Netflix has been trying to get me to watch this for ages. I finally broke down and plowed through it in the last few days.

It starts out okay. I was particularly amused by Daniel-san's raging case of Protagonist Syndrome constantly making everything worse. But by the end of S3, my suspension of disbelief was suffering because the action had escalated from "don't worry, we did this kind of thing all the time in the '80s!" teen movie bullying to "call the cops like, yesterday, no, seriously, why is nobody calling the cops?" openly committing multiple major felonies without consequence.

And there's just enough pretense at law enforcement that I can't even pretend that this is some kind of AU where the LAPD doesn't exist and no one has guns, so everyone has to rely on their personal martial arts skills for protection against roving gangs of karate sociopaths.

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I mean, seriously, S3 had Hawk deliberately maiming someone — and not just "broke his arm in a fight, too bad so sad", but pinning a defeated opponent and deliberately and maliciously fracturing his arm — and Tory — who's already on probation for, presumably, assault with a deadly weapon in the S2 finale — attempting to straight-up murder a romantic rival. And then Hawk's allowed back into the fold with all forgiven, and Tory's allowed to just walk away, because, hey, after-school special lesson learned I guess!

I'm at least hoping that the reason we didn't see Lives In His Mom's Basement Guy in S3 is because he's doing ten to twenty in serious grown-up prison for assaulting minors during a job interview in the S2 finale.


Also, every time Daniel-san says "Miyagi-Do" in his stupid Jersey accent, I want to punch him in the face. Actually I pretty much want to punch him in the face all the time.

Actually the list of major characters that I don't want to punch in the face all the time is basically Miguel and his mom and abuela, sometimes Sam, surprisingly Johnny, Aisha, Mrs. Daniel-san, and, um... the chick who dumped Hawk, I guess. I'm not sure if she counts as a major character.

Maybe they'd have less karate violence if they got some less punchable characters.