‘Cobra Kai’ Episode 6 Recap: Lip-ing the Script

There’s something beautiful about how earnestly sappy Cobra Kai can be. It’s like the dad joke of TV series, and I mean that as the highest of compliments. Shots of Danny LaRusso doing deep-breathe exercises alone in his home. Saccharine Boston-tracked flashbacks to a wide-eyed Johnny Lawrence discovering his dojo. Samantha LaRusso laughing alone in her room because an e-card from Miguel is the nicest note to happen to her in days. Cobra Kai is one wrong foot placement away from being an afterschool special and that’s why it works so well. There’s not a cynical beat in this show’s body, almost a miracle in a time where every show is almost mandated to treat genuine sentiment like a kid on the playground avoiding cooties.

But Danny says it himself: It’s not about the punching and the kicking, it’s about balance. Episode 6, “Quiver,” is about as flawless an example as you can get of how to balance storytelling with an actual heart.

Sue me, I’m a sucker for happiness.

Raise your hand if you also did not know “quiver” was a term for a group of cobras? Appropriate, though, that this episode started off with a lesson, because “Quiver” is all about what it means to teach. On his abrasive, more-than-occasionally racist surface, Johnny Lawrence is a terrible teacher. The Cobra Kai dojo is officially full of the exact same people a teenaged Johnny Lawrence would have gleefully karate chopped in the balls during homeroom. “God it makes me feel like a virgin just looking at you,” he tells one hopeful student. He embarrasses Demetri into quitting, repeatedly mocks Eli’s lip deformity, doles out the type of less-than-flattering nicknames you’d hear fly during gym class dodgeball (including Sling Shot, and now I desperately need to know how a kid earned the nickname Sling Shot).

Luckily, in the end—and again, we dip real close to “so sugary sweet it makes you vomit” territory here—it’s the students that teach the master a little about himself (cue “aww” track). “You don’t know what it’s like to be us,” Miguel tells Johnny, which jars loose memories of a 1979 summer, where Brad Delp’s falsetto drowned out the sound of parents arguing and Johnny Lawrence found a real family inside the walls of Cobra Kai. Before he became karate king of West Valley High, Johnny very much so knew what it was like to be the Sling Shot of society.

Simply put, William Zabka makes this all work. He stutters and side-eyes along with his insults just enough to let us know there’s a better man beneath the words he’s saying, even if Johnny doesn’t know it. When he told Danny in “Esqueleto” that he wasn’t Kreese, he was right. He uses Kreese’s words and lessons because they’re the first things in his life that gave him a little confidence, but they’re tempered by an understanding that Kreese never had. Once again…balance. It’s all balance.

Which is why, despite the fact students are quitting in droves, Johnny’s teaching method is actually working in its own ass-backward way. You see it in Miguel, who no one is calling Rhea after he dished out sweet, sweet cafeteria justice. You see it in Aisha, who has bought way the hell into the Cobra Kai way. And you can literally see it in Eli, who returns to the dojo with a badass mohawk and more oomph in his voice than the last five episodes combined. “You see that? Doesn’t matter if you’re a loser, or a nerd, or a freak,” Johnny says. “All that matters is that you become badass.”

That is…definitely not all that matters. But it’s certainly some kind of start.

Danny finds his dojo emptying out for the exact opposite reasons as Johnny. He’s too earnest. Too into the zen of it all. Too quick with the fortune cookie advice. In the fast-paced space of Alexas, PS Vitas, and Facebook bullying the idea of doing a bit of kata in the garage with your dad seems like time wasted.

To everyone, that is, except for Robby Keene, who never had a dad to slow things down for him so instead had to grow up too fast. It’s not a coincidence that episode writers Joe Piarullo and Luan Thomas have Robby get in trouble for revving the enging of a showroom car. For Robby—who took the LaRusso Auto Group job just to piss off his father—the idea of someone teaching him to pump the brakes is enticing because it’s so alien. “You want to stick around, learn a few things?” Danny asks him, welcoming Robby into his empty dojo. Robby’s reaction is a great subtle slice of acting from Tanner Buchanan, a “sure” that takes even him by surprise.

Vinnie Mancuso writes about TV for a living, somehow, for Decider, The A.V. Club, Collider, and the Observer. You can also find his pop culture opinions on Twitter (@VinnieMancuso1) or being shouted out a Jersey City window between 4 and 6 a.m.

Watch Cobra Kai Episode 6 ("Quiver") on YouTube Red