This series was one of the earliest to premiere this season, and it came in with enough baggage to weigh down most the young competitors seen on this misbegotten con job — not to mention comparisons to an odd Stanford Prison Experiment-like incident in Norman back in the ’50s. Blasted by some critics for exploiting kids and investigated for possible violations of New Mexico’s child labor laws, “Kid Nation” put a bunch of kids in a supposed ghost town and purported to allow them to build their own society without adult interference.
So I was intrigued, mainly because it had “Lord of the Flies” overtones and, if done correctly by someone like, say R.J. Cutler, there could have even been a hint of reality to this reality television. Instead, “Kid Nation” is a super-lame “Survivor” rip-off, all the way down to dividing the 8-to15-year-old contestants into teams and creating “challenges.” And this ghost town — who is anyone kidding? Frontier City looks more authentic.
“Kid Nation” could have gotten it right if it had taken some kind of cross-section of society and just taped what happened. Instead, they cast the show for entertainment (pageant queen, delinquent, born leader, eccentric goofball) and manipulate the situation for maximum drama.
October 19th, 2007 at 4:07 pm
I think it’s a cute show for kids and parents to watch together. It’s certainly more suitable than survivor is now. I think that some of the kids are making very wise decisions for their age if the show isn’t prodding them to do it. But, I have kind of grown fond of the show, eccentric kids and all. The only thing that bothers me is the character of some of the children. Taylor specifically. If I were her parents I would cringe every time I heard her say “Deal with it” or “I’m a beauty queen, I don’t have to do that”. But, it’s a great teaching tool to show my kids how not to act.