Cobra Kai Recap: Teacher’s Pet Sematary
Okay, I’m starting to understand what this final season (and these opening five episodes, more specifically) is really about. At the end of “Sleeper,” we learn that when Miyagi-Do competes at the Sekai Taikai in Barcelona, only six of the students will be allowed to fight, including one male captain and one female captain. It immediately injects some much-needed conflict into the season, turning a unified dojo against itself with some high-stakes competition.
I’m pretty excited to see how all this goes down in the next couple of episodes, but prior to that cliffhanger, this is mostly another just-okay episode. Let’s start with the okay-est story: Kreese is still in South Korea, demonstrating his sensei abilities to a slightly skeptical Kim Da-Eun. Now, I’m not sure how the rules work for the tournament, and I’m not sure how old the students in this dojang are supposed to be, but it seems a little ridiculous that these big, strong 20-somethings will be facing off against a bunch of kids. When Kim Da-Eun was at Cobra Kai, didn’t she use her old students as senseis, not as competitors? Remember Daniel, Johnny, Chozen, and Mike Barnes kicking ass in the last finale? That seemed like a slightly more age-appropriate matchup.
Kim Da-Eun is having trouble dealing with one of the students, Kwon Jae-Sung, who keeps distracting his classmates by disregarding the rules and showboating. But Kreese has a good eye for potential, and he’s more interested in Kwon than Yoon Do-Jin, the supposed best student in the class. So he stokes the drama by punishing the whole class with hard labor, pissing off Yoon enough to shove Kwon down some stairs. “Only through pain does a champion reveal himself,” Kreese suggests, and when Kwon eventually confronts him, he tells the hothead to give purpose to his anger.
Yoon is a classic teacher’s pet, following every single instruction to a tee without ever improvising, and that limits him as a fighter. So when Kwon decides to retaliate and kick his ass, he’s powerless to anticipate Kwon’s moves and make any surprise moves himself. Kreese signs off with a summatory lesson about how the only way to beat someone who has heart is with heartlessness. But again, this all feels a bit familiar. If we’re sticking with the dojang, I would’ve liked to invest a little in Kwon and Yoon as actual human characters instead of just Kreese’s new soldiers. We were able to root for Cobra Kai fighters in the past, and it would be helpful to have a similar investment in some of the people fighting our heroes at the Sekai Taikai.
Or maybe just some comedy would help lighten up these relatively dark scenes in Korea. That’s part of the reason why Johnny’s story works so much better in this episode; both Kreese and Johnny are trying to stir up shit to turn their students into more aggressive fighters, but it’s a lot more fun to watch characters we know well. Fresh off the news that he and Carmen are having a girl, Johnny proclaims himself a girl dad and volunteers to handle an issue with a couple of female students.
And something clearly needs to shift with Sam and Tory; it’s great that they’re friends now, but that means they’ve lost the fire that made them such productive sparring partners. They’re too scared to disrupt the peace by really going at each other, even in a safe setting, probably because they both still remember Tory fucking up Sam’s arm. So Johnny arranges a sleepover at Devon’s house and crashes the party, something that would feel profoundly creepy in almost any show other than Cobra Kai.
The slumber-party montage of Johnny unsuccessfully driving a wedge between Sam and Tory is hilarious, especially because of how consistently transparent his ploys are. (“If Sam could describe Tory in one word, what would that word be?” he asks the Ouija board.) He’s smart to weaponize their old-boy problems, but stealing both Miguel’s and Robby’s phones to send them unconvincing messages is a terrible idea, especially because he’s making it look like Miguel and Robby are trying to cheat on their girlfriends with their exes at the same time. I would’ve liked to see Miguel’s and Robby’s reactions upon finding out that Johnny stole their phones and tried to frame them.
Because we’ve all watched sitcoms before, we know that eventually Sam and Tory will turn on each other before the episode is over. But I love how “Sleeper” handles it, letting them hash some stuff out without letting their heated discussion escalate into a fight or regress into another seasonlong beef. Both of them own up to what they did all the way back in season two, from Sam accusing Tory of stealing Amanda’s wallet to Tory almost killing Sam. There’s no awkwardness in the tearful hug they share, the clear emotional peak of the episode. It makes sense that Sam and Tory weren’t able to comfortably fight each other at the dojo before, given all the unspoken baggage between them. Now, they’re actually communicating instead of tiptoeing around each other. They can be friends and sparring partners.
Daniel’s Miyagi-centric subplot also works decently well, but it feels vaguely unfinished, like Daniel isn’t done wrestling with his feelings about the secrets his sensei hid from him. While he’s clearing space for Chozen, they discover a box of Mr. Miyagi’s old belongings hidden beneath the floor. In addition to boxing gloves, they find a passport with a birth date six years earlier than he told everyone, along with a newspaper clipping that suggests he assaulted and robbed someone as a young man using the name Keisuke Miyagi in 1947.
Amanda joins the crew to get more answers at a boxing gym listed at the address on the ID, a gym where Miyagi was apparently a partner. The grandson of the gym’s late co-owner confirms the story, explaining that Miyagi apparently fled America after stealing a pricey necklace. But he’s quick to note that his grandpa trusted Miyagi with his life. Everyone has light and darkness inside them, it turns out, even Mr. Miyagi; this robbery was just one piece of a man loved and respected by many. Daniel understands that intuitively — and while it goes unsaid in the episode, it’s important to remember that this robbery took place less than three years after Mr. Miyagi’s wife and newborn son died in an internment camp while he was stationed overseas. Daniel knows this context, but he’s still hurt by the fact that he never knew the truth about this side of Miyagi. He can’t get over the idea that Miyagi didn’t trust him enough to tell him.
These are interesting ideas, and I’m curious to see if the show takes it further. Cobra Kai has always done a great job treating Mr. Miyagi like an important unseen character, so it makes sense to reflect once more on the franchise’s most iconic character — and its oldest sensei-student bond — as it comes to an end. And demystifying that larger-than-life figure (someone Amanda calls “possibly the greatest man who ever lived”) by exposing us to an unflattering chapter of his life is a very Cobra Kai move. Beyond all the gloriously over-the-top karate cheesiness, it’s that type of subversion that made this show such a pleasant surprise from episode one.
Mr. Miyagi’s Little Trees
• “Your daughter is a pussy now.”
• “Are we ever gonna tell Sam and Anthony about Cancun?” Wow, go Daniel and Amanda.
• Inspired by the idea that we need to make the most of the time we have with people we love, Chozen looks into flights to Okinawa. So maybe we’ll learn sometime soon why exactly Kumiko didn’t return Chozen’s feelings.