America’s Toughest Jobs, Episode 3: Goldfingers and Cold Fingers

Previously on America's Toughest Jobs: Our 12 remaining contestants drove 18-wheelers 500 miles on dangerous Alaskan roads. Phil did well, Chris got thrown out of his truck, and Amy lost the final challenge.

This time? We're still in Alaska, but this time, we're lookin' for gold. We get a little lesson about gold, how for thousands of years it's driven exploration and war… and it also looked really good on Shirley Eaton. Well, they don't tell us that, but it bears stating.

Anyway, our 11 jobsters are in the Chugach Mountains in Alaska, having to survive the cold weather, raging waters, and hungry bears to mine a little bit of gold that they don't get to keep. Crossing my fingers for a bear attack… or one of the contestants to get his or her head stuck in a "hunny pot." Either way.

Josh Temple, dressed in a hideous orange and red jacket (Tim Gunn, where are you when we need you?), greets our little group in a little muddy clearing and tells them tens of thousands of ounces have been pulled from the clay at this spot. Gold's worth a lot these days, so looking for it is big business. But it's hard work – you can dig all day, and if you don't know what you're doing, it will all be in vain.

Sean and Nate of the Crow Creek Mine are introduced as his week's bosses. One of them actually does kind of look like a youthful version of one of those old-timey gold prospectors you always see. The contestants will be judged on teamwork, skill, and, work ethic.

Young Old-Timey Prospector Guy shows us what we're lookin' for: a 2.5-ounce gold nugget dangling on a chain, worth $2,300. The other boss talks about the dangers, including the risk of falling in the creek. Where I'm from, most creeks are harmless little paths of water, so saying that falling in a creek can be fatal sounds silly. This body of water looks more like a raging river to me. But if you say it's a creek, I guess it's a creek. The water at Crow Creek is about 35 degrees Fahrenheit, flowing from melting glaciers.

We're told that mining is still done the same way it was in the Gold Rush, with the little pans and all that, which is really kind of remarkable: with all the technological advances we've made over the years, we can't find a better way to look for gold? Wow. The contestants are shown how to get the gold to settle at the bottom of the pan, then empty the water and mud until the teeny, tiny little chips of gold are visible. The editors provide a handy little arrow on-screen showing us where the gold is in the dish, although it's really not all that hard to spot.

Chris, in talking about the freezing water, has the quote of the year: "There's a lot of coldness in those glaciers." Glaciers are cold? Does Al Gore know about this?

Ben follows it up with another brilliant quote: "Hypothermia and stuff is not a joke around here. You fall in that creek, if you're by yourself, you could be screwed." Thank you, Jason Castro.

After three hours, no one has found any gold, which isn't surprising since it's vastly outnumbered by the amount of mud you'll find out there. The handy arrow pops up to show us the first little bit of gold, apparently hauled in by Sandy. My, she's loud. She's also "bling-blingin'," she tells us.

Rick is next, and he says finding it makes him like "a big kid." He tells us that he was homeless and grew up eating out of Dumpsters, so his rough background gives him an adaptability he believes the other jobsters don't possess. If he finds several thousand more pieces, he says, he can build Mr. T "a nice little spot of bling." I pity the fool who says the word "bling" one more time. Michaela is also doing pretty well.

Rie, on the other hand, is having no luck at all. She appears to be a bit jealous of her neighbor Michaela, whom she calls "Ms. Golden Nugget." Phil tells us that patience is a virtue, and that gold mining is like playing the slots at Vegas – you keep pulling the handle until you hit it big. Except the slot machines in Vegas use mostly buttons now instead of handles, but whatever. Guess he hasn't been in a while.

The boss calls out Phil and Ben for not doing the job correctly. "A needle in a haystack is nothing compared to a nugget in a creek," Ben tells us. He seems to be having a good time, even if he's mostly unsuccessful.

And… Phil falls in the creek. He loses his bucket and runs after it as it floats away. Phil is safe – the water is just about knee-deep where he fell – but our narrator tells us that if the river were just a little deeper, Phil would have been in real danger. But through the magic of family-friendly reality television, Phil is totally unharmed. Imagine that. Oh, how I fondly remember Mike Skupin of Survivor – falling in the fire was a horrible accident, but it was a true unscripted reality TV moment. For a show about dangerous jobs, this just feels too sanitized to me.

Next up is setting up a tent for the overnight stay. It should be simple, says the narrator, but the jobsters are too tired and cold to perform the task effectively. To reference Survivor again, the scene really resembles those early season episodes where the castaways are trying to set up a camp and just can't get it together. The phrase "too many chiefs in this tribe" is overheard, appropriately enough. I guess this is what Survivor: Alaska might look like.

Boss Sean observes that the group finally figures out the meaning of teamwork in getting the tent together. Guess he spoke too soon – Rie and Bryce start going at it. Bryce says to pull a rope through a hole or something, and Rie sarcastically says, "Thanks, Bryce, I know." Then they kvetch at each other some more.