Entertainment

‘Gold’ struck

Finally, the mad men of the Klondike, the desperate Hoffman family, have stuck gold. Literally.

On Friday night’s season finale, Jack and Todd and the crew, at the last minute, find that, unlike last season, they have actually turned a corner — and they do it on the very last day of the season.

How much and what happens you’ll have to see for yourself, but this finale is a nail-biter from start to finish.

As I was watching, I was thinking that, yes, there is a reason everyone loves this show, and that Discovery has just renewed it for a third season. And the reason is as simple as it is complicated.

The simple reason is that this series is primal. The complicated reason is that this series is primal. And that’s why it’s a huge success.

The “Gold Rush” guys are regular Joes who touch the souls of Americans because they are the successors of our predecessors — the crazy mountain men and women who risked everything, lived in mud and filth and danger to dig for gold in the 1840s and 1850s.

And despite the 165 years between then and now, the reason for their need to dig is the same: Desperation.

The Hoffman crew, headed by Todd and his father Jack, were the guys who last year sold everything — including the little airport Jack ran — to buy the excavating equipment necessary to stake a claim and dig for gold in Alaska when gold was at historic highs.

We watched as they endured unbearable hardships.

Yes, they have modern-day heavy equipment, unlike the miners in the 1800s, but the modern equipment comes with its own set of built-in hazards which are greater even in some cases than those faced by the original miners.

This season, the show followed three crews — the Hoffmans; Fred Hurt and his Dakota Boys, who stepped in and took the claim away and out from under the Hoffmans after they were thisclose to finding gold and young Parker Schnable, his dad and 91-year-old grandfather of the Big Nugget Mine.

This season’s finale — more dramatic even than last season’s finale — finds all three crews on the very last day of the season, as the winter approaches and the ground freezes, making digging impossible.

It’s the day for last resorts and dangerous chances. And all three crews take those chances and risk their lives and destroy hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment that can never be repaired. This is when each crew is already broke and unable to replace anything.

The thing here is that, unlike every other reality show that tells us that is “everything is on the line,” here on “Gold Rush,” everything is on the line.

Do the Hoffmans strike it rich or does Fred profit from their work? And what about the Schnables on the very last day before they head out?

Life in the bitter north is, well, bitter. But the rewards can also be very sweet — if very rare.

Bravo to the men of the Klondike.