Female Body Inspector t-shirts. William Zabka is great in his role and everything that Johnny Lawrence does in this show is gold, but the whole Miguel’s dad thing felt like a wasted opportunity after the emotional scene last season where a drunk Johnny told Miguel he loved him, but thought he was talking to his biological son, Robby.
Speaking of Miguel’s dad, there had been rumors for years that his dad might be “Karate’s Bad Boy” Mike Barnes, but while that wasn’t how the story unfolded, we did see the return of Mr. Barnes. Teasers posted over the summer on Cobra Kai‘s social media showed a picture of Barnes that turned out to be a red herring, because here in Cobra Kai Season 5, “Karate’s Bad Boy” has become “Furniture’s Bad Boy”! That’s right, when Daniel tracks Barnes down to ask for his help in taking down Silver, Barnes reveals how after his fight against Daniel (in The Karate Kid Part III) he picked up odd jobs until he met the love of his life, became inspired by her father, and now makes a living running his furniture store. Daniel is happy to hear that Barnes isn’t a part of this plot to destroy his life, but Chozen mistakes some playful sparring for the start of a fight, and introduces himself to Mike Barnes by kicking some ass! Watching the villains from The Karate Kid sequels get into it was yet another slice of fan service from a series that thrives on it. The way that this show has morphed the character of Chozen into part badass, part fun uncle, is a testament to how well they are able to weave the past events from Karate Kid films into the new era, and it was cool to see Barnes brought back into this universe with a new twist on his character .
With Silver poisoning the minds of the younger generation, it’s led to the once-bullied Kenny to morph into an alpha with a chip on his shoulder. Sure, Daniel’s son was a dick to him last year and is now paying for it ten-fold, but Kenny has thrown reason out the window and won’t even take advice from Robby. On the flip side, Tory begins to doubt herself and why she should rep the Cobra Kai brand, especially now that she knows her trophy was bought and paid for by Silver, not to mention that she’s aware Kreese is only in jail because of him. Terry has made himself untouchable, an aspect brought to light when he bumps into our heroes at a bar and Anoush asks “who was that giant Bond villain”? Truer words could not have been spoken. Cobra Kai Season 5 spends a lot of time building heat on the maniacal sensei by flawlessly outsmarting our heroes at every turn. Ol’ Terry got the Roman Reigns push this season, and for you non-wrestling fans reading this right now, it just means that Silver was made to be a more unstoppable villain than ever before, embarrassing or intimidating anyone in his way while he plasters that shit-eating grin on his face.
Not everything is all bad in Cobra Kai land, though. Johnny Lawrence is still the center of the universe, and life is pretty good for our blue collar badass. His relationship with his son is better, his bond with Miguel is tighter, and his relationship with Miguel’s mother Carmen is going very well. Well enough that Johnny’s entire family dynamic might be changing, which Johnny responds to as only he can. After failing Robby when he was younger and the entire ordeal with Miguel, Johnny’s just glad that everything is copacetic, but the latest curveball that comes his way forces him to man up real fast, leading to things that we first saw in the trailers for this season, like Johnny doing ride-shares and food deliveries while headbanging to Billy Idol.
As much as Johnny’s newfound family seems to be happy, the same cannot be said for Daniel’s. There’s a lot of turmoil under the roof of Casa De LaRusso, and Daniel’s wife Amanda is putting the blame at his feet. It even forces her to take off and head back home to Ohio with the kids so that she can gain some clarity. She eventually does so and returns to Daniel’s side to support him in his war against Silver, thanks to some input from another person from Karate Kid lore! This was one appearance that I did not see coming, especially with how it was explained. Let’s just say it turns out that Amanda, a character that didn’t debut until Cobra Kai became a thing, has a surprising tie to the past that comes in handy this season.
The one member of the Anti-Silver brigade that doesn’t get to do much about it is John Kreese. Stuck in prison after oafish Cobra Kai wannabe Stingray fingered him as the man who beat him (at the behest of the man who actually did it, Terry Silver), Kreese spends his days being John Kreese. He’s got to contend with an administration that can see through his bullshit and prisoners who take him for just another old man that used to be something, but it’s not long before Sensei Kreese has his confidence back. The scene where he’s confronted by a pack of prisoners looking to do harm might be my favorite of the entire season. Obviously at his age, Martin Kove can’t move like he used to and there’s a reliance on stunt performers, but here we see the fight from Kreese’s perspective, where it’s the younger version of himself (the one we saw in flashbacks in prior seasons) doing the fighting and making the prisoners bow down to him. It’s not even that it was the most intense or dynamic fight this season, but the stylistic choice to do it that way really made it stand out, and I applaud everyone involved.
One thing that was very noticeable this year was that the show was pushing the content boundaries a little harder. There was a lot more language (several F bombs were dropped, among other things) and this season was by far the most violent season in the show’s history. Fight-wise we get a bunch of little ones leading up to the grand finale, and if you’ve been watching this show for the past five years you know that every season has to end with some type of big showdown. This year we get two that happen simultaneously, as the adults have had enough and confront Silver at his home, while the Miyagi-Do and Eagle Fang kids encounter the Cobra Kai kids in their dojo. This is where the most blood was shed, and man do they ever make it count. I don’t know what plans are in place for Season 6 (nothing has been announced aside from the creators mentioning they’re currently working on a different show first), but it will be interesting to see if they try to trump the brutality from the season finale.
I purposely keep things vague in this columns because I know that some of you reading this might only be a few episodes in (or maybe you haven’t started at all), so there’s plenty more going on in this season, like Eli/Hawk trying to lead by example, Stingray driving around blasting Chris Jericho’s “Judas” theme (a nice Easter egg for any of you AEW fans out there), Silver’s real reason for rebuilding Cobra Kai, the ongoing romances between Miguel and Samantha and Robby and Tory, and a surprising confession of love from a fan favorite character to another. What’s not so surprising is my endorsement of this season, because it was absolutely fantastic. Cobra Kai is a show that has gotten better with every new chapter in the saga, and several episodes in this season took me by surprise in the best way possible. If you’ve started it, go finish it ASAP. If you haven’t started it, then stop reading right now and log into your Netflix account and get on that.
No seriously, it’s ok if you stop reading. I’ll understand. Go watch Cobra Kai Season 5!
