I love the stuff with Johnny Lawrence, Daniel Larusso and John Kreese. Miguel, Samantha, Tory and Robbie are ok as the main "karate" students.
The red rooster geek to bully arc is alright and makes sense, but the rest of the geeky kids forming rival gangs is completely ridiculous. Even in a show where we are supposed to think Daniel-san can fight after 3 movies of him flailing his bony arms around, its not believable at all.
You're not wrong.
Maybe the kids are there to attract todays kids to the show.
Honestly, you can pretty much say that about any show with kids. Kids in movies and tv suck and almost always detract from the story.
Watching the show, and seeing how kids today actually are, the only accurate portrayal seems to be the chubby Larussa boy. That's the majority of kids today.
I love how S3 didn't focus on them as much. I hate those clowns.
shareI agree with the person below who said the kids are there to induce kids to watch the show. (I think the show is meant to be watched by GenXers with our kids. That is how my family watches it.) I can see how, for someone who doesn't have kids, the kids on the show could be frustrating.
But for me, as a parent, the show's genius is because of the combination of the adult viewpoints and the kids' viewpoints. Johnny and Daniel are seeing the kids' conflicts through three lenses: (1) their memories of having been through the same thing when they themselves were younger, (2) seeing, from their adult wisdom/experience, how damaging the kids' behavior is to the other kids and (3) recognising their own part as adults in creating and perpetuating the kids' rivalries by their own behavior or poor parenting.
So, to my view, the kids are essential to the story because they are the instigating factors and it's the kids' futures at stake, but the story (I think) is really written FOR adults. The center of the story is Johnny and his internal struggle. He has at lot at stake because he feels like he can really do some good in Miguel's life by being Miguel's sensei, as well as getting some own success that way (Miguel has the potential to be a big winner which would reflect well on Johnny). But on the other hand, every time he helps Miguel, it seems to be at the expense of his own son Robby, who is going down the same bad road as Johnny did (or worse) for the same reason: lack of a supportive father-figure. Johnny has a really interesting dilemma.
It's fun to have Daniel in the show but Daniel does not have stakes of the same magnitude so I don't think the tv show is really Daniel's story. Daniel has a good life and fairly stable kids. He can fight the karate thing for his ego, or not, doesn't really matter. He can help Robby, or not. If Robby goes to jail, Daniel will feel sad but it would be peripheral to the big picture of Daniel's life story.