The Summit

The following review contains information about the first half of the first episode - which I do not consider to be a series spoiler. I have actual mountaineering experience, and am trained in search & rescue.

In real mountaineering, SAFETY is the TOP PRIORITY, and NO LIVING PERSON is left behind. People compete against the mountain, and NEVER against each other.

"THE SUMMIT" is erroneously couched in actual mountaineering, and infected with hypocritically self-conflicting objectives. The show should be presented as a team race, on a controlled closed course, and not disguised as a mountaineering quest.

+ Unlike "Survivor," contestants are told that this is a unified team effort, for everyone to complete the journey. That is a blatant lie.

+ Some contestants are chosen, who are obviously out of shape, plainly unable to perform in the hike or "challenges," and subject to real life threatening health emergencies. That is not legitimate competition. A better show would be the TRAINING of contestants to challenge their own personal limitations, and those who successfully train, then climb a mountain as a unified team. That would be the "Survivor" equivalent of merging the tribes.

+ Similar to "Survivor," contestants are implicitly encouraged to align in opposing "aliances," and forced to eliminate their fellow competitors. That never really happens on a mountain. By contrast, elimination happens on an Olympic competition rock climbing wall. Or even earlier, when one gives up training.

+ In my opinion, this show is offensive to the sport; and, falsely leads people to believe that they can just put on a backpack, and start walking up a mountain. That is less realistic than a cartoon.

Are you kidding me?? Gave this show a go because it looked different. Different?!?! It is the same tosh as every other Australian show. What do we have...?? A bunch of contestants from different walks of life, different demographics, different abilities, but oh boy do they AAAAALLLLL have that same old "life has been hard" montage to bleed out. Same thing over and over. Introduce contestant, slow motion montage hiking/walking/climbing/surfing/playing with their dog/whatever. They've got three kids (tick), a loving relationship (tick), great job (tick)... and here it comes... quick switch from upbeat music to sad piano... here we go... "... but life hasn't always been easy..." And boom. Here we go again. Every two minutes there's a slo mo montage on TV of someone who looks perfectly fine on the outside, but *cue sad piano* "... life hasn't always been easy". They lost this, they lost that, they fought, they rebuilt, they blah blah blah. How are people still switching this rubbish on?? Summit, jungle, kitchen, island, city, dog pound... no TV show format is safe from this same old dried up bottom of the barrel nonsense of the real life DRAMA every single show wants to ram down our necks. Uplifting orchestra flips to sad piano flips back to uplifting orchestra over and over for sixty minutes. It's DONE, DONE, DONE. Honestly, how can people still care?? Every year new seasons of the same drivel just in a different format. This time people "who haven't always had it easy" climb a mountain. Oh great. Cue tears, sad piano, life montage. There seriously can't be anyone left in Australia with a sob story to tell to a slo mo montage anymore. Just stop.

The show summit is somewhat irritating to watch. Because some of the people on the show are so out of shape and that contestants vote off the strong means the week are never gonna make it to the summit. And then when they have a choice to vote off the week, the strongest are voted off and the week slow the rest of the contestants down. How dumb is that? Yeah, the people are letting their emotions overshadow the strategy of the goal of the game which is getting to the summit, but they are not going to get there when they keep voting off strong people. And then the host doesn't really let the contestants vote. He basically picks 2 people and then they vote on the two people he picks.

I'm not sure what it is with aussie reality shows but they feel the need to stretch way too long.

This could have been a good show (albeit with a lot of seemingly random eliminations) if it was maybe hour long episodes. But no, every single challenge or discussion is dragged out till you just wanna fast forward huge chunks of it.

The scenery is awesome - that's why i picked it up. Jai seemed to be playing an emotionless character (or just didn't want to be there) which was weird - no reason he couldn't have been a bit more fun like say the aussie amazing race host.

All in all, was enjoyable enough to keep watching but i did skip chunks.

It's such a shame that this show format has great potential, but is woefully let down by the so called host who adds nothing, and just comes across as a smug half wit. Also the challenges faced by the competitors could be much more diverse and enhance interest by incorporating basic survival tasks like shelter building, fire making and at the very least cooking food, rather than arriving to a ridiculous banquet of meals and booze. It doesn't have to rival or copy Survivor and Alone, but surely it would benefit by being more authentic and interesting by exploring some other elements of traversing this amazing environment.