The Summit players are choosing their strategies, and Dennis Cho seems committed to sacrificing pal Geoff Green.
In Us Weekly‘s exclusive clip from the Wednesday, October 9, episode, Dennis explains in a confessional why he is focused on sabotaging Geoff.
“Geoff, he is showing his strengths. He is super likable and is gaining the trust of others. But he is also a top elite athlete,” Dennis says. “Those are three things that worry me.”
Dennis thinks Geoff’s success will be his ultimate downfall, adding, “But once people start to notice what a strong player he is — socially and physically — I think that is going to be his demise.”
The sneak peek then shows Dennis trying to get other players on his side.
“If we let him tag along too far, we will get screwed,” Dennis notes while questioning Geoff’s past commitment to their group votes. “I thought I trusted Geoff and that vote right there had me take a step back and recollect. He knew the plan. He was the first person I talked to.”
While speaking to the cameras, Dennis confirms that Geoff was the person he wanted out of the show.
“Geoff is by far the scariest threat on this mountain,” he adds. “I will throw his name out there at some point.”
The Summit, which premiered on CBS in September, centers on a group of contestants in the Southern Alps of New Zealand who are trying to reach the top of a mountain while undertaking various tasks along the way. Each contestant has a backpack with a portion of the grand prize, which adds up to $1 million.
Host Manu Bennett previously revealed to Us that the contestants didn’t know what exactly they were signing up for when they arrived.
“They waltzed into that valley in the middle of this incredible terrain in New Zealand. I don’t believe that they knew as far as I was told. I was under the impression that they arrived without knowledge of being on a show called The Summit,” he shared. “So they didn’t know that they were going to be scaling a mountain — that was going to be their surprise. And they didn’t know there was $1 million involved.”
Manu pointed out that the contestants “are not athletes,” saying, “These are just ordinary people. Like, one guy works at Trader Joe’s and nobody is a mountaineer. When you look at something like that, you try to figure out how is it possible? [The prize money] is a dream aspect for most people’s lives. That’s the big game changer. Suddenly you see the motivation.”
Since The Summit comes with its fair share of twists and turns, the production team made sure multiple protections were put in place.
“Inherently the American productions have much more safety and much more in place than what we do in little old New Zealand where if you fall, you just hope you land on a sheep,” the actor told Us, saying he felt “really, really good” about how the safety of the contestants was prioritized. “I — at all times — felt that the network had those bases covered, which I thought was paramount to making sure we were shooting a show that was going to guard these 16 non-experienced people of a very complex mountain system.”
The competition series couldn’t prepare for everything, though.
“[There were] a few mountain guides. There’s some locals that know the area like the back of their hand that have ascended those mountains and know them very well. They know exactly where there’s going to be avalanches. We could hear them going off all the time,” Manu recalled. “It was sort of late in the season so you had melting snow and there were slips and things going on all the time. But they know and they know how to navigate the right route.”
He continued: “On any of these mountains, you take a wrong turn and you go up the wrong side and either somebody’s going to fall or something’s going to fall on you. Gravity is probably one of the main determinants of our show — and people fall each season figuratively and literally. As far as safety is concerned, there was an international group of well-versed mountaineers involved in our show. We had one of the best coordinators of obstacle courses. … We had some pretty admirable mountaineers that were making sure that nobody stepped too far off track.”
The Summit airs on CBS Wednesdays at 9:30 p.m. ET.
