Cobra Kai Recap: The Chozen

Something held me back from really loving the first two episodes of this batch of five; Barcelona should be a fun change of setting, and it is, but there’s been something a little workmanlike about these opening events in the Sekai Taikai and about these reversions to old character patterns. The show has felt a tad less joyful than it does at its best.

That changed for me with “Snakes on a Plane,” the exact midpoint of this 15-episode sixth season. That’s kind of a surprise for the least Barcelona-centric episode of the group, and for one that features a prominent Anthony LaRusso subplot. But I felt a lot of genuine joy watching this one — both that big bombshell appearance at the end and the stuff leading up to it.

That’s an impressive accomplishment considering a relative lack of karate and the brief somber turn with Carmen’s health. When Johnny calls Amanda from the plane, she reports that Carmen is still unconscious and that they’re monitoring her bleeding. Otherwise, we aren’t privy to what’s going on and if she’ll be okay. Now, I figured she’d make it out of this one, just because killing Carmen off this deep into the show would really cast a pall over the remaining episodes. But the story works because while we know she’ll probably be okay, and we know it’s safe to enjoy the plane ride for any comedic possibilities, Johnny and Miguel have no such assurances.

Pretty much anytime Miguel feels hurt or neglected by Johnny, then the two come back together, it’s guaranteed to work on me. They’re the core, original sensei-student relationship of the show, the new Mr. Miyagi and Daniel, and in some ways they’re an even more important pairing than Johnny and Daniel. Often the distance between them builds just because they’re each busy with their own stuff — as Johnny explains to Miguel later in the episode, Robby needs more support than him right now, feeling directionless without any particular college prospects. As he movingly tells Miguel, though, “You’re my son, too.” He admits that he’s worried about losing Carmen, that he knows it’s false comfort to pretend he knows everything will be okay.

The rich asshole in first class is a pretty cartoony villain for the episode, but it’s fun to see Miguel be the one to punch him out rather than Johnny. And that’s the first of several Ws for these two, the biggest being the news that Carmen and the baby are completely fine! (That bloody bedspread was kind of horrifying for a moment, but I figured it was a misdirect.) She needed an emergency cerclage, but now she’s back to bedrest for a few weeks, so there’s nothing else to do. She even encourages them to fly back to Spain and win the Sekai Taikai.

I think I would believe I could win a world karate tournament if Carmen told me I could, but her encouragement might interfere with the wishes of the new fighter drafted to compete for Miyagi-Do: Kenny. Johnny asked Amanda to get Kenny on a plane to Spain to replace Miguel, not knowing they’d be headed back the same day. It’s pretty smart to fold Kenny back in at this point, and I’m relieved that it doesn’t mean Miguel will actually be absent. There’s an interesting opportunity for conflict going into the next couple of episodes: With a limited number of slots, who actually will be competing?

Getting Kenny to agree isn’t an easy task. He’s still convinced Anthony was the one who drugged him with laxatives and led to the memeification of “Shit Butt,” a nickname that really doesn’t roll off the tongue very well. (Then again, Kenny famously called Anthony “LaPusso.”) Amanda makes Anthony apologize to Kenny for the bullying, but he’s overly defensive about the laxative allegations, and the two inevitably get into a fight. (Amanda: “Fucking karate.”) Ever the peacekeeper, Amanda gets them to shut up by sharing the news about Carmen, a forceful reminder that their problems are small potatoes. It’s their duty to move past this so Kenny can feel safe at Miyagi-Do and come through for his friends in Barcelona.

That doesn’t stop the war right away. But Anthony’s more earnest apology does, along with his over-the-top gesture of voluntarily evening the score when it comes to pants-shitting. Devon’s guilty call admitting to the whole thing seals the deal. Kenny and Anthony might not be besties right away, but there’s no longer any bad blood.

But as one feud ends, the teen drama in Barcelona is reaching a fever pitch. At Chozen’s encouragement (and against Daniel’s), the kids are “hitting the town hard” to decompress tonight, including a tapas bar where Robby, Tory, Kwon, and Zara get locked in a four-way mind game. Robby isn’t normally a drinker, but the breakup and his recent karate performances have left him in a dark place, ordering double rum-and-Cokes while jealously watching Kwon’s obnoxious flirting and thinking about how little the breakup has affected Tory — either personally or in karate, which tends to have a direct correlation.

Robby ends up spending the night with Zara, who seems intent on personally screwing with Tory, either out of some Kreese-esque attempt to get under her enemy’s skin or some pathological need to be the prettiest and most popular girl in the room. The next morning, Tory happens to see the two briefly kiss outside Zara’s door, which should further up the stakes going into the next event.

Everybody is getting cozy with people they shouldn’t be that night, including Demetri, who accepts a dance with a girl who is not his girlfriend Yasmine. Eli’s FaceTime with his own girlfriend Moon sure seems intended to rat Demetri out, even if he didn’t know Yasmine was in the room with her at the time, but it puts the two friends on even worse ground than before.

And Sam spends some time with Axel, mentioning that she saw Sensei Wolf hurting him. He’s firmly focused on fighting and seems timid about everything else, though he tries to plant a kiss on her after an aborted fight with Kwon and some of his usual cronies. I can’t quite tell where this story is going; is Sam starting to realize she might want something other than the life she dreamed of for herself and Miguel?

All this stuff is solid, raising some intriguing wrinkles for the rest of the season. But I have to say, my absolute favorite part of the episode is Chozen and Kim Da-Eun’s subplot, during which they keep running into each other while searching for their students. At the beach district, they run into each other again, eventually tracking the kids to the tapas bar where they were last seen. Both expected to find the kids fighting, leaving a wrecked bar in their wake — after all, there’s historical precedent. But it turns out they worried for nothing, as far as they know.

Kim Da-Eun has always been a solid secondary antagonist, but I’ve also never thought of her as complex in the same way as Kreese or Silver. But it’s refreshing to start to see her separate from Kreese, disapproving of his off-the-battlefield tactics. The episode sets us up to think Kreese kidnapped Daniel without her knowledge, but following Dennis to a hotel leads to the “fuck yeah”-worthy ending reveal: It was Terry Silver behind the kidnapping this whole time, presumably working with Sensei Wolf to take out Miyagi-Do and elevate the Iron Dragons to victory.

It’s a great moment, especially because it comes early enough that it’s actually surprising (as opposed to an episode-ten cliffhanger, which is what I expected). And yet Chozen and Kim Da-Eun’s make-out session (and subsequent off-screen sex on the beach) has to be my favorite moment. There’s a real energy to their sparring throughout the episode; in a show like this, you’d expect at least a couple fighting-turns-into-making-out moments, but I think this must be the first actual instance, maybe because male characters rarely fight female characters (and there are next to no queer characters).

Outside the satisfaction of watching Chozen get his groove back after Towel Man ruined his mojo, I love seeing Kim Da-Eun in this new mode. Alicia Hannah-Kim has never gotten the chance to play comedy on this show, so it’s a delightful to see her flex those muscles here. (The moment she shakes sand out of her sleeves and hair the next morning is a highlight.) It’ll be difficult for the character to redeem herself at this point, given the ways she has hurt her students, but her growing divide with the other baddies is another variable to keep our eyes on. I wasn’t expecting a full-blown enemies-to-lovers arc in Cobra Kai, but if that’s where this season is going, I’m here for it.

Mr. Miyagi’s Little Trees

• “Why is the plane doing this bendy thing?” “You mean following the curvature of the Earth?”

• “Need to go inside. Looking for teenagers.” “I heard that one before.”