Episode 05: Cobra Kai - S01E04 - Cobra Kai Never Dies

2:13PM Jan 15, 2023

Speakers:

Jason Connell

Sal Rodriguez

Keywords:

johnny

daniel

robbie

miguel

mother

moment

kyler

billboard

son

walks

episode

karate

penis

cobra kai

scene

macho

friends

flyers

kohl

kid

Welcome to Just Curious Media. This is Let's Talk - Cobra Kai. I'm Jason Connell, documentary filmmaker turned podcaster.

And I'm Sal Rodriguez, toy collector and comedian. All right, so here we'll see how much of a comedian

Not that funny more of a toy collector in this show. So here we are. This is Episode Four Cobra Kai never dies. Good title,

no mercy.

And it's 8.5 rating on IMDb. This episode starts with Robbie, Johnny's son, and he's working at Tech town. Yeah. And he's working there and a customer comes in and drops off a laptop. And Robbie seems like a really decent guy and says, Hey, you know, fix your computer. You know, what's your password? The customer looks at a shirt and says thanks, Eduardo. Oh, immediately you know something's off. Yes. And he's like super nice. customer walks away. And what does Robbie do?

Robbie takes off at the laptop goes to the back of the building, gives it to his hoodlums buddies. So we realized that in there that it was all a scam. He doesn't really work at the store. He just took this guy's laptop.

And there isn't Eduardo and he throws his shirt to him and says, Thanks, Ed. Yeah, so we know Robbie's a bad guy. He's already gone on some sort of Craigslist, posted the computer to sell it. And his buddies are saying, Yeah, hey, have three people Venmo you and the first one gets the computer so they're gonna scam other people to sell the computer to

yeah, these guys are doing scams. They're doing stolen merchandise, scams. Venmo scams. These guys are hoodlums scamming people, you know, these kids are misguided, obviously. Look how Robbie grew up. Robbie didn't have a dad. So you know, you got to cut him some slack. He's a juvenile delinquent. He might be able to turn a corner.

I'm not saying he can't come back from this. But right now he's acting out so they're punks. So we cut to Robbie. He's going to skate off with the laptop. He sees a flyer on the ground picks it up. Sure is anything. It's the Cobra Kai flyer. And what I really liked about it was you saw the address to the Cobra Kai dojo, which is to 500 to victory Boulevard, Van Nuys, California. 91401.

Nice. I missed that. Did you Google it? I

googled it. And it said someone had put a pan that says Cobra Kai dojo, but I did a Street View. And there's nothing there.

Was there a receipt of flats?

Well, yeah, but it's not called receipt of flats.

Is it an actual strip mall?

There is a little mall there. Yes. Oh, wow. So yeah, that's

cool. I didn't.

But I love seeing the address. I pause it was like, I've gotta write that down. I love address. Yeah, as you should. So Johnny is drunk, which is not a surprise for the season thus far. And he's got his flyers in hand, and we're flashing back to when he dropped off, Miguel. And how upset his mother was it this wounded son of hers that are obviously his responsibility. Yeah. And just

adult took your son to the dance as his chaperone chaperoning. Yeah. And then meanwhile, your son comes back a broken mess.

Exactly. And so then Johnny spots the Russo auto billboard. There's someone with a spray cans.

Yeah, there's a guy tagging on a wall with the spray can gives him some

beers for the spray can. And we'll find out what Johnny did. Yeah, so now cut to Daniels driving to work, sees his billboard. And there's blood on it.

There is a spray painted giant penis head. It's straightforward. Daniel Russo's mouth. I was actually surprised to see it. This show pushes envelopes. It does. It does. In fact, some of the things they do and some of the things they say. I'm surprised this is YouTube, baby. It's a new era. I love it. I love the freedom. So he sees the child penis and he flips out.

typical, typical Daniel. But yeah, that is pretty great. Same. So now we cut back to Miguel, still in pain. Mother is not happy. But his grandmother's fine with him continuing his training.

The mother says no more karate, but the grandmother is totally new. By the way. The grandmother speaks Spanish only and there are subtitles. Yes. The mother is bilingual. Right? And I think we're to assume maybe Miguel only speaks English. We don't hear Him speaking Spanish.

