Ace Degenerate
Directed by Jon Hurwitz & Hayden Schlossberg
The season opens with a Flash Back to 1984 and the All Valley Karate Championship, maybe the beginning of everything that went wrong with Johnny Lawrence's life. A closeup of Johnny lying on the mat after that fateful Crane Kick fades to Johnny in present day. After breakfast in his lonely bachelor pad, he takes out the trash, brushes off his new teenage neighbor Miguel Diaz, and jumps in his formerly Cool Car to head to the job he hates. On the way to work, with Poison's "Nothin' But a Good Time" - whose lyrics pretty much describe Johnny's situation - playing on the soundtrack, he sees a billboard for Daniel LaRusso's chain of car lots. An attractive jogger calls him a creep when he tries to turn on the charm.
While at his handyman job in a gated community, Johnny gets treated like dirt; he's fallen a long way since the country club of his youth. An argument with a terrible customer leads to his getting fired. Later, Johnny goes to get a slice of pizza at the local bodega, where he's berated by a meth addict. Miguel comes out of the store and a group of bigger boys start to bully him, pouring a bottle of Pepto-Bismol on his head before throwing him against the hood of Johnny's car. When Johnny objects, they turn their attention to him but are soundly beaten by the former All Valley champion. For his trouble, Johnny gets maced and arrested.
Early the next morning, Johnny arrives home from his night in jail, only to be accosted by Miguel, who asks him about his moves. Johnny clarifies that it was "old school karate" but refuses to teach Miguel despite his pleading. He goes inside and his stepfather is waiting for him. Sick of bailing Johnny out, Sid gives Johnny a cheque, as an effort to "buy him out." Johnny tears it up and Sid leaves in disgust. Johnny then proceeds to get drunk in front of the TV; when yet another ad for LaRusso's comes on and he can't change the channel because the remote control doesn't work, he throws his beer bottle through the screen and leaves.
Drunk driving, Johnny reminisces about Ali, The One That Got Away, and ends up at the sports complex which was the site of his humiliation. A car full of reckless teens slams into his car and drives away. To add insult to injury, the car gets towed to his archnemesis' place: LaRusso's. The next morning, Johnny dons a Paper-Thin Disguise and tries to quietly tow his car to another lot. Daniel, after ribbing him a little about losing the All Valley tournament (though Johnny argues that Daniel won with an illegal kick to the face), offers to fix Johnny's car for free. Johnny turns and leaves when he finds out Daniel's daughter was the girl in the back seat of the car full of teens who hit him. This is the last straw: He uses the cheque Sid gave him to lease his own dojo and tells Miguel he'll teach him karate.
Tropes:
- Berserk Button:
- Johnny is sick of seeing Daniel's face everywhere.
- Johnny doesn't really care about the Pepto-soaked kid until he gets pinned against his car. Do NOT mess with his car.
- Blatant Lies: Daniel trying to find something to compliment about Johnny's appearance."You look, you look... It's good to see you, man!"
- Bullying a Dragon: Kyler and his goons get a clear warning from Johnny when they start to get belligerent with him. They ignore the warning, and he wipes the floor with them.
- The Cameo: Ed Asner as Johnny's cantankerous stepdad Sid.
- Chekhov's Gun: The check that Johnny tears up; later, he finds it under a pile of trash, tapes it back together, and uses it to open his dojo.
- Chekhov's Skill: Johnny's experience as a handyman allowed him to put together the dojo surely saving labor costs along the way, as we'll see in later episodes.
- Cool Shades: Averted. At the beginning, Johnny puts on his sunglasses when he's cruising around — but it doesn't impress the lady jogger he encounters.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Johnny versus Kyler and his goons. Johnny honestly suffers more from not stretching before the fight than he does from the gang's actual attacks.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Miguel accidentally ruins Kyler's group's plan to buy alcohol at the convenience store. As a result, they begin to make his life miserable and assault him.
- Establishing Character Moment: Johnny, clearly hung over, takes a drink from a warm, stale Coors stubby, spits it out... and then keeps drinking.
- Exact Words: Played for Laughs. Johnny follows Judy's instructions of putting up her TV to the "wall across from the door". However, Judy was not clear with telling Johnny which wall to hang the TV up on, causing Johnny to hang the TV up on the wrong wall.
