Cobra Kai Midseason-Premiere Recap: National Lampoon’s European Vacation

¡Bienvenidos a España! After a few months off, Cobra Kai is back for the second of its three final batches of episodes. When July’s mid-season finale of Cobra Kai skipped forward to the Sekai Taikai, I had some mild concerns: If the big world tournament finished in the next couple of episodes, what else was there left for this final season to cover? After watching the first episode of this next batch, though, I feel reassured. The All Valley Tournament in season four took two whole episodes, and this one might take five. I’m all for spreading the event across multiple episodes, especially if it means we’ll get to know the competitors from the other teams better. This shouldn’t feel like just another battle between Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai, even if it inevitably comes down to them in the finals.

“Benvinguts a Barcelona” begins in the immediate aftermath of the ceremony at the end of the last episode, the evening before the tournament begins. That means breaking the cast once again into the kids and the adults. While the competitors go on a field trip to L’Aquàrium Barcelona, their senseis will schmooze with sponsors at a cocktail mixer.

I felt like the last episode rushed a little in getting everyone to Spain, so it’s nice to see this episode slow down a bit, even if it means delaying some of the payoffs and reiterating some of the stories we’re already familiar with. Johnny and Daniel are still butting heads, working together as senseis and sharing the same hotel room but refusing to be friendly. Daniel is worried about Johnny blowing it with the sponsors, and we do see the guy immediately almost get into a fight over the last two steaks at the buffet. But as always, Daniel has just as deep a capacity for aggression, and he’s the one who almost gets violent when Kreese threatens him.

And yet the biggest embarrassment is Chozen, who shows up behaving like he just drank an original-recipe Four Loko. He’s totally sloppy, smashing vases full of the same flowers he brought to Okinawa to win over Kumiko. Unfortunately, someone he hilariously calls “Towel Man” (then “Shower Man”) answered her door, so it appears Kumiko has another man in her life. Then again, Chozen didn’t stick around long enough to hear who exactly the guy is. It’s very possible he doesn’t grasp the full truth about the identity of Towel Man.

Johnny learns at the mixer that winning the tournament could lead to lucrative brand deals that would put Miguel through college and easily provide for Carmen and their kid (plus Rosa). Daniel also has a revelation, albeit one that will affect him less on a material level and more on an emotional one. After showing Mr. Miyagi’s bloody Sekai Taikai headband to representative Gunther and another dojo gear and apparel expert, he gets a lead on a legendary champion named Master Serrano who may have known Miyagi from back in their tournament days.

Off on their field trip, the kids are occupied by their own mix of petty drama and more serious conflicts. This is a very necessary episode for Tory, whose perspective we haven’t heard since she stormed out of the Miyagi-Do captain competition after her mom died. She seems fully aware of Cobra Kai’s unattractive qualities this time around, based on her reactions to Kim Da-Eun calling her a rat and downplaying what she did to Tory’s hand last season. But it’s like she later explains to Robby: With Sam all but guaranteed a captain spot, this felt like the only option to compete. At least she still seems to have Kreese in her corner.

Fresh off that angsty conversation, Robby accepts Kwon’s challenge to a high-kick contest, gambling away his and Demetri’s room when he loses. He catches even more heat when Sam calls him out for getting played by Kreese again; he knew Kreese had approached to Tory after escaping from prison but didn’t tell anyone, and then she got sucked back into Cobra Kai. Everyone seems peeved at Robby, who’s clearly distracted going into tomorrow’s tournament, but most are reluctant to directly confront him about it, perhaps worried they’ll disturb the peace and throw him off his game even more.

Tory does make one effort to ease Robby’s suffering … by putting their relationship on “pause” when he visits her in the middle of the night. She might think this is genuinely helpful to him after hearing from Sam about his inability to focus when he’s so worried about his girlfriend — but it obviously backfires, because it turns out getting dumped doesn’t help you focus either! In fact, from one angle, Tory may have actively (if unintentionally) sabotaged the competition by breaking his heart. Robby is right when he points out that she only trusts herself, a core issue that she can’t move on from despite Miyagi-Do’s positive influence.

The first event the next day is called “Captain’s War,” and it involves pitting entire dojos against one another in groups of four, each tasked with protecting their own captains and taking out the others. Tory knows Miyagi-Do, so her dojo should really listen to her, but Kwon walks all over her until she takes Kim Da-Eun’s advice and gives him no choice but to follow. The Miyagi-Do competitors drop quickly, and Robby gets distracted by Tory and messing up.

This presents a decent opportunity to really establish the dojos other than Miyagi-Do and Cobra Kai on the mat, and there’s … some success. Flachi Della Notte, one of the two new teams in Miyagi-Do’s group, gets effortlessly decimated in the background before we get a chance to see much of them. But the Iron Dragon dojo actually wins the first round, their two captains handling Tory, Kwon, and Yoon without much trouble. (They were so confident that the other fighters on their team actually stepped down voluntarily, which is pretty badass.) “Welcome to Barcelona, bitch,” says the girl credited as Zara, who met Tory briefly during picture-taking earlier. It seems she could be a fierce new antagonist in these middle episodes, along with her sensei (the guy who stole Johnny’s steak).

“Benvinguts a Barcelona” does mostly feel like a setup episode; the one event we do see probably doesn’t matter all that much in terms of determining Miyagi-Do’s place in the tournament, and both Daniel and Johnny’s goals and conflicts in Barcelona are still being defined. But I’m pretty excited for the tournament to come, which should feel different from the usual competitions back in the Valley. Who doesn’t need a little vacation every once in a while?

Mr. Miyagi’s Little Trees

• RIP Chad McQueen, who played Dutch in the original movie and died back in September. There were once plans to bring him on board for a cameo in Cobra Kai, but it never worked out.

• Apparently, Kreese’s charges were dropped because he’s a veteran with PTSD who was supposedly innocent and forced to escape. Not sure that makes any sense, but sure.

• “These your models? I got way better-looking kids at my dojo. Let me show you some photos.” “That’s not really the criteria.”

• I really like the conversation when Sam tells Tory she felt hurt that she didn’t reach out after her mom died, instead stepping into Cobra Kai’s arms. The conflicts can get repetitive in this show, but it’s the shifting contexts that keeps the rivalries interesting.

• I recently re-watched part of the Disney Channel Original Movie Johnny Tsunami for a Halloween costume and discovered that Yuji Okumoto (a.k.a. Chozen) played Johnny’s dad, so that was a fun discovery.