The Gold Rush Scenes Some Fans Find Awkward To Watch

By some metrics, Discovery's gold mining reality series "Gold Rush" is a considerable success. For example, in the years since its premiere, its core concept has been expanded to eight spinoff series in total, suggesting that many of its habitual viewers are invested enough to venture beyond even just the mainline "Gold Rush" show.

That said, plenty of "Gold Rush" fans remain critical of the series as well. For instance, some regular "Gold Rush" viewers have expressed not enjoying segments centered on somewhat recent addition Fred Lewis. In fact, some of those viewers revealed that they skip Fred Lewis scenes altogether. Furthermore, "Gold Rush" hit what could arguably be considered one of its lowest points when a clip show episode aired during Season 9, which is currently rated as the single worst episode of "Gold Rush" on IMDb.

Recently, some "Gold Rush" fans online similarly expressed discomfort about the cleanup scenes that cap off Parker Schnabel's mining expeditions in a given season.

In one notable instance of a "Gold Rush" fan sharing criticism of the series, Reddit user BuildTheBase started a thread on the "Gold Rush" subreddit titled "Those awkward Parker cleanup scenes are hard to watch," arguing that the cleanup scenes at the end of Parker Schnabel's various mining operations over the course of the series make for particularly awkward viewing. As hallmarks of these sorts of scenes, they listed Parker mumbling, Chris Doumitt hugging unenthusiastic team members, lingering tension with mechanic Mitch Blaschke, and "everyone laughing extra hard at Parker's jokes because he's the boss."

A response by user SomeOtherAdam, which was the most-upvoted reply in the comments section, similarly criticized these sequences, but for an entirely different reason. "I hate the weigh outs. Just tell us the results. Stop the counting: 10, 20, 30, ..., 659.43! Show us more about how they set the plants up (not just move them) and clean the gold," they wrote.

Meanwhile, some viewers took an opposing position, praising Parker's skill as a boss and leader. User Old-Lavishness-9546, for example, contrasted Parker's typically fruitful gold hauls with Todd Hoffman's meager findings after mining in the jungle.

Of course, as long as Parker remains a part of "Gold Rush," these sorts of scenes will most likely continue, to the apparent discomfort of the numerous viewers who spoke up in this thread.