Gold Rush Fans Are Glad Season 13's Premiere Scaled Back On This Aspect Of The Show

After 13 seasons, fans of Discovery's "Gold Rush" have witnessed millions of dollars in gold be dredged up from the bottoms of waterfalls, abandoned mines, richly forested land, and other locales deep within the wildernesses of Oregon. Fortunes have been made, reinvested, and lost over the course of the show's history. There have been messy legal entanglements, sad endings, and new beginnings over the course of the show's multi-season run.

But there's always room for improvement, even when your show has a tendency to knock it out of the park ratings-wise frequently. As Season 13 dawns, some fans have expressed a bit of relief over this change to the show's makeup. It's a detail that has been bugging them for seasons, but the latest go-round has improved this reference trifold. Here's one thing fans of the show are happy that the series has decided to do less of this time out.

Heading into Season 13, Fred Lewis wasn't much of a fan favorite, something he seems to be very aware of. In February of 2022, he even read some mean tweets directed toward him aloud for Discovery's cameras. One big thing that annoyed fans of "Gold Rush" was the program's overreliance on referring to Lewis' military history as a special forces medic for The Green Berets. The show's narrator often referred to Lewis as an "Out of work special forces medic" or a "former Green Beret Army medic" in previous seasons, to the point that its audience began to rebel against the reminders. These callbacks became so notorious that a man claiming to be Lewis' stepson posted to the "Gold Rush" subreddit to defend the way Lewis and the show reference his military past.

Things have changed for Season 13. Posters on the "Gold Rush" subreddit replying to a thread for the Season 13 premiere, "A Seismic Shift," approvingly noted that there were fewer references to Lewis' previous job this time out and that the show's voiceover announcer modified Lewis' introduction. "The more they wind back the Green Beret nonsense the better... It's gold rush, not Soldier Soldier," said u/Xavilend. u/roj2323 noted that the announcer's description of Lewis has been somewhat truncated; he is referred to as a former Army medic instead of much more wordy references to his history as a Green Beret. "Honestly season 12 would be a hell of a drinking game if you did a shot ever [sic] time they said it," they added. u/Xavilend concurred, noting the show's producers had often repeated Lewis's backstory, perhaps to increase audience identification with him.

Will the change hold? That remains to be seen, but it's definitely a step in the right direction.