I hadn't picked up on that. Yeah, right. When he does communicate with his grandmother. I know

people who grew up American Mexicans, third generation, second generation who could not communicate with their own grandparents. And maybe not even just Mexican American English. No, you know what I know some people who had parents come over from the old country, or grandparents rather, only speak Yiddish. And they can't communicate with their grandparents in Yiddish. So if you notice, I could have sworn we did not see Miguel speaking Spanish at all. So the mother is kind of the go between.

That's a good point. So Johnny is passed out after that horrible night after the Halloween dance. And he gets another call from Robbie's school. Yeah, the vice principal and now Robbie has skipped a month of school.

I think the son told the school that he and his father were going on a whitewater rafting trip right yeah. Yeah, so he lies to the school says he and his dad are taken off. The vice principal calls up. Hey, sorry to interrupt your vacation whitewater rafting. I was almost wondering if she didn't even buy it herself.

No, I think the Vice Principal knows that she's dealing with a real What do you say punk? With absent parents? Yes, we find out more about the mother shortly. So Miguel runs into Johnny at the apartment complex, and learns he's shutting down Cobra Kai. There's no more money. There's no students. He's lost his one and only loyal student and his head salesman and marketer.

So and web designer, web designer

and all of that. So are back at the school. I You shouldn't Sam have a quick exchange, but it's obvious I should still quite upset. Yes. And then she works out a friend. She's hurt. And you

could tell how conflicted Samantha is. She wants to be with the cool kids. But she does still have affection for her childhood friend.

And there's no bringing her into that because Yasmin and crew would just not have it.

You know what I can so relate to this feeling this aura because when I was in junior high, one of my best childhood friends q1, but by the time we made our way into junior high, q1 had become a Crip. And there was a moment where these Crips were about to jump me and Keon came and rescued me and said, leave him alone. And they walked off together. And he looked back at me, and we both knew that we'll always be friends. But that that was a turning point. Yeah. And when q1 walked away, that was it. Never saw him again. Never saw him again. No, never saw him never came back to school. I don't remember seeing him after that. So I totally relate to those moments where the teenager kind of has to choose sides a

lot more at stake in your relationship. This is just sad things more of a Can't Buy Me Love. PG type saying no Crips or bloods no no life at stake yet. So are you sure walks off and now Kyler enters frame and they're talking about their movie date?

Yes. But meanwhile, one of Tyler's buddies. This would be behind the back of Samantha. Does the BJ sign Oh yes. Classic. Oh, he does. The classic BJ says

kid would fit into varsity blues just fine.

And you know, one of these bullies who rides on the coattails of the top bully? Yeah, so he's like a secondary or third bully. He's not the top bully. And then Kyler gives the guy that oh, yeah, yeah, this is gonna happen. So poor Samantha and this moment.

She's also ignoring text messages from her father. He's texting

his daughter at this moment. He wants to communicate with her because they had a little falling out about his mistrust of Kyler.

Now we're back at LORUSSO Otto, and someone has sent them 100 sausages for lunch, probably because they've seen the hilarious billboard on butcher Boulevard with the large penis to his mouth. Yeah, so

somebody thought of what a great prank to send 100 sausages to LORUSSO.

And so we've come to find out that it's his competitor Kohl's auto. So now Daniel, upset about that has his crew, which includes one of his top salesmen and his cousin up on the Billboard, to paint over the penis. And they also find out that somebody took a deuce up there.

Yes, because at first he steps that he's like, Oh, I stepped on a dog shit. And he's like, how would a dog get up here?

Is it too far fetched to think that you could just have anybody go up and repaint a billboard? Doesn't that seem like a bit of a safety issue?

Well, think about this. How did Johnny get up there in the first place

illegally? This is during the middle of the day, they kept little painting. Have they even gone to any classes? And

no, they they had no safety harnesses on Okay, I think in real life, you'd have to call up Gannett outdoor and be like, Oh, my billboard was vandalized, and they would send their workers in a few weeks

you represent your top salesman and your cousin, but it makes for a better scene. So now we're at Robbie's apartment with his punk friend. Yeah. And they have

the laptop, and now they're watching the torquing. They're

watching torquing. And correct me if I'm wrong, but they're rolling joints. I missed the joints, then there's a loud constant bang on the door. And it's Johnny. Because Robbie's mother's nowhere to be found. Yeah. And so Johnny now kind of coming out of his 35 year stupor. Yeah. And confronts Robbie. Yeah, well, you

know what, he's trying to be a dad, but you would have to use the softer approach. Yes. If this were real life, like you'd have to try to appeal to your kid in a softer gentler manner as opposed to trying to operate out of I'm your dad.

