Kid Nation

My wife and I watched the already highly controversial Kid Nation on CBS last night.

The first thing that you should know about Kid Nation is that there's a ton of crying on Kid Nation -- not as much crying though as is currently going on in Red Sox Nation.

The show starts off with 36 kids traveling out to an old ghost town in the middle of nowhere. After the kids get off the bus, the bus leaves and in comes in a helicopter with 4 kid leaders that were decided by the show's producers ahead of time. This immediately sets up an interesting dynamic where right off the bat, where the kids wonder why they didn't get a chance to pick their leaders. Somewhere Hugo Chavez is smiling.

After the kids travel a few miles or so to their new wild west home, they set off on finding places to sleep, cooking a dinner of mac and cheese for each other and getting to know one another. Kids cry. Kids bully each other. Some kids, who weren't selected as leaders by the show's producers, become leaders in their own right.

On the second day, the kids are involved in a Survivor-like capitalist challenge - are there no original ideas any longer? -- where they compete to see who becomes the upper class - with a high wage - all down to who is in the lower class. When the competition was completed and the kids were told they would have a Let's Make a Deal choice of having more outhouses or a television set, they surprised me by choosing the outhouses. It was many of the surprises that I saw in this show that confirmed for me that if adults were faced with the same decision they would pick the television set ... or Internet access if it was offered.

While it shares many of the same ideas as the been there and done that Survivor, I'm looking forward to watching to see how the show shapes up and if the kids are able to transform the old Wild West ghost town into a burgeoning township once again.