I thought season 1 was brilliant and then as the focus started to go away from Johnny and Daniel and instead focus on the high-school kids the series kind of lost me. Some of those kids and especially the dude with the hair lip and mohawk are just terrible actors.
It was fun for about 1.5 seasons then mostly it lost me.
Very good commentary and you are very right, the first season focused more on the actors of the previous movies, but to give it continuity they had to concentrate on the senseless fights in the school for immature things.
Although I don't remember in which season is that Daniel travels to China and follows a few chapters with that theme that started in the previous movies, also with Rod and Jonny's story with the initial gang of cobra kai.
I really liked those continuations of stories.