Right. Robbie even defense his mother Yeah, sequence so Johnny leaves and

I was hoping that Johnny would kick Robbie's friends asked as I was hoping for that, but yeah, didn't happen but those guys didn't push it either. They knew that they didn't they were just being smart. Alex, I think they've made some smart aleck remarks are laughing at inappropriate time. They just want to get high and watch some more torquing that was an actress torque and that was a professional twerker right.

Obviously, she was good. So now we're in the school library and Miguel is informing Demetri and Eli that he's done with karate,

while his mother said that's it. It's over. And his friends are like, Oh, good.

Yeah. Good. You have quit talking about that karate stuff. Yeah.

One of the friends was like, yeah, it's given you a sense of confidence.

Yeah. Which is good to know. You don't want I don't like, and then Kyler. Of course, he's everywhere. re-emerges and confronts all of them again.

Yeah. And he grabs Dimitris backpack throws it in the garbage. I mean, just total bully stuff.

Yep. But what he doesn't know is antha is behind a row of books, and overseas Kyler. And really his true character. I love seeing people getting caught because she wouldn't believe it otherwise, but no, two different callers.

I gotta admit, I was thinking right before we see Samantha, I was thinking to myself, someone was filming that. Like there was somebody with a hidden camera or with their phone, we don't see it and then we see Samantha even better.

Yeah. Well, the way they were paying and I thought she was around the corner as well. And I was pleasantly surprised. It was good to see that she saw it for herself. Yeah. And she's a smart enough girl. It was obvious that something was a little off with him. And then there it was her proof. So McGill's mother comes and picks him up school feeling, you know, bad for her son. He's moping around, not feeling good. Is not in Cobra Kai anymore.

He just doesn't want to go home. Just wants to go home. Yeah.

So back at LORUSSO Otto, there's a marketing meeting. And we learned from Amanda that back in the day, karate in the valley was like football in Texas, which kind of goes back to our Karate Kid episode. How we said that for Daniel to be this successful for winning an under eight team tournament seemed a little far fetched. But maybe back in the 80s they put you on a pedestal if you won that tournament. Yes. And so this meeting doesn't go. Great. I showed Daniel a video from the competitor Kohl's Kohl's who he just got his 100 Sausages so he's assuming that he was responsible for the penis on the Billboard. Yeah, I think he's thinking that and he also in the video you see Cole's do the cactus giveaway, which is a knockoff of the Banzai giveaway.

It would be the car dealership equivalent of a rap disc video. Exactly. It was him basically dissing LORUSSO style.

So Daniel exits this meeting, headed straight for Kohl's auto.

I love that.

So now we're at a bar and we get to know Robbie's mother.

We don't even know that's Robbie's mother. When the scene first opens, we just see a woman at a bar with a guy,

but we do know that she's a bit of a drinker. Bit of a lush and a bit of a Barfly.

Barfly. Yes. I like that word. That's an 80s 80s movie.

And then Johnny arrives and he's upset. He's blaming her for being a bad mother a little unfair. At least she didn't check out, right. I mean, she has her flaws, but at least she raised Robbie to the best of her ability. She was there. But Johnny in this moment, does offer to raise Robbie. Wow. Yeah. So that was a big moment for him. I will say, I'll take care of him. I'll make him go to school. So he's really, yeah, but

then the mother poo poos it? Of course. Oh, yeah. With what father's skills with what Dad's skills are you going to raise? So even though he volunteers to all of a sudden be a dad, the moms like oh, yeah, but it wasn't

a false proclamation. I could tell that Johnny seems sincere. Yeah. And he's trying, but I like why this is going on her date is a nice enough guy. He was respectful to Johnny, but he doesn't know what to think. I was kind of humorous. I do

like it. He continued the date though. Oh, yeah. Because you remember when Johnny makes a wisecrack about oh, show only blow you if you buy our dessert? Yeah, the day was probably like, oh, they do have a pretty good dessert menu.

