'Cobra Kai' succeeds in its fourth season in spite of itself

Series is all about its own fictional history

January 20, 2022

Courtesy photo

Robby Keene (Tanner Buchanan) copes with two senseis, Terry Silver (Thomas Ian Griffith) and John Kreese (Martin Kove), in the fourth season of Netflix's "Cobra Kai."

I've spoken before about what a gravity-defying franchise "The Karate Kid" films already were, even before they became the foundation for the ongoing "Cobra Kai" Netflix series, and that's never been more true than now, in the wake of the show's fourth season.

"Cobra Kai" continues to thread the needle between empathetically reflecting the minefields of modern adolescence and sharing the Marvel Cinematic Universe's ability to whistle past what would happen if certain events occurred in the real world.

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