Anyone seen this? I like it. It’s on Discovery. It’s about a bunch of guys who lose their jobs and decide to mine for gold in SE Alaska - the panhandle. They don’t know much about mining so it’s kind of funny. They stumble around for a while and eventually hire a guy who knows a lot more to help them out. They have only shown 2 episodes so far, the rest start this Friday night. It’s sort of like the Deadliest Catch if the guys on the boats did not know how to fish.
I should add this is all above ground mining. There are no tunnels, shafts, etc. It’s strip mining on a very small scale.
I watched one episode.
- The guys are clueless. This, of course, leads to conflict.
- They come within inches of destroying an integral piece of machinery. This, of course, leads to conflict.
- There’s some old geezer who *thinks *he knows what he’s doing, and totally goes off on his own in some random manner basically digging holes wherever he gets the hunch there is gold. This, of course, leads to conflict.
- Some of them have their kids with them … in bear territory. This, of course, leads to conflict.
- They don’t have a plan, and whatever plan they do have, they don’t follow (see geezer above). This, of course, leads to conflict.
It just seemed like another crappy show where people who don’t get along try to accomplish some meaningless task, all the while forced drama ensues. I don’t plan on watching another episode.
There is another guy right near them who has made a lot of money by finding gold so they should do OK if they get their act together.
It’s being billed as the highest rated original series on cable right now. I caught it tonight and ended up watching three episodes in a row. There’s a lot of buffoonery on display - I cringed when they all went bear hunting at night with an assault rifle and pistols. They also shot into the brush from the middle of a camp with small kids running around (who leave boxes of crackers out that attract the damn bears to begin with!) I don’t want to see anyone get hurt or sick (SPOILER - too late), but I’d also like them to at least show some recognition of how reckless some of their decisions are. I can find something to like in all of the miners, except for the leader’s father. He’s stubborn, clueless and whiny. I don’t understand why his son can’t rein him in like he does the rest of his crew. I guess going broke digging for gold in the 80s gives him immunity.
Ultimately I think the show’s going to be a winner. It’s a good mix of “what not to do” coupled with “how it’s done” as shown by the their 90 year old neighbor and his grandson. Did anyone else laugh at the grandson’s reaction to the new guys when he went to their camp to help them with their equipment? Here’s a screen cap: :rolleyes:. The leader said he was embarrassed to take advice from a 15 year old kid, but that “kid” showed more maturity and level headedness than the new crew’s boss will ever have, IMO.
Even if they don’t find any gold, I bet they’ll see good money from the Discovery Channel. I suspect they all knew this going in. Like I said, as long as their families don’t suffer from their husbands’ mistakes, I’ll probably keep tuning in.
I watch the commercial and am horrified, and have absolutely no desire to watch it.
Just that geezer screetching ‘No guts, no glory’ is nasty.
And what the fuck … they are at risk of having their homes foreclosed and they wander off to pan for gold? Get a fucking job and pay the damned mortgage for Ghu’s sake.
If mrAru decided to go off and pan for gold to pay the bills, he would be divorced pretty damned fast.
This, of couse, leads to conflict.
They have everything working and found gold. But it appears they will have more issues next week.
From tonight’s show:
Everyone: “All right, after a week of repairs we finally got all the machinery working!”
5 minutes later
Son: “Crap! The generator’s spewing oil, shut everything down!”
Father: (AKA the Old Man Who Went Broke Mining Gold in the 80s): “What in tarnation’s a goin’ on around hurr?”
Mechanic to OMWWBMGit80’s: “Yeah, that O ring you replaced on the generator? It slipped off because you didn’t seat it right”
OMWWBMGit80s: “…whurr’s my sunglasses?”
No wonder that other guy
said “Screw it, I’m going to work on a salmon boat.”
I really hope they see some of the money from this show, 'cause I’m not very sure they’re goning to make any money from gold this season. Another entertaining episode, though.
Watched that tonight. Man! I hope those guys hit something big. But gold fever is a contagious and devastating disease.
I have a friend who prospects for gold and gemstones as a sideline, his hobby basically pays for itself - whatever the costs of materials for melting down the gold and silver and casting the settings, and whatever it is he uses to cut and polish the gems, and the travel, food, camping and prospecting fees for the trips [and probably a few of the pieces he makes go to various people as birthday and christmas presents]
He says that there is no real way that he would be able to make a living unless he managed to find a serious gold vein somewhere that he could actually lay a claim. He normally goes to you-mine-it sorts of places, and parks that allow prospecting [there used to be a tv show about treasures that showed one of the campgrounds that he goes amethyst hunting at]
I want to vacation in Herkimer for the ‘diamonds’ [double terminator quartz crystals] and Nevada at the Peacock mines for opals sometime =)
For those who don’t want to watch until the end, John Schnabel, the neighbor with the claim next to them, let the cat out of the bag about how much gold they found:[spoiler]
John Schnabel, a Porcupine miner for 25 years, said he heard the Hoffmans’ crew found 16 ounces of gold, or about $20,000 worth.
