[Full disclosure]: I make no promises that I will not write things that can be construed as spoilers. Read at your own risk, if you think Cobra Kai is as so bad it’s great as I do.
Despite the fact that I think I’ve established that I have very little free time to myself on a very regular basis, I still made it a point to churn through Cobra Kai season 3, fairly pretty quickly as soon as it dropped. It’s very fortuitous that the episodes are all barely 22-30 minutes, so they breeze by quickly, and it’s very easy to binge watch and complete without that much commitment, and of course, the show is so fucking terrible that I can’t help but think it’s great.
That kind of description doesn’t really help to determine on whether I like it or not, but when the day is over, I’ve seen every single episode of the show, and I have no real regrets in watching. I’ve also written and analyzed the show numerous times on the brog, back when I was still acting like it was beneath me and I was doing the show a tremendous favor by writing about it.
Anyway, S3 – shotgunned it, and finished it in two days, over one evening and two baby naps.
Frankly, the season was far better than I had expected it could possibly be, and despite my declaration that they really didn’t have enough nostalgia content to go bast a third season, the show does a good job enough by dragging things out and filling up plot to where there’s absolutely no choice but to continue going on, and obviously it was done by design so that the people in charge of running and making the show can continue to be employed and continue to get paid.
The season picks up after S2’s high school fracas that resulted in a bunch of students beat up, but mostly Miguel in the hospital after getting kicked off the second floor by a jilted Robby Keene. One of the more amusing things about shows starring teenagers is that when there are seasonal gaps, the subtle changes that occur to the actors themselves, because of the natural aging and changes that occur to people of that general age. The actors playing Miguel and Sam appeared to put on some weight, some of the younger actors in S2 were hit by the puberty baseball bat, and just in general many of the actors supposed to portray high schoolers all looked like they were in their mid-twenties now.
I made a lot of predictions about S3, and some came true, and others did not. But I like to think that I hit the nail on the head with some of them, most notably the central plot of who joins forces with who, and the general direction of where the storyline is headed. Granted, they filled an impressive amount of time with backstory of characters I never really thought about concerning myself on their backstory, but when presented, it wasn’t actually bad and helps shed a little bit of light on things.
Regardless, the general pace of the show remains flagrantly predictable once you get your bearings on how things are progressing, but it’s still guiltily enjoyable throughout the show, although there was less charm about how cheeky the show knew of shark-jumpy they generally were. I still maintain that the show is horrible; but so horrible, it ends up being enjoyable.
At one point, I felt that the show had way too many storylines running concurrently, and had concerns that things could easily go off the rails, and that the Robby arc was often pushed to the backburner, but the show does a good job of keeping things moving along quickly, and for someone like me that always feels like there’s never enough time, I can appreciate the fast pace in which things moved.
Naturally, it’s not Cobra Kai without bringing in just about every single character from the original trilogy, and they show no boundaries at how much scraping they’re willing to do in order to dredge up the past. Some were more surprising than others and fuck it obviously I’m talking about Chozen, and I had him pegged to be the big bad in a potential season 4, but clearly the showrunners didn’t have nearly as grandiose ideas for him as I would’ve and not only brought him out in S3, but gave him a face turn that made John Cena look like Bryan Adams.
And speaking of wrestling, it’s very evident that the creators of the show are probably wrestling fans, because as weird as it is to say this, the show operated a lot like wrestling storylines, and there was a tremendous amount of wrestling logic that could be applied to all sorts of plots, not to mention the references to actual wrestlers that pop up every now and then, which is a little catering, considering the show clearly doesn’t want to pony up for too much name sponsorship, which is laughable in its own right, watching them parade out Coors, RC cola, and made up their own Japanese auto conglomerate, hilariously named “Doyona.”
All else I’ll really say is that Koreans are apparently given a tremendous amount of credit for being bad motherfuckers, and I’m completely okay with that.
Anyway, I don’t think I really spoiled that much other than the appearance of Chozen. I didn’t give away any plot points, nor give too many predictions for S4, but it’s clear where the story is going, and some of my old predictions are still in play. But realistically, unless the series plans on dipping into The Next Karate Kid, or worse off, dipping into the Kung Fu Kid which is always a possibility considering Will Smith is a producer, I’m really dubious to know if the series can genuinely continue on past a fourth season.
