08-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
‘Back to the Frontier' Review: Disconnection and Deprivation on Max
People will go a long way to get their kids off their cellphones. All the way to the 1880s, apparently.
'Back to the Frontier,' a creation of HGTV's Chip and Joanna Gaines, transports three families to the era of Rutherford B. Hayes and the Homestead Act, where they will practice farming, construction and animal husbandry in the shadow of the Rockies, living with no electricity, running water or internet and doing so in dilapidated shacks that were abandoned decades ago by other failed homesteaders. The Gaineses made their name with 'Fixer Upper.' This is another level of squalor.