"The Root of All Evil"
This is the toughest blog of the entire season for me. Why, you ask? Well, other episodes of
Kid Nation might not have been great, but at least they were entertaining. This was a train wreck. So I stamp the big black advisory sticker over this first paragraph and tell you that if you are reading this and going to get annoyed by some negativity, then you might just want to stop now and come back next week. However, if you also thought this week was a train wreck, by all means read to the end. The one thing I won't do is lie to you and put a rosy spin on this blog just for the heck of it. I am nothing if not honest, so my apologies to all who'll hate what's to come. Every show is allowed a train wreck now and again, right? Right?
So let's look at some of the reasons why this episode was bad.
The No. 1 reason has to be: Who the heck is Nathan? Yes, who is this kid? I don't ever recall seeing him before, and tonight he wins a gold star. And does he have any expression other than
indifferent? I know that's a lot of questions all at once, but I think I'm entitled because I didn't know he existed before this week. And you just have to love the conversation between Laurel and Nathan, which was totally scripted and ended up with Laurel saying that she wishes he wouldn't grow up so fast. She's known him for 20 days and she's what, two years older? That's a really funny statement for her to make, and Guylan said the same thing later. Weird.
Then there were the nominations for a gold star. Nominations? When did this happen? At no other point has there ever been nominations, unless they just haven't shown them. I wondered what the heck Greg was talking about when he mentioned he might nominate Pharaoh, and then we saw. And then, either due to creative editing or what really happened, the entire city voted for Pharaoh except Greg, and the town council gives the star to Nathan. Why bother with the nominations if you clearly don't care about what people say at all?
And how about this great $18.50 treasure?! Yeah, you know I'll bet the original town members left it there for these kids. You just knew the fake treasure hunt was coming at one point, didn't you?
One thing we've been talking about for weeks now is the creative editing, which this week just happened to have the kids saying their clothes aren't getting clean enough and then having the showdown reward be washing machines. What a coincidence! Oh, and the gold-star winner is the main person doing this wash, which isn't getting clean enough.
But, there were actually two things that I did enjoy. One was the 10 seconds at the end where the girls had a fake fashion show. The other was Jared saying, "Holy banana bread." My wife thinks Jared won't get any nookie until he's 35. I have to agree. And I'm leaving it at that.
Maybe next week I'll booze it up first so everything seems funny. Oh, c'mon, I know you're thinking about doing the same thing.
Until next week, friends.
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