I watched the first two episodes with very low expectations and I have to say it lived up (or down) to them. For some reason it felt extremely cheap, the premise feels very hokey, it appears to be telegraphing a “twist”, the humour feels forced and it looks to be descending into a lot of teen angst drama. On the plus side Johnny / William Zabka does a decent job with what he’s given as does Ralph Maccio, though he seems to have lost his New Jersey accent.
Without expending too much mental energy I’m sure there are much more interesting directions they could have taken this. Incidentally if anyone wants to experience some retro martial arts goodness staring none other than Johnny/William Zabka, Martin Kove aka John Kreese and Bolo Yeung (from Enter the Dragon and BloodSport) check out Shootfighter: Fight to the Death. It’s very violent but has some extremely hammy old school martial arts action. It’s also hilarious because Bolo clearly has zero english, and rather than dub him, his entire performance is conducted in grunts and nods iirc. The whole film is on youtube.
