Alaska : La ruée vers l'or

Feeling slightly stupid to be a sucker for this show. Not much new in the 5th season, but still like the elements of people struggling, being assholes, taking senseless stupid chances and so on. How much is real and how much is played or scripted, I don't know, but seems real enough for me to not turn the program off.

From the first season the Hoffman crew has been running on too small budgets and knowledge, I don't know if effort, luck or help from the TV- production has made them still succeed sometimes. Parker is developing a A-class asshole attitude, if some of this is real it is interesting to ponder why - ambition, expectations, camera fever, narcissism or something else?

What makes me believe in the show is that too much operation, equipment and costs are involved for it all to be fake. One annoying fake element of this show is the drama build-ups and the speaker voice - "If they can't manage to ... this will be the end of the season!". Showing more of what actually happens including the boring stuff, and scrap the forced drama would have made the show better.

I enjoyed Gold Rush for years until producers decided to start creating BS scenarios. What made this show special was the same thing that made other reality shows special in their early days. It was mostly REAL! I lost intrest around season 7 because I started noticing these scripted scenes. I've recently came back and started watching where I left off. I'm now on season 10 and the BS scenarios, artificial incidents and obvious scripting is ridiculous. I'm having trouble just watching a single episode because they're all scripted the same. Camera flips, person yells, edits all over the place, insert artificial scenario then you find out a truck tire is in a ditch... The show needs to get back to its roots and stop trying to create scenarios. It's as bad as a horror movie overusing jump scares...

I love this show and have watched every season, always looking forward to the next. But this season is just way to scripted. Heavy winds with not a single tree swayin. Clear "acting" by new miners. It's becoming more cringing to watch than exciting. Yes, just the mining may not have the drama factor but it does have the realism factor which is what I'd much prefer to sink my time into.

I spent 54 years as a journeyman truck-and heavy-equipment mechanic, often working through the night by myself a long way away from any help. I am amazed when I see things such as equipment operating for long periods without a sign of a grease gun or any maintenance at all! A season or two ago, an excavator chewed up a final and Jack took it apart, and it was obvious that it was bone-dry without lube- no wonder! Does anyone there ever check fluid-levels or grease anything? They seem to just jump in and go to work! I don't see them winterize anything, yet they come back the next year and wouldn't you know? It fires right up, and again they go right to work with it! Amazing equipment, huh? This year Todd and Jack take over an existing claim, and wouldn't ya know? Somebody left equipment there! Another miracle- the batteries are hot, the stuff starts right up without anyone checking a thing. Hells' bells, the Teletubbies have more smarts! I have to add one more thing... the narrator has a death-wish outlook! If something minor happens, suddenly we're told "If they can't fix it, all will be lost!" C'mon, get real. Take care of it and keep going.

The "5" is for the part of the show illustrating the gold mining.

If I was grading on the amateur acting of the Hoffman and Schnabel crews, it would be a fat zero.

I do enjoy the Beets portions without criticism - honest workers, no drama.

Schnabel - petulant spoiled brat, perpetual smirk on his face, an idiot that only looks successful due to the hard work of his employee - of which he is a real prick to every episode. What a goof!

Shows like this has an audience not for the fake drama, but just to watch the machines working, illustrate repairs and improvisation, and the final product. It doesn't need anything else! Just like "Ax Men", another great show that the producers ruined by the fake drama, this series is also going to eventually fail, if they keep up with the soap opera scripts.

EDIT/ADDED:

I've just finished watching S08 ep 20, and have to amend my review.

Todd and crew are pathetic, portray themselves as bumblers that have traveled North and South America mining for gold, and obviously don't have a clue about mining, nor understand the machines they use in the show. I see them as a bunch of aimless idiots!

Tony Beets has joined in the soap opera scripts, it seems - behaving like a greedy a-hole that resents anyone else operating a mine to the point of sabotaging others' operations?! Yes, what he does, obstructing the lawful movement and development of another business is criminal, *and if this was real acts of interference* he would be arrested and lose all the rights to his claims - forbidden from mining, himself...but it's fake, so he continues to just behave like a goof for the cameras.

Parker is still a tyrant brat that continues with his own fake crisis, fake feud with Beets, and fake drama.

*All these lands are owned by the State/Province/country, and mining rights/prospecting rights are permitted by the grace of these government jurisdictions*. All the show characters are only temporary guests of the land.

With contempt toward the show producers, that have lost focus on the gold mining, I've reduced the five-stars to a one...because zeroes aren't permitted.

This show is starting to bore the hell out of me!