On Friday’s Gold Rush on Discovery, Parker Schnabel is up to some extreme measures that may very well alienate his core crew.
Parker has brought on a beautiful college grad named Jessica who has a pad in hand and a shiny new hard hat. The problem is that she has never mined in her life and her job is to rate the work and find the bottleneck in Parker’s team’s organization. This isn’t sitting well with anyone.
Jessica’s sole mission is to ensure the workflow is good at the plant and no one goldbricks — namely Brennan Ruault and the gang who pull paychecks from Mr. Parker Schnabel.
Her job is to help monitor the efficiency of the plant, which means the guys cannot screw up at all. This clip below is ahead of the episode that shows exactly how this goes over with Brennan Ruault, Bree Harrison, Aaron Bo, and the others. And trust us — it’s going to be a testy episode.
Now, on top of the stress of finding gold, the gang has to appear to be doing their jobs efficiently and are judged by a person who has zero mining experience and has no clue about what they do on a daily basis.
Opening the clip, Parker gathers his people who have smiles on their faces as they greet this newcomer. But that will change for the worse.
Parker says: “[This is] Jessica here she’s gonna be helping us with… really it’s about… just making sure that we’re staying efficient and we’ve got a lot to do this season. If you’re working hard you don’t have anything to worry about.”
When you watch this clip, pay close attention to the sunny smiling Brennan who jokes at first, but then the reality of the deal hits him like a ton of bricks.
Aaron says to Brennan: “Boy oh geez… Oh, Brennan, we’ve all got something to worry about!”
Jessica quickly senses the sea change of mood and assures them she is there to observe and just stay out of their way as she rates and ranks their work and output. It creates a lightning-fast exchange of glances among the team members as they finally get what the deal is. It’s insulting to them and they share their feelings with the camera.
As Jessica tries to calm the ranks, Parker cuts to the chase.
He says: “Yeah I mean… I’m not gonna sugarcoat it, she’s gonna be kind of up your sh**.” He later says, “It’s not that I don’t trust you it’s really that I don’t trust myself [and] we’ve got a mountain to climb this year and I want to find the best way to do that.”
Jessica is taken aback by his blunt talk. The two walk off as the core team retreats to their equipment, muttering under their breath.
She says: “Is it ever awkward if there is someone who is… I guess… being unproductive for a week?”
Parker throws down at this point. “Just fire them.”
She realizes now that he means business. “You don’t… you aren’t into redemption?”
Putting the Christmas bow on his new attitude, he says: “We don’t have time for redemption.”
Tune in to see how this goes over as the crew is working overtime shifts this season.
Gold Rush airs Friday at 9 PM ET/PT on Discovery.