Bread Pudding. Okay, so now we're at Kohl's auto Daniel confronts Tom Cole's

Daniel walks right into the showroom floor. When what's his name? Tom. Tom is showing a new customer a car right in that moment. And he has a Boba

Yeah, and he's real proud of the ball because they make bulb is on site. That's a

big thing for this guy. Tom Cole. Is this boba. That's his little thing that he does these offers his clients and new customers is Bobo so he has a Boba in his hand, offers it to the new customer. She walks off and then daflores Daniel one. Oh, I love that.

And Tom is just baiting Daniel and they kind of make up and Tom offers him a boba. Daniel politely declined to bow but he says he's

full in this moment. We think there's maybe some peace in the small

Exactly. But he says he's full. So what is Tom said to that?

Tom says you must be full after eating all that dick.

And there you have it.

In that moment is when you realize, Oh, this guy Tom.

He's just too proud of himself. too cocky. Daniel looks to leave comes back. Does the spinning heel kick knocks the Bulba oughta Tom's hand. ants splashes everywhere. And that's a great sequence. That's a great kick.

I love that kick. Do you think that was rough? Macho was that a stunt? I

think was rough budget. Really? Everybody's in shock because Tom was even doubting the history of Daniel. Oh, yeah. He's

like, Oh, you did? Karate. Oh, yeah. Right.

So that shut him up, shut everyone up. And Daniel probably needed to do that to squash any of that rivalry. Right then in there.

Well, then remember that if that was rough, macho doing that kick? He's what 58 doing that kick?

Is that 58?

Yeah. How old is rough, macho?

There's no way he's 50.

Rough. Macho, according to my notes, was born in 1961 150. Looks

great.

He does look great. What I'm saying is if that were him doing that kick, it's even more fantastic.

My hunch is it was rough, macho, but regardless, it's such a great scene. But to your point, I had no idea of how rough macho was 58. Hey, looks great. Yeah. And that was good on him.

And by the way it since he's 58. His wife, if you do the math, his wife was 38 on the show, if you just go by their true ages, if you believe that the actress portraying you know their traders, so rough, macho, or should I say, Daniel is dating or his wife, brother is 20 years younger than him. I know. Wax on wax off,

left a circle. Okay, so now we're in the movie theater. And Sam is still upset with Kyler, which I don't understand this is that they get all the way in the theater. They get the tickets, they can the seats, and she's just harboring this resentment. And finally it

comes out soon as the scene opens. You see the body language and he's trying

to get fresh colors. Just you can tell this guy's a punk. And she made he makes a move of his arm around her. She doesn't want to deal with it. She says I saw what you did. Yeah, it's like, oh, no, those guys are my friends. Yes, playing around. Sure. And then he doubles down. Yeah, he comes in hot and heavy putting his hands on her lay a hand on

the inner thigh

like, whoa. So what does she do?

She does some karate moves. And more like Steven Seagal. Yeah, because they were up close. It's what they call fighting in a phone booth when

defensive, just puts him down and he's embarrassed. And she walks out of the theater and exit the scene. And you could tell chi, there's like, oh, wow, that that's the end of that. Yeah.

Those moves were fantastic,

great sequence. And you know, right then in there that she really had training from Daniel and although we saw a little with that, in the earlier episodes, like a flashback hurts a little kid. Yeah. But that's when I knew that we're gonna see more from Sam in the future, because she's really deep down. You know, Daniels offspring. Yeah.

Because I had forgotten about the scene of Daniel training her in the dojo years past. Yeah, I forgotten about that. Until that moment where I thought, oh, kick ass.

So now we're at a diner. And this is a really good scene, Sal. Johnny oversees a touching moment between a father and a son sharing an ice cream sundae. Yes. You know, he did a great job. And that same kind of tearing up? Sure. He's seen something he never got to experience. And that's on him. And he knows it's on him. Yeah. And so that leads to the very next same cut to him. And we see Johnny apologizing to who we don't know yet. And apologizing for not being there. He wants to do better. And seeing this. I knew who he was talking to. I'd figured it out. But did you know,

I knew only because I'm highly intelligent, that's fine. But otherwise, I think it's easy to assume he's talking to his ex or talking to the son. Correct. You would think that automatically the knee jerk reaction would be that's who he's talking about right

back to Robbie's mom says I'm going to do my damnedest and be a good father. Yeah. But he's actually talking to McGill's mother. Yes. Because he's probably grown closer to Miguel in the last month, two months, and he has Ravi and yours. And it was still touching though.

