In this reality series, a number of teenagers are followed during an unusual formative episode in their mischievous lives. The term brat suggests that their parents, who are also portrayed, are at least in part to blame for failing to provide a firm, guiding hand, as so many in the contemporary West, but theirs resort to an extraordinary remedy: the kids are signed over to the authority 'in loco parentis' of a professional (but self-made, not formally qualified) team which runs SageWalk, a cross between an old-fashioned summer-camp and a reformatory, in the Oregon forests.