- Funny Background Event: While Johnny is curbstomping Kyler's gang, Lynn (the homeless woman) can be seen eating the slice of pizza that Johnny dropped.
- Humiliation Conga: Johnny's life at the beginning of the episode. He gets fired from his tedious handyman job thanks to Poor Communication Kills and his status as a Politically Incorrect Hero, has his car t-boned by Sam's friend Yasmine, gets hassled by a homeless woman who mistakes him for a rival homeless beggar, gets arrested for defending Miguel (and his car) from Kyler and his goons, has his stepfather drop by to insult and effectively disown him, and worst of all, has to suffer the humiliation of Daniel LaRusso, whose commercials keep reminding him of how successful the latter has become, pitying him by discounting the repairs on his car.
- Insistent Terminology:
- It's a dojo, not a karate school.
- Johnny's gonna be Miguel's sensei, not karate teacher.
- Jerkass Has a Point: Johnny calls Daniel out on the crane kick — the first in-universe acknowledgement that the kick was illegal. Daniel points out that Johnny was the first to make an illegal move, to which Johnny retorts while he got a warning, Daniel got the win.
- Mistaken for Subculture: Lynn mistakes Johnny for a rival homeless hustler, much to the latter's aggravation. A few minutes later, Kyler also labels Johnny as a bum.
- Noodle Incident: Due to something involving a waitress, Johnny is banned from Applebee's.
- Not Helping Your Case: Johnny gets fired from his handyman job after supposedly calling a woman a bitch. He tries to correct his boss explaining he just said "Stop your bitching"...only to immediately say "You're firing me because of that bitch?"
- Not Now, Kiddo: The cops are so focused on stopping Johnny from choking Kyler and arresting him that they ignore Miguel trying to explain the situation to them.
- Out of Job, into the Plot: Johnny getting fired from his dead-end handyman job sets off a chain of events that leads to him reopening Cobra Kai.
- Paper-Thin Disguise: Johnny slinks into Daniel's dealership hoping not to be spotted, and accentuates his disguise by... pulling up his hood.
- Parental Sexuality Squick: Johnny grimaces when he hears Sid call his mom "tight" in a lustful tone.
- Perspective Flip: The episode begins showing the final fight from the original film, but edited to focus on Johnny this time, entering slow-motion and zooming in when Johnny's face gets smashed by the Crane Kick, to emphasize just how badly that one kick hit Johnny.
- Pet the Dog: Though he's angrier at the fact they almost damaged his car, Johnny tells Kyler's posse to lay off Miguel rather than take it somewhere else.
- Poor Communication Kills: Johnny gets into an argument with a client straight out of Not Always Right when doing a home improvement job. Thanks to the poor communication on both sides, Johnny ends up insulting the client and he gets fired.
- Product Placement: How many people in Encino drive Audis, anyway?
- Shoot the Television: After seeing Daniel's advertisements one time too many, Johnny breaks his television.
- Still Got It: Johnny has been out of practice for decades since the 1984 All-Valley Tournament, but he's still able to hold his own in a fight, as shown when Kyler and his gang attack him.
- Terrified of Germs: Played with. Johnny asks the convenience store clerk to put on gloves, but it's completely justified considering the man is holding Johnny's pizza in his unwashed — and bandaged — hands. Later, in Johnny's apartment, Sid remarks that the red sticker means food is spoiled, but Johnny blows him off.
- This Is Gonna Suck: A silent example. Johnny almost succeeds in getting in and out of the dealership without encountering Daniel himself, and is mere feet from the front door when he hears Daniel calling out to him. Johnny does indeed turn around... but he very noticeably winces first.
- Ungrateful Bastard: After the fight, Sid bails Johnny out of jail, but the Cobra Kai master is anything but thrilled to see him.Johnny: What the hell are you doing in my apartment, Sid?
Sid: Oh, that's some "thank you". - Watch the Paint Job: Kyler's gang throwing Miguel against Johnny's car is what prompts him to intervene.
- Wham Line: When Johnny tells Miguel "No. I'm going to be your sensei." at the end of the episode.
- You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Johnny says this word for word when he finds out that one of the girls who wrecked his car by accident is Daniel's daughter.
- You Have No Idea Who You're Dealing With: In his confrontation with Kyler's gang, Johnny straight up tells them "Trust me, you guys are pissing off the wrong guy on the wrong day." And they are.
