MONDO EXTRAS

Sophia: I hope everyone noticed that the arcade was the downfall of our town.

MG: Yeah, that was pretty clear. I didn't see you spending much time in there.

Sophia. I hate videogames. I would have wanted to play chess.

Lori: It's like when Sophia didn't choose the mini golf over whatever it was, because she knew if the kids were golfing they wouldn't clean up in the kitchen. It was a choice between the religious books and the golf course, and you chose the books.

Sophia: [One time] we asked Jonathan if we could just take the box instead, because we hated both the rewards. You know, those big boxes that the rewards came in?

MG: Yeah, those were cool.

Sophia. We wanted one of those because the rewards were so crappy.

Lori and MG: [Laugh]

MG: Too bad he said no.

Sophia: I know! Some of us were saying for Season 2, one of the reward should be forty hot pizzas...or Jared. You see them pulling down the front and him coming out.

MG: "Hi, everyone!"

Sophia: I know, exactly!

Lori: One funny thing -- Sophia won't do this imitation, she does such a good imitation of Jared -- he said to somebody during the filming [Jared voice]: "Don't you just looove Sophia? She's so beautiful, and she's Jewish, too!"

MG: That sounds like Jared.

Lori: He's adorable. And he has nice parents too, and they all revel in their weirdness. They love it. They got such a kick out of watching him. They know they're all different. They really had fun with it.

MG: Well, that's good. I'm glad to hear it. Anything else you wanted to set the record straight on?

Sophia: It was just a great experience.

Lori: One thing that I hear more than any other comment is that it was the one show that parents and kids sat down every week to watch and discuss. I don't even know what's on TV anymore [Lori had said in a previous email that before Kid Nation, the family didn't have a TV], but it seems there's such a dearth of that kind of programming. To have a show that showed that it was okay and entertaining to have really smart kids and you don't have to be embarrassed. It was really nice to have a show that appealed to kids' intelligence rather than everything that's so dumb in our country.