It’s August, which means it’s time to catch up on your streaming platforms before traditional TV comes roaring back with its fall season (Will “60 Minutes” still have its editorial independence now that the Paramount/Skydance deal has closed? I’m writing a piece about it, soon to go live on Screen Comment). I’ve had a fun summer cruising through the Netflix library.   Here are some of my recent top picks to check out on the platform (featured image is a still from “WEDNESDAY”):

“COBRA KAI”

For pop culture fans of a certain age, getting back into the martial arts saddle with Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio), Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) and the rest of the no-longer-kids from the Valley as they mentor a new generation amidst the omnipresent designs of the vile John Kreese (Martin Kove) hit just the right balance between nostalgia and a fun new story about the next generation.  Fine performances came mainly from the younger actors, especially Johnny’s teenage son Robby (Tanner Buchanan), Johnny’s student and eventual step-son Miguel (Xolo Maridueña) and Peyton List as the tormented Tori, whose tumultuous upbringing led her to constant disappointment as she transfers loyalties from Johnny to Kreese and back again throughout the show’s run.

Of course, much of the show’s joy was in catching up with not only Daniel and Johnny but also glorifying in occasional appearances by legacy characters including Ali “with an I” (Elisabeth Shue), Kumiko (Tamlyn Tomita), Jessica Andrews (Robyn Lively), Chozen Toguchi (Yuji Okumoto) and Mike Barnes (Sean Kanan), the “bad boy of karate” from “Karate Kid III.”  The show even had time for some gallows humor, including when Johnny’s old motorcycle chum Tommy (Rob Garrison), who exhorted Johnny in the first film to put Daniel “in a body bag,” dies of illness and is shown being zipped up in precisely that fashion.  It was later disclosed that the producers knew Garrison, who died in real life in 2019, was battling a terminal illness at the time the episode was filmed—a fitting tribute to a true trooper.

On “Cobra Kai,” it was always the sitcom-worthy bickering of Daniel and Johnny that provided the heart of the enterprise.  Season 6 finally (?) closed the door on Daniel and Johnny’s longtime rivalry-bromance-rivalry-bromance-rivalry-bromance, but not to worry, as Macchio and Jackie Chan teamed up for yet another “Karate Kid” film this year—approximately enough, subtitled “Legends.”

In addition to a watchful eye from Macchio and Zabka as executive producers, showrunners Josh Heald (“Hot Tub Time Machine”), Jon Hurwitz (“Harold & Kumar”), and Hayden Schlossberg (also “Harold & Kumar”) found a unique way to respect the canon of the eighties trilogy (trust me, no one remembers “The Next Karate Kid” from 1994) while putting younger characters at the forefront as they navigate the competing dojos of Miyagi-do, Cobra Kai and Eagle Fang.  Laughs were plentiful, not the least at Johnny every time he made an out-of-time reference, such as telling his students in 2024 that fame would soon get them cast in ZZ Top videos.

Farewell, to the show, but as the movies—and the series—reminded us so often: Cobra Kai never dies!

“SOMEBODY FEED PHIL” (Season 8)

Phil Rosenthal may have the world’s best job: getting paid to travel the world and eat delicious food.  And then eat some more.  This season, the writer and TV producer took his crew (including his dyspeptic brother Richard, usually behind the cameras for a good ribbing) on a world tour of culinary greatness, visiting Amsterdam, Boston, Tbilisi, Australia, Manila and Guatemala.  As always, Phil Zoomed in a comedian each episode for the traditional “joke for Max” in honor of his late father.  I nearly jumped out of my seat when 99-year-old Mel Brooks took on the assignment on this episode this season (when he isn’t busy making “Spaceballs 2”!).

A definite standout happened in the Las Vegas episode, where Phil, who created “Everybody Loves Raymond,” dined out with Ray Romano and Brad Garrett.  Their good-humored fun at one another’s expense was great to watch, and it made me want to check out Garrett’s Vegas residency.

As in earlier seasons, Phil brought his family members along for some fun, including wife Monica (who appeared on “Everybody Loves Raymond”), as well as the couple’s grown children Lily and Ben, not to mention Lily’s chef fiancé Mason Royal.

It’s all in good fun and a great way to experience faraway places—and their food.  Phil Rosenthal is the good-humored, ever-smiling host of it all, who braves even the pratfalls of travel with a wink.  Season 9 can’t come soon enough for those of us hungry for more.

“MR. MCMAHON”

“Tiger King” veteran Chris Smith got WWE head honcho Vince McMahon to sit for nearly 100 hours of interviews, which provides the starting point for this fascinating docuseries.  Appropriately, the 79-year-old is interviewed inside a darkened wrestling ring, where he shares with Smith stories from his difficult childhood and rising through the ranks of his father’s wrestling organization until taking over the whole enchilada following Vincent Sr.’s passing.  Vincent Jr. soon eclipsed his father, turning the then-WWF into a billion-dollar enterprise.

