Kid Nation: The Root Of All Evil

This week's Kid Nation was all about the buffalo nickel. Earning, spending, discovering, and even reaching into fake vomit -- money was the focus.

A couple of the kids explored their entrepreneurial sides. Divad, who we've only glimpsed in previous episodes, decided to try her hand at selling fried potato treats along Main Street. Good idea but still fairly tacky taking food from the kitchen that the kids could eat for free. One of my favorite kids of the show, Jared, decided that it wasn't fair for her to be making money like that so he dumped her tables over. Yeah, it was over-the-top but I laughed.

Jared eventually came up with his own money-making scheme and it was brilliant. They showed him burning wood with a magnifying glass in front of one of the bunkhouses and the first thing that popped into my mind was that he was trying to burn the place down. Really, though, he was burning names and symbols into little pieces of wood he'd gathered and was making necklaces with them. The other kids loved them and soon Jared was the Bill Gates of Bonanza City. He earned so much money that he was able to pimp himself out with some new duds. It was priceless when he was strutting down Main Street and then went over to gloat to Divad. That's my boy.

Meanwhile, thanks to "the book" and an entry in it from April 20, 1885, the town council went on a little treasure hunt. With map and lanterns in hand, they entered a mine in search of a treasure chest. I don't know about you but I'm not sure I could have handled the bats that were hanging out down there. Eventually they found the chest and opened that baby up. 370 shiny buffalo nickels greeted their little bright eyes and ideas of how to spend the fortune spewed from their mouths. They quickly settled on buying goods in the store that all of the kids in town could enjoy: baseball bats, musical instruments, jump ropes, and even a kite. I think that was definitely the best decision they could have made and luckily all of the kids in town had a great time playing with all of it.

We met a couple of new kids this week that we'd never seen before -- Pharaoh and Nathan. Pharaoh seems like a cool kid but his telling Zach that he needed the gold star because of his family's situation rubbed me the wrong way a little bit. Nathan is a kid I wish we'd seen more of prior to this episode. On his bio he said one of the things he'd get rid of in his neighborhood are the bullies. That's sad especially because it appeared Greg has spent some of his time picking on Nathan even though the little guy has been working his butt off in town. But then we know how Greg is don't we?

Divad got more airtime this week than ever. I remember only a couple of snippets with her before this episode and I'm thinking I'll be fine with only seeing snippets of her in future episodes. She irks me for some reason and the way she acted after not getting the gold star didn't make it any better. She'll just have to show people how hard she works? Doing what? Frying up taters and making campaign posters? She needs a clue.

The showdown was pretty interesting and it was nice to see the blue team work together so well catching their golden eggs. I couldn't believe how many they got -- 38! Crikey! The red and green districts performed horribly though. How could they have only caught five and six eggs in all of 15 minutes? Thanks to the efforts of the blue team, the entire town got their reward though. Their choices were: a laundromat with modern coin-operated washers and dryers (20 cents per load) or new outfits for each of them and four pioneer-era washing machines that were free to operate. How smart of them to choose the second option; not to mention some of them kids really needed some different clothes to wear! I think most of them were wearing the same thing day after day.

At the town hall meeting, when the grownup asked if any of the kids wanted to go home none of them to chose to leave Bonanza City. Too bad Taylor didn't raise her hand. Speaking of her, did you notice she only had two (I think that was all) tiny speaking scenes? It sure was nice to have a break from her because I was really tired of all of the episodes revolving around the little princess so much. But anyway, the council decided to give the gold star to Nathan (kudos to Greg for nominating him) because he'd been a hard worker since the first day and wasn't doing it just for the money (they're talking about you Divad and Pharaoh). Even better than Nathan's speechless reaction to getting the gold star was the look on Divad's and Pharaoh's faces at the news. Serves them right!

I don't know if I liked the look of next week's episode. Bored kids and a talent show with a possible gold star on the line? Something just doesn't sound right about that.

Did you have any favorite scenes from this week's episode?