Where to start with this train wreck of a series? Well, real gold miners must laugh themselves silly watching this rubbish. I worked in a coal mine for years and the one thing that is drummed into you is maintenance. There is none on this show.There are three main crews in this - Parker Schnabel, Todd Hoffman and Tony Beets. Each one as ludicrous as the next so lets start: Parker Schnabel is an arrogant spoiled brat who, unfortunately, runs a crew at the ripe young age of 21 (about). He treats or rather mistreats his employees in a way that should have resulted in several law suits. He throws tantrums when things go wrong and it's everyone else's fault, not his. One laughable moment was when the water ran out and they started pumping silt through the dredge. Here's a hint, start doing a pre-start walk through of the mine, you may have picked up you had no water. An idiot's mistake. And, his Australian girlfriend is back for another season? The producers must have paid her to come back as it is a mystery why she is with Parker.He is a thoroughly unlikable character.Todd Hoffman who never seems to learn. Every season they run out of good mining area. Here's your hint - a mine plan. I have worked in several mines, they all had mine planes. We knew where we would mine each day and had a three month plan, so this never caused a shutdown, And, I don't think God's plan involves making you rich so stop the ridiculous prayer every time you want to find gold. It really cheapens Christianity and is not what I would expect from such self proclaimed pious people. And, just about running out of money every season and then finding a rich area that enables you to continue mining the next season is getting a little old. It happens every season and it's about time the producers came up with a knew story line.Tony Beets is a foul mouthed idiot whose brains have been passed on to his kids. Only Monica the daughter seems to be able to string a sentence together without sounding retarded by mumbling and excessive swearing. Engage brain before opening mouth. Although I don't get all hot over swearing, it is overdone and noticeable because of the amount of bleeping to cut it out. They sound uneducated and simple.Tony tries to sound decisive as if everybody jumps when he yells and he expects instant action. Such as when the engine seized on the dredge operated by Kevin (son). Asked what the F*** is wrong. Sons yells back I told you it was F*** stuffed and you need to buy a new one. How much father asks - $600K says son. Do it says dad and the next week and brand new custom engine appears ..... what? Then one of the engineers lets it slip it was ordered last year. Good God, how stupid do you think we are. This, of all of them is the worst crew for maintenance. A barge engine overheats and a larger coolant pipe is added to keep it cool. Shall we test it? No, lets just F*** go. And of course the pipeline is never checked and comes off just about seizing the engine. Between the equipment that fails and is mistreated because it doesn't get regular maintenance and the stuff this idiot gets built that doesn't pass compliance (the barge was a good one) I shiver at the amount of lost money. If he was the CEO of a company run by a board he would have been fired a long time ago.I gave this a 3 because it is one of the few programmes that makes me laugh out loud and that can't be all bad. But don't take it seriously. These people are too stupid to waste your energy on.

I started watching the series with I guess the same fascination many of us have: the interesting and daring abilities of man, the perseverence and excitement in achieving success. After a few series, I realized that this series is the representation of Evil in its purest form: the American Dream gone bad.. The financials of a gold-digging business consists of cost and revenue: the struggle is about earning more than spending on equipment and manpower. And while it seems useful for the sakes of employing people, the net sum is that there is no practical use whatsoever of adding gold to the existing gold in the world: the enormous sums of gold that exist currently are not even fractionally being used for useful purposes, such as healthcare equipment or R&D. Most of it is used purely for speculation or totally useless consumer goods we could live without, or for which alternatives could be developed from other materials than gold. But the result of the gold digging business is, almost equal to the enormous amounts of money earned with this rare metal, the enormous pollution caused by the machines that work on digging it out and dredging, not to speak of the maintenance of these machines and even more pollution creating them for this purpose. And given the relative cheapness of oil compared to the value of gold, the volumes puffed away are enormous. Not to forget the accessability of gold: trees destroyed, creeks diverted, top soil removed which we are in dire need of to sustain nature, and the non-mentioned chemical treatments that many companies use to make the gold even more accessible. And all this for what? To give some punters the chance to get rich. What a noble cause.. Which brings me to the second, human aspect: the way these miners are portrayed. Their lifestyle and attitude towards other fellow humans. Moreover, towards those who make them rich. Here, the operation owners show their truly dark side: the hypocrite quasi-Christian praying of the simple-minded Hoffman, who behaves as if it is an unjust act of God if he does not get rich from gold digging, while he obviously has no clue of the business and most likely never made a profit, were it not for the heavy royalty money he gets from the producers of the series. Does God exists for the purpose of bringing them gold, as if the entity were some servant that does favours?.. Followed by the ego-centric Schnabel, who instead of learning humanity and humility from his late grandfather, has learned to become a self-appointed prodigy for the sakes of showing his merits, walking over his loyal men at any given occasion with the fury of a 5-year-old deprived of his toys, while immediately deserting them when a new kid comes around the block who kisses his *ss and hisses as a snake in his ears. No spine whatsoever, in the business pour l'art and would not survive either, were it not for the parents offering him this opportunity to play with toys. Last but worse, Mr Evil himself, the peasant Dutchman turned dictator, Tony Beets. The style is the man himself: hates the world and everything in it and the only God for this man is money. Treats everyone who works for him worse than slaves, including his own children who hate him and just see him as a fat wallet, just to compensate for his lack of self respect, justly knowing that someone like him should never be in a position of power, due to his sheer destructive manner towards anything human. The three flawed characters represent the American Dream gone bad: no noble cause, exploiting the opportunities offered in the worst possible way, people that serve them and destroying nature along the way. We watch with fascination, as if a dark drama is being presented that never ends, always waiting for liberation when finally their success may turn them into the good people we hope they really are deep within. But the fact is, the evil in them grows along with the purpose of the business and will never lessen. Their success will only justify their methods and the spiral never ends. It is up to us to decide whether we realise the sickness of it all and learn the lessons taught: what to avoid in our ways at all cost, how not to live our lives and finding real purposes instead of these people's meaningless goals. The sad reality however is that the producers do not make any attempt to offer this choice: no contemplation, no retrospect, no reflection. The series is shallow and is lost in the mechanics of the business, in the details of „thrills and tension" whenever a new human bond is tested or broken, due to the inherent risks of the ventures. We are left to our devices to learn and most of us probably are led to believe that the acts are heroic and for worthy causes, just another aspect of a twisted world. The producers would have a powerful means to reflect on the sickness of it all, instead they exploit the weak human interest in sensation and drama and encourage drama to portray twisted minds as heroic acts of perseverence. Either they are pathetic or plain dumb. The series is a human fail and should be taught in schools as media manipulation first degree. The actors should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity, the producers sent to detox to get rid of their perverted minds. Meanwhile, stay sane and use your heart when you watch this garbage. The real world is not like this, don't let it become like it by accepting lies as the truth.

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.

What appears to be a group of six novice miners searching for gold in Alaska is actually a produced TV program paid for by sponsors. All the desperation of mortgaging their lives, taking a great financial risk, and possibly failing in their efforts to make money are all fake.In the fist season they only found 14 ounces of gold worth about twenty thousand dollars but in actuality each minute of commercials probably brings the production company about that much money so everyone in this production is doing quite well. Unless you want to believe the miners (actors) agreed to act for free. YEAH RIGHT!Each miner (actor) is probably being paid about thirty thousand dollars per episode to act desperate.