Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Kid Nation

Anyone catch Kid Nation tonight on CBS? The show has gotten a lot of buzz, both good and bad. Basically, it's 40 kids put in an abandoned ghost town out in the desert for 40 days to fend for themselves. Lord of the Flies ring a bell? They have to build the town and make it work without adults telling them what to do. Some of the negatives have been that it's cruel to put kids this age in such a stressful and emotional situation. They didn't even screen it with critics, choosing instead to show it to schools all over the country today before tonight's airing. But after a first viewing, while there was a lot of crying, I thought it was cool to see kids taking charge of their own lives. And amazed by how serious and profound kids can be, more-so than your average adults (or maybe that was just the editing?). The kids are also allowed to leave if they want to. The producers have set up a framework with class structures and breaking up the towns into four sects--plus they appointed a team of 4 leaders. I'll have to see a couple more episodes to make an official call, but it's definitely an interesting show, even in the wake of controversy.

UPDATE: There will be an encore presentation of the premiere on Saturday, September 22, 8pm in case you missed it. You can in fact view it online in full as well. Also, Salon.com has a decent review of the show.

3 comments:

Renee Kurilla said...

I watched the last half hour! I felt really bad for Jimmy, he was so homesick :( but at least he got to go home. The kid with the HUGE chocolate bar was funny. The 14 year old girl was impressive too.
It was amazing to see 40 kids work together like that. Not to mention interesting for me to see how kids of all ages relate to each other. I'll probably be guilty of watching it again.

Marli said...

do you think it'll be available to download from somewhere? I don't have cable, but I'm dying to watch it!

Bob Flynn said...

CBS is pretty good about putting their shows online, so I would say give it a couple days. On their main website.