Kid Nation

[jannieC]

I thoroughly enjoyed Kid Nation; talked it up at work today like crazy. Apparently it sucked royally and I was unaware. Look at this review:

By Robert Bianco, USA TODAY
Leave it to CBS to create a better fuss than a show.

Last year, the network stoked a free-publicity controversy with Survivor's racial divide; this year, it's child labor and kiddie exploitation for Kid Nation. And once again, the show turned out to be far more tepid than its pre-show heat would have led you to believe. Whatever dangers the kids on Nation may have faced, the only risk posed to viewers by last night's premiere was death by boredom.

It was like watching some other family's incredibly dull home movies — assuming in your home movies, the kids make speeches and 15-year-old boys get to hit 11-year-olds without an adult intervening. But then, what would you expect? They're kids, exhibiting the kind of behaviors, good and bad, that kids do in real life.

That's not awful or particularly surprising — but it's also not even remotely entertaining.

The nation-building involves 40 kids, ages 8 to 15, sent to turn a ghost town into "a town that works." Last night, that meant learning how to cook, milk goats, use an outhouse and deal with the class divide.
FIND MORE STORIES IN: TV | CBS | New Mexico | Survivor | Kid | Kid Nation

For anyone who was expecting originality — well, you have to admit that was awfully childlike of you. There are a few new twists: No one gets booted off, the council can hand out $20,000 gold stars. But otherwise, it's bits and pieces of every reality show you've ever seen, from the trumped-up conflicts to the talk-to-the-camera complaints.

As for concerns over the children's welfare, odds are the dangers are, in the mysterious way of TV, both fake and real. Fake because there were always adults off-camera; real because they weren't close enough to prevent some unexpected injury.

For TV, the issue isn't so much what happened to the children in New Mexico; it's what's about to happen to them now. Nation took a group of children who have no clear idea what image they project in person, let alone on TV, and labeled them forever as "the brat," "the cry-baby," "the nerd" "the full-of-herself know-it-all" and "the bully," all for purposes of profit. And what's worse, anyone who has ever watched a reality show knows these children were cynically, crassly cast to play these roles.

It doesn't help Nation to claim that you can find equally horrific examples of kid behavior on shows like the Saturday morning Survivor rip-off Endurance— and not just because "Johnny does it, too" has never been much of a defense. The crime is exposure, and however bad it may be to act foolishly on Saturday morning TV, it is much worse to be humiliated on the top-rated network in prime time. Which is why we fuss more over CBS.

The network should take that as a compliment. And then begin acting like it deserves one.