Even though the pre-release controversy surrounding Kid Nation, CBS's attempt to bring Lord of the Flies-style improvisational community-building to primetime television, seemed to indicate each episode would bring viewers harrowing footage of exhausted 10-year-olds mistakenly chugging bleach or sacrificing their weakest, most homesick citizens to a pack of ravenous coyotes for the good of an evolving society, the physical jeopardy in which the Nationeers were placed in last night's premiere exceeded anything we were prepared for.

We refer, of course, to Bonanza City's 40:1 child-to-outhouse ratio, an utterly abusive dearth of civilized waste-elimination options that could stunt the healthy gastrointestinal development of the town's prepubescent populace. To their credit, however, the show's producers cleverly devised a way to remedy that imbalance, knowing that even the most willfully constipated, ADD-addled of contestants wouldn't be able to convince his peers choose a single idiot box over seven new shitters so that he could stay current on Hannah Montana.