Sensei kreese7/21/2023 “King Cobra” is a very illuminating episode on The Karate Kid’s and Cobra Kai’s real bad guy: John Kreese ( Martin Kove). The second lesson Daniel has to learn is that, like Chozen says, “Defense takes on many forms.” Blocking blows isn’t the only way a person can protect themselves and, sometimes, it isn’t enough. After all, if Chozen isn’t the same angry kid he was in the 80s, maybe Johnny isn’t as well. The first one is that people can change, something that he needs to accept in order to put away his differences with Johnny. It’s a scene that serves to teach Daniel two important lessons. By the end of the fight, when Daniel is completely immobilized and fearing the worst, Chozen honks his nose and lets him go. What begins as an unpleasant chat over drinks turns into a fighting lesson after Chozen takes Daniel to his dojo and refuses to let him peek at his Miyagi-Do scrolls, even if the two of them are, in LaRusso’s words, “karate cousins.” With his usual threatening demeanor, Chozen punches and kicks Daniel into submission, showing off a kind of karate that doesn’t seem to have much to do with self-defense. LaRusso’s rival from The Karate Kid Part II, Chozen ( Yuji Okumoto), makes an appearance on Season 3 of Cobra Kai to show Daniel a different side of Miyagi-Do karate. RELATED: 'Cobra Kai' Season 4: Release Date, Trailer, Cast, Returning 'Karate Kid' Characters, and Everything We Know So Far It’s a fighting sequence that serves not only to show Miguel’s physical prowess, but also to throw off the school’s social hierarchy and to get Johnny a bunch of new students, kickstarting the process that leads to the new rule of Cobra Kai and to certified dork Hawk ( Jacob Bertrand) becoming one of the most feared kids around the Valley. Cobra Kai-style, Miguel shows no mercy towards Kyler and his minions, jumping over tables and using trays as weapons to render them unconscious. In “Counterbalance”, he uses his newly acquired knowledge of Cobra Kai martial arts to help out Sam ( Mary Mouser) after Kyler ( Joe Seo) spreads a sexual rumor about her around school, leading to her being publicly shamed in the cafeteria. Thankfully, though, he has karate on his side. Granted, it’s a somewhat crooked sense of justice, considering that he does draw first blood in a fight against teenagers, but still, better a flawed hero than a villain.Ĭobra Kai’s first student after Lawrence’s makeover, Miguel is what kids typically call a nerd, frequently bullied by the popular crowd in school. Miyagi ( Pat Morita) saves Daniel from Johnny’s own gang of bullies in the first Karate Kid movie, and that serves to show that Lawrence has developed a sense of justice over the past few years. It’s a scene reminiscent of the one in which Mr. After seeing Miguel being harassed by other school kids at a convenience store parking lot, Lawrence channels the karate black belt in him and beats the living daylights out of the bullies. He hits on random women on the street and his first words to his new neighbour, Miguel ( Xolo Maridueña), are, “Great, more immigrants.” It’s the kind of thing that makes you glad life wasn’t kind to him.Ī few scenes later, however, we learn that Lawrence might not be as bad as he seems. From waking up with a half-eaten bag of chips by his side to getting fired from his job for using the wrong bathroom, the list of public and private humiliations the former king of the San Fernando Valley goes through would be enough to strike pity in the hearts of even the cruelest human beings if Lawrence wasn’t so quick to show us that he’s still a jerk. In the first few scenes of Cobra Kai, we find out former bully and local karate star Johnny Lawrence didn’t exactly grow up to have a brilliant future.
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