When I saw Snowflake Mountain pop up as a new release on Netflix, I was immediately skeptical. Oh, boy, another cheesy survival show.

But I was intrigued, what can I say, I like to try new things. And let just say, the first episode had me hooked.

Before going any further:

I am going to do my best not to share any spoilers. However, since I am talking about the show, you may be spoiled by some things and have a different perspective going in.

If you don’t want to be spoiled, I will just say this:

Watch it.

Now, onto my review.

My expectations going into the show were not actually what the show was about. I thought the hosts, Joel Graves and Matt Tate, were going to take some spoiled snowflakes and throw them into the wilderness and teach them survival skills. I genuinely thought the contestants were going to have to build their own shelter, hunt their own food, I mean, the whole surviving-out-in-the-wild shebang.

This was not the case, and actually, I’m kind of glad it wasn’t.

The premise of the show is to take a bunch of young kids from all walks of life who have no ambition, they don’t believe in themselves, they’re spoiled, they believe the world revolves around them, etc. They’re, well, snowflakes.

I’m honestly surprised Netflix allowed the term ‘snowflakes’ to even be used within speech, let alone as the title of a show.

But that’s neither here nor there.

When the contestants first appear on the show, they believe they’re headed to some spa for some type of reality show. I have a hard time believing this scenario. Like, they really didn’t know what they were signing up for?

Some of the contestants felt like they were force acting and it was hard to take them seriously sometimes.

But, I truly believed that they were spoiled beyond belief and simply needed a little confidence boost.

This is what Matt and Joel gave them. It wasn’t a show about throwing people who had absolutely no survival skills, into the wild to fend for themselves.

It was about boosting their confidence by teaching them survival skills. Knowing you can accomplishing these challenging survival skills, will boost your morale. You realize that you are truly capable of so much more. Maybe they won’t go on to be survival experts, but this journey led them to finally believe in themselves and do so much more.

A few of the missions are a little silly, at least from my point of view, but from someone who has never, ever, ever, ever fended for themselves for nothing ever in their life; the missions were right on point.

I was really thrilled to see Cat Bigney as a guest teacher. She was a ray of positivity and really dug down deep to help the contestants push through and find deeper meaning behind why they may not have wanted to do something. She was absolutely amazing, knowledgable and I hope to see more of her in the future.

In saying that, I felt like the contestants were kind of on vacation since the missions couldn’t have lasts more than half a day in most cases, so it seemed like they had a lot of ‘off’ time to do whatever they wanted.

Matt and Joel weren’t around too much, except for the missions and sometimes popping up in their camp. I felt there could have been a stronger presence, maybe they could have been nearby? Maybe there could have been more leading by example? When we’re talking about people whose role models are all dancing on TikTok, maybe a little more guidance and support would have been helpful. But maybe that was all done for TV, I’m not sure.

SPOILER

Ok, I have to say this, what was up with that random new contestant in the middle of the show? I didn’t think it enhanced anything, she didn’t stand out at all, she didn’t struggle, wasn’t complaining, nothing, there was absolutely no reason to bring in a new contestant in the middle of it.

END SPOILER

I don’t even know if that was really a spoiler, but I figured I’d add the big words in there anyway in case you wanted to skip that paragraph.

There was a cash prize at the end and I was honestly glad with the person who won it. I’ll let you watch to see who it is.

Despite my nitpicking of the show, many of the contestants truly changed their mindset about the world, about themselves, about how capable they really are. Though of course there’s always a few who refuse to change, even if there’s a huge chunk of money to be won at the end or for self-improvement or what-have-you. But that’s how it is in life, some people choose to change, some don’t.

I hope there are more seasons because I think some lives can really be changed here.

Would I recommend that you watch it?

Give it a shot. It’s not what you’d expect, but it’s a different kind of show-all-together.

Morgan Rogue

Morgan writes for OutdoorHub while also being the founder of Rogue Preparedness where she helps people get prepared for emergencies and disasters, as well as thrive any circumstances.