Critic Reviews
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Three seasons in, creators Heald, Hurwitz, and Schlossberg preside over a scorching hot sandbox that’s as complex as it is cluttered. Characters keep emerging from the shadows, beats zig and zag at a rapid clip, and the action gets more and more ludicrous. But, clutter can be good for a series, particularly when it’s maintained, and the three showrunners happen to keep a clean dojo.
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All in all, Cobra Kai , which thankfully has already been picked up for a fourth season, remains a pure, escapist delight.
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This object lesson on how to make a TV spin-off from an old movie franchise is even more fun third time round, and you don’t even need to be a Karate Kid fan to enjoy it.
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Enter season 3, which kicks up the nostalgia factor into an even higher gear while remaining every bit as soapy, playful and disarmingly funny. "The Karate Kid" might be 36 years old, but this series offers a battle plan for other revivals to study.
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At half-hour each, Cobra Kai is an easy binge that will only make you want more.
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If you liked the last two seasons, you’ll love the new one. Original characters from the first film appear throughout, giving the sense that the series has a much wider arc than it really does, while new characters continue to push the story forward.
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In its comparably slower but highly rewarding third season, the show proves that fan service does not have to be an entirely cynical concept—it gives you what you want from “Cobra Kai,” in part because it continues to challenge how you see the whole story.
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Call-backs to the movie are as ample as fans would demand. At the same time, the show refuses to wallow in the past, preferring to drag it screaming into the present. Cobra Kai will continue to thrill Eighties kids. But it is no museum piece and viewers insufficiently ancient to appreciate the totemic significance of phrases such as “wax on/wax off” will still get kick from it.
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The young actors do a fine job in their vanilla “West Side Story” universe, but it’s the adults who pack the biggest punches in “Cobra Kai.” ... Finally, we have a Johnny Lawrence worth rooting for.
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The finale points toward an endgame. And that finale is wonderful, wonderful, ridiculous, and wonderful: A high energy showdown for youth in revolt, alongside a never-more-sensitive portrayal of middle-aged reminiscence. It reaffirms Cobra Kai as one of the cleverest reboots in our nostalgia-drunk era.
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Cobra Kai still has a great combination of character depth and self-referential humor that makes it one of the best shows of the reboot era. We’re just a tad afraid that the story has nowhere to go and will get more ridiculous than the first two seasons, but not in a good way (like those first two seasons).
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The new season has flaws in its efforts to give its story new dramatic underpinnings, and those flaws at times really bugged me. The new season is also the closest creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg have come to evoking the actual tone of the original franchise.
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There are still more than a few moments of badly engineered plotting and situations that leave you dumbfounded none of these kids have called the police; but Cobra Kai isn’t trying to score points for believability. Season three pummels you with enough broad laughs and over-the-top twists to keep you coming back to its televised dojo, no matter how often it backslides into hokum.
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Earlier in its run, Cobra Kai was able to live equally well in the past and the present. Not anymore, unfortunately.
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The third season isn't a knock-out, but if all you want is cheap excitement, it'll do.
Awards & Rankings
User score distribution:
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Positive: 43 out of 50
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Mixed: 4 out of 50
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Negative: 3 out of 50
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Jan 2, 2021
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Jan 3, 2021
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Jan 2, 2021