McMahon abruptly cut off the interviews with Smith in January 2024 following a slew of sexual assault and harassment allegations. Still, Smith was able to fill out his six-episode series with archive footage as well as a plethora of other talking-head pieces with commentators, wrestlers (including the recently departed Hulk Hogan), as well as Eric Bischoff, McMahon’s onetime rival who, when his WCW organization collapsed, soon came under McMahon’s employ in yet another sordid storyline dreamt up by WWE writers.

Probably the best WWE storyline involved McMahon himself “turning heel” and becoming a grossly exaggerated version of his real-life persona, as well as the ring’s ultimate boogeyman.  Several commentators wax on where Vince the man ends and “Mr. McMahon” the character begins, including McMahon himself. Still, wherever that line is, it’s just one more stop on an improbable arc that has made him a billionaire several times over.

Sometimes, he admits, things may have gone too far, including in the sexualization of female athletes and (try not to barf in your mouth) a proposed but ultimately discarded storyline in which Vince was to be the incestuous father of his daughter Stephanie’s baby.  So horrific was the idea that even Stephanie McMahon, who appears in the docuseries, refuses to discuss it publicly, even now.

That McMahon is an entrepreneur of the first order—and a showman who got rich by first pretending pro wrestling was indeed real and then, incredibly, far richer after admitting it’s all fake—is not in doubt.  This he did on the backs of his talent, whose bodies were warped by McMahon’s punishing circus schedule, and whose attempts to unionize for better pay and fairer treatment were torpedoed from within, almost certainly by Hogan himself.  And yet even considering such loyalty from his biggest star, McMahon wasn’t above mocking Hogan when he went to WCW, parodying him as “the Huckster.”  All was forgiven when Hogan and all other WWE evacuees returned as WCW folded.

In the interviews, the surly McMahon, with obvious plastic surgery making his face more than a bit stiff, comes across as crass, money-driven and win-at-all-costs.  What he perhaps lacks in introspection, he makes up for in preening for the cameras, once again making the viewer ponder if he and Mr. McMahon are the same.  Though McMahon ducks out when the allegations hit, Smith fills in the picture amply, including interviews with Linda McMahon, Vince’s long-suffering wife (he freely admits to multiple affairs) and now President Donald Trump’s secretary of education.  And, yes, there’s “the Donald” himself in vintage wrestling footage, acting as himself in baroque skits alongside Mr. McMahon and his coterie.  It all makes so much sense.

“TITAN: THE OCEANGATE DISASTER”

Was it pure hubris or tragic irony that OceanGate founder Stockton Rush perished on his way down to the wreck of the Titanic?  The tragic 2023 accident resulted in the deaths of five people in one of the world’s most inhospitable environments, including Rush himself.  It didn’t have to be this way.  Director Mark Monroe (“Charlie Hustle & the Matter of Pete Rose”) interviews Rush’s business partners, family members and former coworkers, who paint a picture of a driven man with a ton of ambition and who saw no problem that money couldn’t solve.  He was also a toxic boss, prone to yelling and firing anyone who brought safety concerns about the submersible to his attention.  (Stop blaming the messenger.)  Cutting corners and resorting to cheap fixes on the underwater vessel made a catastrophe all but certain.

Like an underwater Icarus, Rush dared to believe his manmade contraption was stronger than nature.  Now he and the Titanic are forever joined at the bottom of the North Atlantic—both vessels sacrificed to the folly of supreme ego.

“WEDNESDAY”

The crabbiest teen on TV is back with yet another supernatural mystery to solve.  It’s a difficult job making dark-and-dreary Wednesday sympathetic, but series lead Jenna Ortega positively runs away with the role, nailing the angsty teen’s deadpan comic delivery.  Wednesday and Thing kick off Season 2, having solved the problem of suspicious deaths at Nevermore Academy in Season 1, with Wednesday being anything but jazzed by her newfound campus celebrity.  She’s also caught the attention of a stalker, whose intentions are unclear.  Meanwhile, an ominous murder of crows appears in the skies above Nevermore, typically auguring that someone’s about to get dispatched in rather grisly fashion.

Season 2 also sees more of the blossoming friendship between Wednesday and her lycan roommate, the cheerily sunny Enid (Emma Myers), which is even more complicated given that Wednesday is having visions of inadvertently causing Enid’s death—another enigma to unlock this season.

Meanwhile, Wednesday’s brother, Pugsley (Isaac Ordonez), faces intrigue of his own involving a legendary zombie haunting the school’s grounds.  Pugsley takes a shine to the hungry ghoul, but keeping him as a “pet” will naturally bring with it specific logistical (and bloody) challenges.

In addition to familiar returning faces, Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán as Morticia and Gomez Addams, Steve Buscemi joins the Season 2 cast as Barry Dort, the new headmaster at Nevermore.  Buscemi elevates any material he sings up for, and his off-kilter Barry is a welcome addition to the show in Buscemi’s capably goofy hands.  Also, Tim Burton returns as director for the Season 2 premiere and one other episode, reuniting him with Ortega from last summer’s big-screen “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.”

It might never have been this much fun to be scared.