“They were more interested in making a movie than they were in finding gold,” Schnabel said. “They didn’t get their machinery going until afternoon and sometimes not until evening. They had cameras going all over the place.”[/spoiler]
I usually don’t comment on things of this nature, but due to a lack of common sense by all the so-called miners I just can’t help myself.
I don’t know one thing about mining, but I do know the outdoors. On one episode when a bear was in camp, the old man (I call him Papa Smurf) saw the bear and was going to scare it off. He pulled a .25 semi auto pistol and shot at the bear. Damn… a .25? That’s not enough firepower against a rabbit much less a bear!
Also, Papa Smurfs son is an arrogant bastard who thinks he is Billy badass. Barking orders to the others when he is sitting on his fat ass doing nothing. I recall he told “Dorsey” to get out of the cabin or he would put him out. I think he would be almost too lazy to put anyone out if he could. Dude, get rid of the ZZ Top wannabe goatee, it went out years ago.
I am still in awe of how Papa Smurf's son came into existence.. From the sound of Papa Smurf's voice, he was castrated along time ago, so how did he make a kid???
I hope they do strike it rich. I try my best to wish everyone with good luck. But from what I see the only good luck for the viewers is that they strike it rich and end the show.....LOL
Just my 2 cents worth.
Everyone take care!
I watched one episode, and part of another, and that was enough for me. Mostly because of the general level of idiocy shown. I mean…look across the river…guy over there has been doing this like 70 years, has a set up at least similar to yours, and he and his grandson make enough to just barely get by. You have what, like 8 people on your crew, plus their families? Way too much overhead for that level of operation. The enitre operation is doomed to failure. Which I would still maybe watch, except these idiots then proceeded to bring their entire families up to the working strip mine. Which is reckless to the point of criminal in my opinion. Way too many small children running around a location with dangerous equipment. No way this ends well for anyone.
Yup. Morons.
Can’t get their equipment working, wasting days and weeks (I’d be panning while waiting around. Not these guys). And the worst, mining wise: Just digging up random dirt and expecting it to be full of gold. Hello? That land has been over several times by many groups of miners. All you’re picking up is the shit they didn’t catch!
Yup, too interested in making a TV show and utterly convinced they’ll just stumble into loads of gold with no effort.
Just once I would have liked to see that neighbor walk over, on camera, and call them out on the buffoonery and failure.
Just for clarification on this point, John Schnabel has made a lot of money off of his mining over the years, and I mean a lot. I grew up in Haines and he was easily the richest man in town back then. Mining is really more of a hobby for him at this point, certainly not a necessary income.
In fact, my dad would go up to Haines in the summers as recently as 3 years ago and work with John on his mine and John always paid him in gold nuggets at the end of the summer, so he’s still pulling quite a bit of gold out of there. (In fact, my wife has one of those nuggets that dad gave her when she finished her Master’s degree.)
So there is gold in the area, but yeah, I think these guys are too incompetent to actually find enough to make it worth their while.
Mark
I read somewhere that these guys contacted a TV producer before they went up there , I wonder how much money they get from TV.
spoiler:
they are going back this summer to do more mining so they still have hope of making more money
It turns out their plant was so bad they were losing 90% of the gold. And the land owner sent a guy to make sure they are doing it right. The owner get 20% of what they find.
I’m watching it, but not because I like anyone on the show. It’s more of a “I wanna see the Failure of the Week” thing.
Everyone on the show appears to me to be lazy as hell, like they expected to just saunter on over and start picking nuggets up off the ground. There’s a whole lot of standing around and “meetings” and wasted time. If they’d walk into the stream and start panning, they’d probably have covered their expenses by now, but no, they’d rather take turns frowning at the machinery than put in an 8-hour day.
And they drag everyone around them down with them. “Waaaa waaaa, sister, can I borrow $40 grand so I can play prospector for another month?” What a douche. And by the looks of things, they’re going to be real assholes to the guy the claim holder sent to keep an eye on the operation, even though he, you know, has actual experience and appears to have actually made money off prospecting for gold at one time…yeah, wouldn’t want a guy like that around, we might actually succeed.
It’s like the opposite of Deadliest Catch, which shows people with actual competence.
Hey, maybe there’ll be a “Gold Rush” video game just like the “Deadliest Catch” video games! The object will be watching the sun rise and set each day and walking around talking to people in hardhats while no one actually does anything and your “available cash” ticks down to zero. And somewhere in there is a “Punch Dorsey” minigame.
It was pretty funny how bad their wash plant was. You would think they would have called in the mining expert at the start of construction, not 3 months later.
I wonder if the $25k from the sister was considered a loan or an investment? I assume it was a loan.