The Mountain with Penn Badgley, Anson Mount & Oliver Hudson

It’s time to revisit 2004’s one-season wonder from The WB Network: The Mountain, with Penn Badgley, Anson Mount, and Oliver Hudson.

Back in 2004, a little show premiered on The WB, and given the premise, the location, and the cast, it didn’t seem like it could fail. But that’s precisely what happened to The Mountain. The series barely lasted a season and was quickly canceled. So how did a show with such promise fail so epically that even ChatGPT couldn’t shed any light on the series? It’s time to revisit The Mountain!

The cast

Let’s start with an obvious win: The Mountain was packed with young talent. This series has so many familiar faces and actors who now have their own shows. Maybe it was because they were all young and new to the game, but it’s hard to imagine these actors starring in a one-season wonder at any point in their careers. Yet, here we are.

Just take a look at some of the actors and actresses from The Mountain:

• Penn Badgley (You, Gossip Girl)
• Anson Mount (Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Hell On Wheels)
• Oliver Hudson (The Cleaning Lady, Nashville)
• Alana de la Garza (FBI, Law & Order)
• Tommy Dewey (Casual, The Mindy Project)
• Mitch Pileggi (Walker, The X-Files)
• Barbara Hershey (Black Swan, Beaches)

Some of The Mountain’s guest stars might sound familiar as well:

• Amber Heard (Aquaman, The Danish Girl)
• James Marsters (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Runaways)
• Carly Pope (Popular, Arrow)
• Lindsay Price (Splitting Up Together, Beverly Hills 90210)

An avalanche of messiness

The Mountain had all the ingredients for a great, early 2000s soapy drama series: a good-looking cast, producers with an excellent track record like McG and Shaun Cassidy, and a killer setting up at Whistler Blackcomb Resort in Vancouver, British Columbia. So why did it fail? Well, let’s say great ingredients don’t always mix well. This show never found its footing, and it seemed like it was created to make money rather than tell a story. Take all the cliches from all the other flashy teen dramas like The OC and One Tree Hill, but done poorly, and that’s the first (and only) season of The Mountain.

Is it worth revisiting?

If you love messy, flashy dramas, you need to find yourself a copy of The Mountain. Otherwise, you can skip it – it’s not a classic gem that was canceled before its time; in fact, I can’t believe it aired as long as it did. But, for as long as it’s available, you can check out the full unaired pilot below:

• image source