'The Summit' Isn’t the Grueling Competition It Wants You To Think It Is

What made the first season of Traitors so riveting was that, despite the lineup of reality TV veterans, no one really knew how to navigate the game. Watching them learn on the fly created real excitement. In contrast, the second season had its moments, but it missed that thrilling unpredictability.

CBS’s The Summit initially teased a new and inventive approach, with players struggling to grasp the rules in the beginning. The mountain was presented as the central antagonist, making it seem as though reaching the top would be a gritty, physical challenge. The first episode suggested as much when a player dropped out due to exhaustion, and by the second episode, a genuinely suspenseful moment saw a bigger, older contestant fall as a rope ladder was cut mid-climb. At that point, The Summit seemed primed to deliver something unique.

But after the second episode, contestants shifted into Survivor mode. Much like Survivor, the players started to target strong competitors, taking out anyone with an advantage or simply anyone they found irritating. Even though they were racing against a mountain, the mountain’s obstacles quickly felt like an afterthought. In the first episode, they missed a checkpoint and had to camp in tents. In another, they skipped a meal to allow two contestants to catch up via helicopter. However, speed and stamina are hardly emphasized anymore. Oddly, fear of heights appears to be the main challenge, a trait that baffles me, considering half of them signed up for a literal mountain climb.

The 90-minute episodes don’t help either. There’s too much strategizing and not enough intense climbs or nail-biting moments against nature. I don’t care who’s “blowing up their game” in confessional interviews—this competition should be about who reaches checkpoints fastest. Instead, players vote each other out either because they are physical threats or for trivial reasons.

It cheapens the game and weakens the premise. When nearly everyone (after the initial eliminations) seems likely to reach the summit, The Summit becomes Survivor on a slope, minus the compelling drama or a memorable cast to keep things interesting.

Manu Bennett as the host isn’t helping much, either. He seems to think the mountain’s sheer presence is enough to carry the show, unlike a Jeff Probst who deftly stirs the pot during Survivor’s Tribal Councils. Bennett mostly grunts, cues the votes, and the eliminated contestant shuffles back down the mountain Michael Cera style in an anticlimactic exit.

I wanted The Summit to be about players clawing their way to the peak, where the mountain truly shaped their strategies. Instead, it’s morphing into yet another run-of-the-mill reality show with eliminations, though I’ll stick around to see if the heat turns up toward the season’s end. If they continue to eliminate the stronger players, I hope there are also real consequences: No one makes it on time, and no one wins what remains of the $1 million prize.