After being divided up into four teams, the kids competed in a challenge puzzle each week. The challenge was both physical and mental, as is typical in this style of reality show, and themed to their surroundings. Examples of challenges included routing a water hose through a series of obstacles, or, you know, herding sheep. The purpose of these challenges was to determine their place in society for that week, as well as their paycheck, in the class-based system established by the producers.

The first place team was the upper class, who could work as little or as much as they choose and get paid $1 an hour. Second place was the merchants, who ran the town store and got paid 50 cents. Next were the cooks, who provided meals for the town and were paid 25 cents. In last place were the laborers, who got paid 10 cents to clean the latrines and fetch water. Luckily, the kids didn’t have to pay for meals, but they could use their hard-earned “buffalo nickels” to buy luxury goods like candy and books in the town store.

While classes were rigid for the week, and challenges the only opportunity to advance up the societal ladder, some kids took to bartering or offering services for extra cash. In the first episode, available on YouTube, contestant Sophia dances in the town center in a bid to earn enough money for a bike, which she can’t afford as a laborer. What a lively town!

By episode two, the kids were getting tired of the canned food they had been living off of. At this moment the producers revealed that if they wanted meat, they were going to have to get it themselves. They would have to kill a chicken, as seen in these clips via YouTube.

Excited by the prospect of fresh meat but equally disturbed by the idea of ending a chicken’s life to get it, the council put the matter to a public vote. “We are thinking about killing a chicken,” one council member hesitantly announced at the meeting later that day. After much heated debate and some questions about how vegetarians can manage (answer — “they have, like, tofu and stuff”), they decide to kill the chicken.

Emilie, an animal lover who claims to break wild mustangs on her parents farm, is distraught. Not knowing what else to do, she runs to the chicken coop with two other kids, and they barricade themselves inside in protest. Although they are pretty riled up (one of the protestors wonders aloud, “are they, like, gonna hang them like they did Saddam Hussein?”), their fellow Bonanza City residents eventually calm them down enough to have a conversation about the greater good, and they commence the slaughter.

In case you were worried, the producers thought ahead and cast a 15-year-old butcher to show everyone how it’s done. Emilie even comes to watch! Perhaps this was not the best idea, as she ends up barricading herself in the chicken coop again later in the episode. 

The choice to film in New Mexico was apparently not due to the scenic desert backdrop or Old West charm of Bonanza City. Instead, the allure of New Mexico was the state’s lack of legislation surrounding child labor on TV or film sets. This allowed Kid Nation creators to get creative with their legal language, avoid paying the children for their participation, and keep the cameras on them 24/7. In fact, creator Tom Forman claimed that the kids, “were not working; they were participating,” and that they set their own hours. According to communications professor Mark Andrejevic, such claims were “absurd,” and “in any other industry, this would be called exploitation.”

Since kids are legally required to be in school in most states until they are 18, most sets that involve children for prolonged periods of time have tutors present, allowing the kids to both work in entertainment and obey their state’s education laws. This was not the case with Kid Nation, reports The New York Times, which had no tutor on set, even despite the fact that kids were out of school for six weeks as filming began in April 2007.

After hearing of the production’s potential violations, the state of New Mexico sent a labor department inspector to the set. He claims he was turned away before he could see anything happening in Bonanza City, according to the The New York Times. This would be illegal if true.

It is perhaps unsurprising that this strange flurry of legal loopholes resulted in attempts to hold the production legally accountable. First, an anonymous letter was sent to several New Mexico state officials that described how a child had been taken to the hospital after consuming bleach while unsupervised, reports The New York Times. Later details revealed that several children had been involved, and the culprit was an unmarked soda bottle filled with bleach that had been left on set.

Another letter also addressed the time that 11-year-old Divad had been burned by cooking grease. Although the producers insist a chef was always in the kitchen with the children, Divad’s parents asserted there was not one in this particular instance.

The complaints prompted a full-scale investigation by the New Mexico attorney general. The Santa Fe County sheriff claimed to find no evidence of criminal activity, though he did forward Divad’s parents’ letter to the civil court. Additionally, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists launched a child abuse investigation. Though nothing came of the various abuse and neglect claims, New Mexico did change their state laws in the wake of the controversy to more explicitly limit the number of hours that children were allowed to work on a television set. This effectively prevented filming of further Kid Nation seasons, at least without future legal cooperation on the part of CBS.

Despite all the show’s flaws, some kids and their parents seem to genuinely buy into the experiment by the end. For instance, all four of the children profiled in the Los Angeles Times series about the show’s controversies said they would gladly do the experience over again, even though it was difficult. In fact, all four agreed that the hardest part about the experience was “was leaving Bonanza City and one another.” 

Additionally, contestant Laurel and her mom seem to have adopted the summer camp narrative that was so pushed by the show’s creators. In one of the interviews featured in the Los Angeles Times, her mother said, “I don’t think that she or I feel that she worked any of the time she was there… she feels like it was summer camp.” Even Taylor, the beauty queen who refused to do dishes, said the experience taught her something important. “I learned I have to work for what I want.”

While most kids enjoyed their experience, critics of the show have noted the fact that they may have been exploited. Still, it seems like many of the kids fielded some benefits from Bonanza City, mostly in learning the value of hard work and forming a genuine community with their peers.