Molting
Directed by Steve Pink
Robby: Um... nothing.
Daniel: Exactly. No phone calls, no internet, no family arguments, just you and Mother Nature.
In an automobile junkyard, Johnny rallies his students with a speech before putting them through a Training from Hell montage set to "We're Not Gonna Take It" by Twisted Sister, culminating with Johnny unleashing a pack of hungry German Shepherds upon the kids.
At the LaRusso house, the family greets Daniel's mother Lucille who has come to visit. Over a family barbecue, Daniel fumes about the committee's decision to reinstate Cobra Kai. His mother denounces them as a bunch of bullies, but knowing Miguel as she does, Sam is not convinced. Nevertheless, Daniel advises her to stay away from them, while his cousin Louie suggests getting even by taking back Johnny's car. Eventually, a huge quarrel erupts between Amanda and Lucille over Louie's unprofessional behavior and his use of Daniel's name to make his own deal involving luxury motorcycles.
At Cobra Kai, Miguel trains with Johnny alone, as Johnny believes he is the only student with a chance of winning the tournament. Miguel then receives a selfie of Sam on his phone, and Johnny immediately recognizes her as Daniel's daughter. He proceeds to tell Miguel his version of the events of 1984, painting Daniel as the cocky new kid who stole Ali from him and himself as the innocent party just trying to get him to back off. He advises Miguel to watch out for the LaRussos.
After returning home for the night, Johnny is invited to have dinner with Miguel's family. Miguel is excused from the table to take a call from Sam, who is taking a break from her own family. Eager to keep their relationship going, she suggests that he join another dojo in the valley, but Miguel declines out of loyalty to Johnny. Miguel's mother reveals to Johnny that she left Ecuador while pregnant with Miguel due to a husband she describes as "a very bad man", unwilling to let the mistakes of the past determine her future. Inspired, Johnny returns home and begins to clean up his apartment and his life.
Robby arrives at the LaRusso house for a training session and meets Sam for the first time. Daniel invites her to come and train with them, but she has already agreed to go to the mall with her mother and grandmother. Daniel drives Robby out to a wooded area where they engage in another training montage. When Daniel shares a lesson about balance in life, Robby nearly tells him the truth about who his father is, but ultimately decides against it. His training is capped off with a balancing exercise in which he tries to execute kicking techniques atop a horizontal tree trunk without falling. Upon succeeding, he finds Daniel perched upside down on one arm trying to perform the most powerful kick in Miyagi-Do karate, a double-footed kick that he has never done before.
At the movies, Miguel vents to his friends about not being able to see Sam due to Daniel's hatred of Cobra Kai. As Hawk throws Milk Duds at the girls sitting in front of them, he tells Miguel to just go over to her house and talk to her, which he describes as an "alpha move." Meanwhile, Johnny visits his stepfather Sid and gives back all the money the old man ever gave him, telling Sid he no longer needs him in his life.
Daniel returns home to find that all is well between his wife and mother, thanks to Sam's mediation. As the family sits down to dinner, Miguel arrives unannounced to see Sam happily conversing with Robby. Confused and angry, he walks away.
As Johnny composes a letter of atonement to Robby for his past mistakes, he is startled by the sound of shattering glass and goes outside to witness Louie and two biker thugs vandalizing his car before soaking it in gasoline, allegedly in Daniel's name. Johnny makes short work of the bikers and subdues Louie, but one of the thugs manages to set his car ablaze. Enraged, Johnny demands Daniel's address from Louie before riding away on one of the bikers' motorcycles.
Tropes:
- Calling the Old Man Out: Johnny visits Sid to return money to him now that Cobra Kai is thriving to the point of financial stability. Sid claims that his stepson will be back for more, but in response, Johnny retorts that he no longer needs his stepfather in his life."I never needed your money. It's just the only thing you had to give. Goodbye, Sid."
- Did Not Think This Through: Louie really should've thought twice about torching a car belonging to a guy he knows a) is a karate master of an aggressive style, b) has a very short fuse, and c) already loathes his family with a passion. Daniel isn't giving Louie a pass on this one.
- Foreshadowing:
- At the family meal, it turns out Louie has a bad habit of advertising new business ventures with random people using the LaRusso name to gain traction, which Daniel does not like. At the end, Louie brings some biker thugs with him to vandalize Johnny's car in retaliation for the billboard tag, and does so implying Daniel was the one who told them to do it. This sets Johnny off to confront Daniel directly, which happens in the next episode.
- Twisted Sister's "We're Not Going To Take It" is prominently featured in this episode. The band's front man, Dee Snider, appears As Himself in Season 3.
- Generation Xerox: As though Hawk's new aggressive nature didn't make him enough of a next-generation Dutch, he throws Milk Duds at girls in the theater, unwittingly aping Johnny's recollection of Dutch's own teenage antics.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Miguel starts to show signs of this when he sees the LaRussos enjoying a dinner with Robby.
- Jerkass Has a Point: While Johnny omits a number of important details about his teenage feud with Daniel (tripping Daniel at soccer practice, running him off a hill, almost killing him with the Halloween beating), he's not entirely wrong that Daniel hotheadedly did more than his share of escalation, too (butting into Johnny's argument with Ali, sucker-punching Johnny after he had asked "Had enough, hero?", turning a hose on Johnny when he was minding his own business smoking weed, etc).
- Made Out to Be a Jerkass: When Johnny recounts his side of the story about his first encounter with Daniel, he insinuates that Daniel was the asshole for sticking his nose where it doesn't belong when he interrupted Johnny and Ali's conversation.
- Meaningful Name: "Molting" is what a snake does when it sheds its skin; in this episode, Miguel starts the transition from bullied to bully when he sees Robby eating dinner at the LaRussos', and we see the Green-Eyed Monster start to appear in him.
- Obnoxious In-Laws: Daniel's mother, Lucille, proves to be one to Amanda.
- Perspective Flip: Johnny tells Miguel about the events of the first Karate Kid film, showing that from his perspective Daniel was the cocky new kid moving in on the girl he loved and Johnny was just trying to get him to back off. Unreliable Narrator is still in effect, as he leaves out things like pushing Daniel into the sand to talk with Ali before Daniel responds with a sucker punch, or how he was smoking weed in the bathroom before Daniel pulls a water hose prank.
- Self-Serving Memory: Johnny in his memory leaves out several details, like the fact that Ali had broken up with him before Daniel even moved in, or that some of his antics toward Daniel could have killed the younger boy. Considering how many critical details Johnny left out when detailing the events of his fateful interactions with Daniel, there is reason to doubt his version of events with Ali, from how they met to the break up.
- Start of Darkness: It's in this episode where we see Miguel's dark side begin to emerge thanks to his jealousy over Robby eating with the LaRusso family, specifically with Sam.
- Training from Hell: Exaggerated by Johnny to get his students ready for the All Valley Tournament.
