I am completely, totally mystified as to why Red voted Mike off the council. He was doing a great job! Replacing him with Guylan made no sense, but is, in a way, indicative of politics in general: that tendency people have of wanting change for change's sake. It may be that there were times where Mike wasn't effective as a leader, but we sure didn't see any of them on the show. Similarly, we have yet to see any real reason that Guylan was voted onto the council: he hasn't proven himself in any way other than talking D.K. into not leaving the town. For that, he deserves some credit. But he's been mediocre in everything else that I've seen.

Zach is doing a great job, and I was delighted that he stopped trying to talk Taylor into contributing and gave her a consequence: no pay for no work! Excellent, and very mature. That's the kind of thing a good parent would do: don't get mad, give 'em consequences. It's often scary how mature Zach is, actually.

Finally, I was impressed with the most recent episode, that the council was flexible enough to see that Nathan deserved the gold star even though he only got one vote.

i was surprised mike was voted off, too.
like harold, i thought he was doing a good job.

i felt bad for him, but, again, like harold said, maybe it was just change for change's sake.

and, yes...it really came as no surprise that taylor was voted off.

So, it's a little late, but I wanted to comment on my amazement that the town council changed AGAIN...this time completely. What the...?! When the episode aired, I had a late meeting and so missed the first half. I returned, only to find that Anjay was gone (huh?!), Guylan was gone (not all that surprising), Laurel was voted off (wha-wha-whaaat?), and even Zach had been replaced (You've gotta be kidding me!). It's really, really unbelievable.

Now, after a couple of episodes, I can say that the new leadership is not bad, though the best thing they did so far seems to be abandoning the town and leaving Sophia in charge...

Mike was a little too "intense" at first, and seemed to be a little too swept up in the idea of "being a leader!" (Had a little too much Barney Fife in him.) Curiosly, he actually became a better leader after he was voted off the council (with his being the ONLY vote he got). He continued to work very hard, and took it on himself, for example, to be the one to apologize to Nathan and welcome him into the district.
I thought the new council was OK...was sorry to see it wind up just being all the older guys. I like Sophia, but I wish they hadn't been so obvious in trying to "feature" her. If you read her (and her mother's) interview on the "Television Without Pity" website, she points out how frustrating it was that the kids were prevented from doing so many "common sense" things that would have solved a lot of problems...just because the producers wanted to keep those "problems" in the show and solve them later. Then, when Sophia was made "Sheriff"...she's allowed to use the kind of plain common sense that other kids had not.