Out of all of the shows on the 2024 TV schedule, The Summit might be the most fascinating that I'm watching in primetime. Seeing contestants being blindsided with the news they had to climb a mountain was thrilling enough, but as I watch many try and fail to make the trek, I begin to wonder about the larger questions. What would happen if someone dropped their share of the prize money off the mountain during a challenge?
Executive Producer Kevin Lee was gracious enough to answer my many questions about The Summit, like how they chose the mountain and what would happen if someone dropped their prize money off a cliff. As it turns out, the contestants aren't carrying tens of thousands of dollars in their backpacks after all, but they are carrying some cash:
The bags of money, the outside [layer] of the money is real and then the inside is fake money. But, there are still thousands of dollars in each one of those bags. And so if they had dropped the bag, we would have sent someone down to get it because there's thousands of dollars in there. While it's not a million, that’s a lot. Luckily, that didn't happen, but we did talk about it, and we're like, like what would happen? The insurance [company] and all of that have to take that into account. I think it will be dramatic if that ever happens.
The cash amount in each bag is not insubstantial, but it's certainly less than the original $62,000+ that each contestant was said to have in their backpack. At the same time, they're still carrying fake money that equates to that same value in addition to all the camping gear and survival sacks they must take on the fourteen-day hike up the mountain. So, before anyone cries "fake" or criticizes the series for not putting all the money in the sacks, it made little difference to those hiking.
While The Summit had a sneak preview premiere on CBS in late September, Episode 2 only premiered on October 9th. This gave people plenty of time to catch up on what they missed by streaming the series on-demand or with a Paramount+ subscription and seeing how many of these contestants will ultimately make it to the summit of the mountain to split what remains of the million they start out with.
I think there's a legitimate possibility that none of them make it, but I hope I'm wrong. I do know that host and actor Manu Bennett had a chance to travel through the course before the contestants arrived at the base. That's not to say a guy who played a literal gladiator is representative of the average Joe cast on this series, but I think the hike is very doable for a few determined competitors in this cast.
The real question is whether or not they'll be around at the end to conquer it, as The Summit already has an interesting cast invested in culling weaker players to speed up their hikes and eliminating power players to avoid other competition. It's fascinating to watch, and I wonder how it'll all play out in the end.
We can only wait and see as The Summit airs on CBS on Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. ET. I highly suggest checking it out and the new Matlock series as another of the network's newest shows, as the pilot's twist is just too good to ignore.
