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8:00: Season Finale! This is it, you guys. After all the heartache, cholera, and broken Conestoga wagon axles, we've gotten to the end of our journey. Well, we've gotten to the beginning of the end of our journey. The first three minutes are just a recap of everything that's happened so far (except for the bleach drinking. Where are you Divad (11-GA)?)
8:03: "We've All Decided to Go Mad!" Mike (11-WA) can't sleep because he's reflecting on his time in Bonanza City and all the good memories they've created and OH WHOOPS, THE JOB BOARD IS ON FIRE. What luck that Mike just happened to do something no one has done all season, walk around alone in the dark at odd hours with a lantern while being filmed by cameras on cranes in order to capture this shocking, totally natural, unplanned event as it unfolded. Fart.
8:04: Mike wakes everyone up about the job board fire thing, and all the kids scramble at dawn to get buckets of water to put it out. Luckily, right before the job board caught on fire, a ladder just happened to have been carefully placed as a demarcation of a safe distance from the fire so that the kids would know how close they could get without risking a personal liability that could be translated into a successful lawsuit. Good job, lucky ladder. This whole dramatic event is so surprising and unexpected!
8:10: Jonathan "Career Finale" Karsh tells the kids that the burning of the job board wasn't a mistake. Wha! He proceeds to throw the Pioneere Journale into the embers (as one overworked prop master's PA's heart breaks into little wooden pieces.) The kids can choose to work, or not, and the economy of buffalo nickels has been abolished. Anarchy in the KN! God save the beauty queen!
8:10: The responsible kids (see: Michael (15-WA), Zach (10-FL), and DK (14-IL)) complain about the new lack of structure, carefully reminding us that the whole point of this show is to prove to adults that kids can build a better world. Oh man. Did no one tell these kids that this was just a TV show? Kids, I'm sorry, there is no task force watching this in anticipation of handing the keys to society over. "Ah, they can do it. It's their turn now." Open your unformed eyes.
8:11: Without a Pioneer Journal to instruct them, the next obvious step is...a screaming raid on the candy store. It's like that scene in Willy Wonka where the candyman sings a happy song and pours limitless scoops of unwrapped candy into everyone's sticky hands (Note to entrepreneurs: this is the easiest way to lose your candy store.) Except there's no singing, just guttural animal shrieking, and the candyman has been trampled to death by Heelys.
8:14: Dawn of day 39, and the streets are literally bloody with candy and broken pogo sticks. It's like Detroit on the morning of July 28, 1967, except, you know, without all the virulent racism, white flight, National Guard, and dead black people.
8:15: SHOWDOWN. Oh wait, no showdown. Since we can't subjugate people with a color-coded caste system, we won't be sliding through Jell-O into the mouth of a wooden cowboy to learn about manifest destiny. But there is a reward. The last gold star, and the Council has to award the star right now. But first: tears/ads.
8:22: Zach wins the gold star. Sure. Although I think they should have given it to Brett (11-MN) as a reward for "Who?" Seriously, judging by the Kid Nation website, his highlight reel consists of being in the background while someone else wins a reward. Good job, Brett. This just goes to show, it takes more than a Mohawk to get noticed in a ghost town .
8:24: Since tonight is their last night in Bonanza, Taylor (10-GA) and the rest of the Brain Trust come up with the only obvious way to really say goodbye: by bringing all of their favorite chickens into their room for the night. Which finally explains where they came up with the nickname for their clique. We'll miss you, "H5N1 Girls."
8:25: When Emilie (9-NV) asks if she can spend the night in their bunk-cum-chicken coop, Taylor tells her she can sleep with the chickens, and then Kelsey (11-PA) takes her outside for a stirring speech about how they're all BFFs who love Emilie, but surely Emilie can understand that this is something special and there's simply no room in the bunk for three best friends, a bunch of chickens, and a chubby girl with glasses and a desperate need to fit in. Friendship, you guys, so precious. This turns into an all-out fight with pushing (pushing!), that is only resolved when Migle's (13-IL) breasts arrive in a tank top. Hello!
