LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - In the annals of parent nightmares, this one is near the top: teens who won't behave and, worse, become threats (bodily as well as psychologically) to everyone around them.
What's a parent to do when all else fails? Send the kid to a brat camp, a place far out in the wilderness (so no one will know or see) and get him or her straightened out, at any cost. In this primetime telecast, "Brat Camp," kids get sent packing, as it were, to that very same wilderness and the viewer gets to watch the kids' psychological turnaround -- every painful, seemingly sadistic moment of it (although sometimes caring as well).
As television fodder, this is old stuff: Maury Povich and Montel Williams, for starters, have been doing it for years, albeit in more sensationalistic form. It has great audience appeal, the kind that reality television folk love: the plain old, gladiatorial thrill of watching someone get punished, the rush of that voyeuristic gaze into someone else's distorted life.
The group of kids in this telecast, whose problems range from drug and sex addiction to plain old (but severe) oppositional behavior, get their due. And we're there to see every thrilling moment of it. More signs of the times.