This also reminds me of these guys that maybe have this first son. And then whatever was supposed to happen didn't happen. Like me, okay. I'm talking about me. So my dad had me. And then I grew up without him. But then he had another son, who was about 15 years younger than me. Oh, the good son, the good son. That's the son that he has a relationship with. It was too late for whatever we were supposed to have. So yeah, so Johnny did realize in that moment, though, seen the touching moment with the Father and the Son. Yeah, but then realize it's too late. Yeah. So then it goes back to Miguel's family.

So we can talk about this off air.

I'll pay you 55 for 50 minute session.

So really nice though. He wants to be there for Miguel. He knows Miguel has no father. And he's already really developed a relationship with him and the mother sees he's genuine. He didn't get Miguel hurt in maliciously

well, because he pleads, he walks away. The mother goes back in The grandmother says in Spanish, I like him. Right? She says I like him. Exactly. So the grandmother trusted Johnny when the mother was against Johnny, the grandmother was on board with Johnny and has been on board with Johnny.

Exactly. So now we're at La Russo's household for breakfast. And the last time we had this sequence, Sam had completely ignored Danielle, but this time she's come downstairs, she's happy and engaged. She wants her special pancakes. So Daniels super excited to see this and kicks it into gear, you could tell they have a very special bond firstborn. He's obviously trained her in karate, she's much closer to her that his son.

Yeah, the son relationship is kind of an odd one. Daniel's not that close with a son. I don't even know if the moms that close with the son.

Maybe there'll be development there. But right now, the mother this episode, though, on that note, acts more like a stepmother and these scenes, because it's Daniels having the heart to heart with the daughter, you know, and the mother comes across more like it's not her offspring. Interesting. You know, I'm not saying that's what's going on. But maybe it just they really wanted to force the Daniel relationship with the daughter. Maybe they established that.

Well, you know, the actress that portrays Amanda Courtney Hank Geller, originally from New Jersey. So here we are back to original karate kid again. Yeah, I wonder if that's going to become a part of the storyline at all that you know, maybe she was like a hometown girl or something.

It's true. Daniel is from New Jersey. Oh, I just thought that was a coincidence. If you don't believe it, watch the Karate Kid and then listen to our special episode. So now we're back at the cobra, Kai dojo, and Johnny is packing up the trophies. And Miguel shows up. Yeah. And he's got some big news.

My mom says I can train again. Boom, you're back in business baby. Because moments earlier, Johnny's packing up his trophies, he's taking off plaques off the wall, whatever he's packing up. He said, This is it. It's over

fit. But he's got one student who's got help. And so he's excited by this. And he comes up to Miguel and he says, I've got to teach you better defense. That's why you got beat up the other night. And the best defense is a good offense. Yes.

And he says to Miguel, are you ready to take it to the next level? Oh, man, how good is Miguel gonna get? Is he going to use his anger to his advantage? Are you going to use his anger? It's gonna go against him. You know, it's like, what's going to happen with Miguel as a student? What's going to happen with Johnny as a Senseo? Where's this dynamic gonna go? How will they both blossom in their roles? I'm big time looking forward to see what happens of this

every time it happens. Don't spoil Sorry. Sorry. So now Daniel is driving to work. The penis is gone off the billboard. He's happy.

Everything's back to normal in his life. Right. Kyler is gone. He's gone. He's happy at this moment. He did that awesome kick at Kohl's dealership. He's a happy camper at this moment.

So he goes into work. And his best salesman says

I found these flyers what up on the billboard or near the billboard up on the Billboard. Okay, Johnny goes up onto the billboard paints, the penis leaves flyers.

We also took it down.

Did he do all that on purpose? Well, he was drunk. Okay, he's got some balls here. He takes a dump on the Billboard draws a penis and drops his flyers. And then they show Daniel look, look what we found up there. And that's another one of those moments where Daniel starts to go, Oh, I

know it. The Cobra Kai is the worst. So now it wasn't call. It was Johnny. And he just assumes that Johnny has it out for him

was cousin eggs. Aman, what are we going to do about this?

And that's it. Episode Four. It's a wrap.

What happens? I need to know what happens The suspense is killing me.

I hope you enjoyed it. Please like us or subscribe to us on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast and I'm super excited to come back with episode five.

I'm big time excited. I'm totally cut out. No mercy,

no mercy. Thank you