TV SHOW - Kid Nation

[Channing]

When I saw the trailer for this show I was a little intrigued. Of course I forgot to watch the premier - but I was wondering if anyone caught it. Are they trying to create a Lord of the Flies type situation? Is this going to be like kid survivor? I assume it cant be too unsupervised for liabiltiy reasons.

Can anyone who saw the first episode give a review?

[riverside6]

I only saw the last few minutes. The show is all about kids setting up and managing one another without supervision from adults. In other words, if kids ruled the world, how would it turn out?

At the end of every week, they have a host, an adult, that asks every kid if they want to go home. This past week an 8 year old boy decided he missed his family too much and chose to leave.

Also, the hardest worker in "kid nation" gets a gold star worth $20,000 for him and his parents to use when he leaves.

I'll probably check it out again next week. The best part about it is that its something clean that I can watch with my wife and kids, so that is nice.

[BlueDiablo]

I watched it and really liked it. I think my kids (who are the same ages as the kids on the show) are going to love it.

[DevilAlumna]

I caught the pilot; will probably watch it one more week, to see if it stays on the Tivo Seasons Pass.

A couple things that interested me -- 1) It took adult intervention to split up the kids into 4 groups; when they got to town on their own, they just kind of all stuck together. I'm sure cliques would have formed eventually, but seems to me that artificially creating divisions (and then involving unequal money distribution) is asking for trouble.

2) Man, I must be a communist b/c the first thing I thought of when they announced the "class" divisions (Upper Class - $1; Merchants - $0.50; Cooks - $0.25; Laborers - $0.10), was, why don't they pool all their money and divide it equally? :D

3) I have forgotten how big age differences are when you are young. The cute little 8-year-old was asking advice from 9 & 10-yo's as if they were SO much more senior; the 14-yo's were calling the 11-yo's "little kids."

[JasonEvans]

The key to the show is good guys and bad guys-- there are a pair of 15-year-old boys who are clearly the bad guys. They are already bullying other kids around and using chalk to graffiti their team "Blue" onto other team's signs. If these were my kids, they would be grounded for something like 6 months for looking like the biggest jerks on the planet in front of the whole world. When the lead 15-year-old guy sticks his finger in the chest of one of the 11-year-old leaders and says "who is gonna make me? You??" it made me sick.

The show is just so-so, in my mind, and feels more like a kid Survivor than anything else. They immediately turned it into a competition with the team division and the $20k prize. Predictibly, the jerk 15-year-old says he is going to go for the $20k prize next week. I predict that when he misses out on it, that he stops working at all. It would have been nice to see the kids actually try to get things working on their own instead of putting all these artificial inducments and games in place. Plus, if you are going to be like Survivor and have games, make it so that the winning team gets some advantage on the other competitors. As it is now, the winning team just gets a little more money.

Also, there was this bizarre incident where a girl who had only 10 cents earned started dancing in the streets to earn money. Eventually she got up to $3 earned (I have a hard time believing the kids decided on their own to give her their hard-earned money-- I bet adult producers asked them to do it) and she used the $3 to buy a crappy old bicycle. Very strange.

Worth noting, one of the main characters from the first episode is the son of a friend of mine. Jared, the very dweeby little kid on the red team, is the son of a guy I play softball with. Jared is Jewish and he comes off like a 70-year-old New York Jew on the show. It is kinda funny.

--Jason "my wife and I watched it and will give it another week, but I am not sold on it for the long haul" Evans

[Jfrosh]

My whole family sat down to watch it including my 4 kids ages 4 - 11 and we all really enjoyed it despite the fact that it has been universally panned by the critics. There are not a lot of shows out there right now that are enjoyable by kids and adults, "Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader" is the only prime time one that comes to mind. (Although I have been known to watch Hanna Montana with my girls). I for one will definitely be watching next week. As an added interest to my kids, it was a girl from my town who one the 20,000 gold star last week.

[IamMatt'sUserName]

I thought it was fascinating because, for the most part, the kids were very well-intentioned. That's a very rare trait in the adult world, and it was refreshing to see how honest the kids were - not yet jaded by the "real" world. Everything felt very genuine to me (although, I will admit the dancing for money incident made me very uncomfortable). Of course, that could change now that there's monetary compensation on the line each week. We'll see.

