The Worst Episode Of Gold Rush According To IMDb

For over a decade now, Discovery's reality TV show "Gold Rush" has chronicled the exploits of gold mining operations all across the continents of North America and South America. Despite its eye-watering episode count and numerous spin-off shows, the series' enduring focus on risky mining expeditions with high personal stakes for the crews has kept viewers coming back again and again. Simply put, the show's format hasn't gotten old for fans, and that isn't likely to change anytime soon.

But while "Gold Rush" has managed to provide a consistent level of intrigue and excitement for 12 seasons and counting, there was one particular episode of the show that didn't go over well with viewers at all, and stands as the worst outing of the series, as voted on by fans. One might expect that this episode in question was host to a controversial moment or a massive factual error, but the reason for its bad reception is much more self-evident.

According to IMDb, fans voted Season 9 Episode 17, titled "Gold Gurus," as the worst episode of "Gold Rush." The episode is currently rated at 4.3 stars out of 10, a far dip below the show's usual baseline of 6.7 stars. While this bizarre outlier in quality may be confusing for some fans, one need only take a single look at the episode's format to understand why it went over so poorly. As it happens, "Gold Gurus" is not a standard episode of the show, but rather, a clip show episode.

It's no secret that the clip show episode format is infamously dreaded among avid TV watchers. Episodes in this format, which are often simple compilations of scenes from previous episodes, have been criticized for breaking the pacing of the current story and rehashing old content so as to pad out a show's episode count. As such, clip shows have built up a fairly negative reputation as being little more than unnecessary filler (via The Independent).

"Gold Gurus" does very little to break the stigma surrounding clip show episodes. The episode is as rote as clip show episodes come, simply recapping the events of the season so far with a bunch of clips and giving a few brief previews of what viewers could expect from the rest of the season. It's simply not a very exciting episode, and it's easy to see why this was a moment that frustrated fans of the show.