The Kids Are Alright

By Olivia Leigh in Arts & Entertainment on Sep 19, 2007 7:24PM

Here’s the premise: Take 40 kids aged 8 to 15. Throw them into a ghost town in New Mexico sans parents, without iPods, minus Lunchables, and let them go at it. Build your own city! Form a government! Be bold and prosper, you say!

What’s that a recipe for? Some (OK, many) say child endangerment and labor violations; CBS says buzz. And if buzz translates into viewers, well, CBS, you’ve got it made with “Kid Nation.”

We remember when we first saw a teaser for the program a few months ago. Sandwiched in between spots for other dismally awful-seeming network shows, the saga of the child “pioneers” trapped in a ghost town for 40 days left us staring at the screen, mouths agape, for nearly the entire spot. Fluctuating from disgust to amazement to warm fuzzies, we have a mixed bag of emotions about “Kid Nation.” Kids yoked with buckets of water: Wince. Floppy-haired tween gives a passionate “Stop arguing! We’re doing this for all kids!” speech: You go, chico! Girl whines about doing work because she’s a princess: We feel you, girl. Kid cries about being stressed: Eek! Maybe we should turn off this unhealthy program. A group of the tykes group-hug a boy missing his wheelchair-bound sister: Oh man, oh man. Best show evar!

And in the end, the questionable nature of the show will have to be assessed on a week-by-week basis. Sure, there seems to be the potential for some damaged child egos (and we know what that can create — seriously messed up adults), and yeah, maybe they skirted labor laws, but in the end, it looks like the show also has the potential to make the kids on the show, and perhaps more importantly, kids (and adults?) in the audience realize exactly what they’re capable of. Here in Chicago, when CBS2 showed the first episode to a group of kids at Ogden High, students and, surprisingly, parents, loved the show, with both groups stating how many opportunities there were to learn about responsibility. And in today’s society of crazy-dependent, spoiled kids, if one kid can wrestle with a goat to teach a nation of little ones a lesson or two, well, we might just be in favor of that.

"Kid Nation" debuts tonight at 7 on CBS.