[Clipsfan]

I think that Jason put it best when he called it a kids Survivor, as they basically ripped off a lot from that show. I watched it, but I'm done with the show as it is as blatantly manipulative as these shows come. The premise of the show is to see how kids react when on their own, but rather than leaving them on their own they set up their society for them (the groups and jobs) and also manipulate/edit the results like crazy. Additionally, even these little kids are doing their camera confessionals like adults from all the other reality shows. I wouldn't be surprised if they're being fed the lines that the producers want them to say. Oh, and they're already typecast. Jared is going to be shown in that same light every episode, while that girl will always be the "beauty queen". Did anyone else notice that they continually show her age as 10, but that when she asked for the ages of everyone in her group she started off by saying she was 11? I wonder why they'd leave that in.

The show is ridiculous.

[JDSBlueDevl]

The only thing that can come to mind (and it came to mind back in May as well): they were going to dump Jericho in favor of THIS?!

I am so glad CBS came to its senses and is bringing back Jericho mid-season. Too bad they didn't have the senses to see this tripe as the disaster it's going to become (and pretty much already has; I'm waiting for the first kid to get cholera or typhoid fever. And if a kid did come down with it, why haven't we heard about it?).

[Olympic Fan]

I was amazed when I saw the promotions for this show. It reminded me of an episode of the old Jamie Kennedy hidden camera show.

The joke was that he collected about a dozen parents in a conference room and pretended to be a slick TV exec pitching almost exactly this show -- in his case, they were going to turn the kids loose on a deserted island and then film their behavior. His pitch was probably a little more callous than this show, explaining that the kids would hunt and kill their own food (although he admitted that the wild boars were a bit dangerous) and they would have first-aid kits in case of any injuries.

The point of the joke was that the idea was obviously demented, but all but one of the publicity-hungry parents jumped at the chance to have their kids participate. I'm sure the safety precautions for this one are better than for Kennedy's fictional show, but somewhere I'm sure he's laughing his a$%$ off.

[BlueDiablo]

The only thing that can come to mind (and it came to mind back in May as well): they were going to dump Jericho in favor of THIS?!

I am so glad CBS came to its senses and is bringing back Jericho mid-season. Too bad they didn't have the senses to see this tripe as the disaster it's going to become (and pretty much already has; I'm waiting for the first kid to get cholera or typhoid fever. And if a kid did come down with it, why haven't we heard about it?).

For the record, I liked "Kid Nation" more than I liked "Jericho." I thought the writing on that show was pretty horrific. Michael, the kid from New Hampshire, had a speach at town council that was better and more heart-felt than those truly awful speeches that the mayor on "Jericho" (that "Simon & Simon" guy, whats-his-name) used to give on "Jericho."

I don't begrudge the "Jericho" fans their success at getting the show back on the air though. More power to them.

Maybe we can all agree that "Cavemen" will suck dinosaur dung.

P.S. None of the kids got cholera or typhoid. A couple of kids did get a little ill when they accidentally drank some bleach. (Oops!) I suspect that the illusion that these kids are completely unsupervised is just that--an illusion. After all, there are like 50 camera crews running around filming all this stuff, right? It's not like these kids are actually living by themselves in the New Mexico desert.

[JasonEvans]

P.S. None of the kids got cholera or typhoid. A couple of kids did get a little ill when they accidentally drank some bleach. (Oops!) I suspect that the illusion that these kids are completely unsupervised is just that--an illusion. After all, there are like 50 camera crews running around filming all this stuff, right? It's not like these kids are actually living by themselves in the New Mexico desert.

They shoulda strapped helmet-cams onto all the kids and put a few remote-controlled cameras in the bunks, mess hall, and otehr key places and then set the kids free!!

I bet if they had done that you'd have seen 1/3rd of the kids drop out at that first "town council." Having a bunch of producers and cameramen wandering around town probably makes all the kids feel safe.

--Jason "Lord of the Flies-- that is what they should have been going for" Evans

[dukemomLA]

As said, I was more than ready to hate this show. I curled up with a good book -- and was ready to give Kid Nation about 20 minutes of my split-attention.

However, I have to say it caught my attention. Even though I didn't want to like this show, I was definitely caught up in many of the kids. I'll give it another week or two on TIVO -- and then will decide. BUT, as of now, higher than my expectations.

[BluDevilGal]

Worth noting, one of the main characters from the first episode is the son of a friend of mine. Jared, the very dweeby little kid on the red team, is the son of a guy I play softball with. Jared is Jewish and he comes off like a 70-year-old New York Jew on the show.

That kid is so funny!

I'll be tuning in next week mainly because some of the kids are so sweet and fun to watch.

I was rather disappointed in the amount of structure impose on the kids. Forcing them into teams and then making class distinctions? It's all so contrived to make drama.

They really should have given them more of a chance to get organized themselves. I wanted them to figure out for themselves that they needed to divide up chores and such.

I'll at least give it one more week, but I don't know past that.