8:33: Dawn. IT'S THE LAST DAY IN BONANZA CITY. Jonathan Karsh reveals three larger, 50,000 dollar gold stars. In order to "earn" the gold stars, the kids have one hour to cook, clean, and decorate for the First Annual Bonanza City Bonanza, a celebration of all they have accomplished. First Annual? F**********ck.
8:35: There are three tasks to complete in what's basically a SHOWDOWN they just aren't calling it that: making their own intensely disgusting pasta and pasta sauce, building picnic tables, and filling a hole in the desert with their garbage. Supposedly, this is a test of all the decisions they have made. For example, the pasta sauce needs to be "piping hot," and luckily they have the Frontier Microwave. But without the how-to books from the library they declined in favor of letters from their parents, how will they ever build the picnic benches? And the garbage...smells bad. Also, how come the garbage is mostly chairs? What is happening to all the chairs? I think they should quit with all the "build a better world" talk until they can "build a world in which we don't break all the chairs."
8:38: They make the pasta and trash and whatever. It's time to party. In order to really make this a party, they're going to need a little help. You guessed it, everyone gets a tab of ecstasy and a Red Bull. Just kidding, this is a party! What do you need to make a party awesome? Parents! The kids go crazy, and it's actually a really emotional scene, albeit surprisingly devoid of apologies or social workers from the Department of Child Services.
8:41: The looks on parents' faces as they are shown the squalor of the bunks and the bloody hatchet used to kill chickens are worth gold stars. In the saloon, Jared teaches his dad how to do a Bonanza Bomb. Ah yes, the stirring moment in every parent's life when they discover that their precocious child has finally navigated the difficult social waters of the frat party.
8:45: Family Town Hall Meeting. When Jonathan Karsh announces that there are three gold stars worth 50,000 dollars each, everyone cheers, because that is what it is about, people. Putting your kids through severe nutritional, hygienic, and emotional deprivation for a potentially-traumatizing 40 days, and then renovating the guest bathroom. We were thinking a Jacuzzi for the tub, but our stupid kid only won a regular gold star, so we've had to scale back our plans.
8:48: The first gold star goes to Sophia (14-FL), bringing her grand total for this season to 70,000 dollars. And it shows. Her face looks way fatter all of a sudden. She looks like she just won 70,000 dollars worth of donuts.
8:49: The second gold star goes to Morgan (12-IN). This is great news. Maybe she will be able to afford a clean coat. Morgan's dad (42-IL) thanks the Town Council and Greg (15-NV) thanks him for the privilege of knowing his daughter (gross ). This is where we get the inevitable "I can't believe you're only 15, you seem so mature" moment from Morgan's dad who claims to have a better conversation with Greg than he does with most adults. Haha. Aw. No. Clearly, this was taped before any of the calling-everyone-a-bitch-and-threatening-a-bitch-hunt episodes aired.
8:50: The final gold star goes to...Migle? WHAT? Wait, seriously, did I miss the whole season of this show? I don't know who Migle fucked to get that gold star, but this is unacceptable. I want a recount. No more activist Town Council members. Migle. What. Ridiculous. It was all for nothing, people. It was all for nothing. Kid Nation? More like Kid Bullshit!
8:55: Taylor: "Kids can do things on their own if they try," and/or are forced by producers without the reasonable intervention of a responsible adult figure.
Laurel, "We have brains, we have opinions, we have real minds." I think I missed the episode that dealt with brains and opinions, unless it's thinking about candy and knowing which video game you like best. But if that's what she's talking about, then yes, they do.
Zach: "I think we really made this place a Kid Nation." If that is the case, then I urge you all to write to your congressman and urge them to bomb Kid Nation. We should fight them over there, so we don't have to fight them over here. We will smoke them out of their arcades. Mission Accomplished.
The end.