My Review of "Cobra Kai: Season 4"

Cobra Kai: Season 4 is out and I've been waiting for this all year. I've come to really like this series even though each season starts out so questionably. This season is no different however I did have to get used to a few things to really get back into the swing of things.

The season starts off pretty much where last season had ended off. We have Miyagi-do and Eagle Fang have teamed up together to take down Cobra Kai. Last season finished off with a bang making us wonder what's going to happen when Daniel and Johnny are teamed together. Better yet all of the old friends from the high school are back together to fight with one another.

Then we have the big new recruit for Cobra Kai with Robby. This season amps it up a bit with the inclusion of a new sensei to help Kreese. It's an old friend of his from a previous Karate Kid movie from the 80s. I have only seen the first Karate Kid so I wasn't familiar with who this new guy was. They did a great job in explaining the backstory so that I wouldn't fall too far behind in his significance to the story though.

I do like how they always poke fun at how ridiculous the old movies were at times but this new Cobra Kai series isn't that far off in silliness as well. I had to adjust myself with the first few episodes of the show. It's easily forgotten that this is a series led by child actors. At times it really shows when the kids look like they're being fed lines or reading off cue cards or something.

These scenes can be very wooden and at times somewhat unintentionally hilarious. There are some bullying scenes in the beginning that are so ridiculous I couldn't help but laugh because of the wooden reactions from the child actors. It's not their fault and I'm sure they'll become way better later on in their careers.

As you continue to watch the show it starts to feel more natural and you get used to it. It just took me longer than expected to get used to this type of acting. Once you're in it you're in it though.

I found that they spent more time focusing on the adult characters than the child characters in the previous seasons. It felt a little different but there are still some teen character story arcs that they focused on. They could have dived a little more into this aspect instead of focusing so much on the adults.

Still the adult storyline isn't so bad. You'll kind of get angry a lot because everyone in this show has a "my way or the highway" attitude throughout most of the show. It's so obvious to the viewer how things are going to turn out but they keep egging us on until the very end. Also that bit of Johnny delivering the lines of things have to be manly got a bit old after a while. It started to grate me.

Another character that unintentionally lost my respect was Samantha's character. I started to feel more empathy for Tory and I started to root for Samantha's downfall. I'm not certain if this was done intentionally.

Though the end has a pretty good payoff. It's pretty predictable to see what's going to happen but they played it off really well. You of course will have new team ups and change in directions for each of the characters as they've learned their lesson from this season.

Overall, I thought this season was pretty good but it kind of falls closer to the line of been there done that area. The ending of the season really helped entice me to anticipate season 5. I just wish it didn't take so long to get to that point. For this I will have to give this season a 7 out of 10. If you've watched the other seasons you're most likely going to watch this season anyways. Those of you that haven't seen it, give it a try but start with the first season.