Peak Season

A few weeks ago I got some e-mail from MTV Canada asking me to take a look at their new reality show called Peak Season. It is basically a Whistler version of The Hills but with lots of foreign accents. As you know I am not a fan of The Hills or The City and told MTV that I was probably not the best choice to talk about the show or review it or hype it or anything like that. MTV was persistent though and led me to believe that if I talked about the show they might see fit to arrange for me to have drinks or dinner or lots of drinks with Jessi Cruickshank. Unless you live in Canada you probably have no idea who she is, but Jessi and Eugene Levy's son Dan host a show called The After Show which as the name implies takes place after a show. Clever people. It is like Talk Soup for The Hills and The City and has highlights and snark and actual interviews with the cast of the respective shows. Ratings wise it actually attracts more viewers than the actual shows and unlike The Hills or The City is funny and worth watching. Even promises of drinks with Jessi wasn't enough to push me over the tipping point. However, Jax volunteered to spend two hours every Monday immersing herself in Peak Season and The After Show and sharing her commentary with all of you and thereby allowing me to concentrate on those drinks with Jessi.

Now here is Jax with her first weekly review.

You know, it’s hard not to have high expectations for a new reality show with the tag line “In Whistler, it’s not your girl, it’s your turn.” Hello! Now, I have to disclose first off that I am a big MTV reality fan. I love Laguna Beach, The Real World ,The Hills and The City. Ya ya I know, it’s all scripted. It might very well be, but I’m watching for pure entertainment so bring on the bitch fights, love triangles, bad graphic tees and the criminal overuse of the word like in every sentence. Exchange like for eh and here we have Peak Season.

MTV Canada’s latest reality show points the camera into the world of a group of twentysomethings living and working in Whistler, BC -home of the 2010 Winter Olympics. (There I said it and I feel dirty)

Whistler, for those of you missed who missed The Bachelorette, is essentially Las Vegas dropped in the middle of the Canadian mountainside. Swap out gambling for snowboarding and there you have it, Peak Season. Same drunks, same fights, same sex scandals, same veil of secrecy and ‘anything goes’ policy. A town populated by tourists and run by Australians, Irish and New Zealanders. At times, watching Peak Season with all the foreign accents your mind starts to wonder if you’ve switched over to Neighbors on the Family channel at commercial and forgot to switch back.

Although it is not produced by Adam Divello, the man responsible for other reality hits The City and The Hills, it is made from the same recipe. From stunning panoramic views of the snow covered mountains to the strategically placed ski bunnies around Whistler Village, Peak Season looks like any other highly stylized reality show from MTV with one glaring exception. Its cast. From Lauren’s anger management problem to Ian and Colin’s outfits that make the Gotti boys look like Versace models…this is hardly a fair representation of Canada or even Vancouver. And if you ask anyone who happened to be sober at 10am in Whistler village, they’d agree. But I digress.

The opening scenes introducing everyone seemed a bit contrived in the way that it seemed each person was trying to fit as much back story into each sentence, at some points I was like “Damn, take a breath, girl.”

We have Lauren, the party girl who loses her job in the second episode. She has an ex boyfriend and a nasty jealous streak. This is the kind of girl you don’t want pissed off at you at the bar. Or Baskin Robbins. She is 31 Flavors of Angry.
Ian and Colin: the two resident douchebags. These guys and their homies are stuck in 2003 and so are their pickup lines. “Let’s go find some skanks.”
How these guys get laid, I will never know. They owe a lot to Jose Cuervo.

Matt and Elle. The Ozzie lovers. She reminds me a lot of Jessica Simpson. Big boobs, pouty lips and cheating boyfriend. Matt gets so hammered he forgets Elle at a bar one night only to end up doing a striptease for another girl..this after a decadent meal of hotdogs on her first night in town! It’s only episode 2 and I’m completely annoyed by him and his voice. If Flight of the Concords were 20 year old snowboarders in Whistler, they would be Matt and his mate Dane.Dre and Amanda. Boring and more boring. They break up in episode 1 because of Amanda’s partying and then mope about it for 22 mins. Amanda better bring out her inner drunk soon otherwise I’m done. Dre is no Justin Bobby so he needs to put the sloppy toque away. Not even close dude.

For the most part, Peak Season isn’t a terrible show. It’s a reality show and audiences tend to be pretty forgiving. Case in point…Rock of Love, Dog the Bounty Hunter and Cheaters. Sometimes trash is intriguing and it’s always life affirming. You know you can count on VH1 after a bad day. I’ll probably watch a few more episodes at least to see if it gets any better. Maybe Lauren will go on a rampage and knock down Inukshuk. Either way, it might be worth it just to tune in to see how people can drink that much booze and still be upright and having conversations. I’m not kidding, these people are insane. Their livers are champions. Forget the f-cking Olympics; give their organs the gold, silver and bronze. Lauren, Steph and all the rest of the Peak Season girls were chugging the hard stuff while tubing…in early daylight. That’s hardcore. Or addiction. Whatever.

Let’s see Heidi and Spencer do that. No really, let’s see those two shoot down an ice covered hill in a poorly constructed and unapproved tubing device while under the influence of grain alcohol. Please.

Sigh..we’re not doing shots of Patron with Frankie Delgado in Area anymore Toto.