Black Gold – truTV’s Actuality Series Returns

Returning for a second season last night, August 19th (new episodes airing Wednesdays at 10pm) is truTV’s Black Gold, the series that focuses on the lives of Texas oil workers.  Brought to you by the creator of Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch, Black Gold is another installment of the reality television genre’s most compelling efforts.  Being a roughneck is a job that perhaps does not get much respect, but these men are deadly serious about their work, and they’d better be, because one wrong move could easily cost them their lives.

This season the show focuses on three crews running Rig 28, and the first episode introduces a new man to the crew, returns a veteran to the rig, and lays out an impossible task the roughnecks will have to complete in order to save their jobs.

Veteran roughneck Gerald Williams gets Cheston a job, but the city boy has trouble adjusting to the work, and in the life-and-death, multi-million dollar world of the rig, they have a little different idea about “on the job training.”  New guys are thrown to the wolves, and better expect serious treatment.  A mistake (even by someone else) can ruin your whole day, and the intensity runs to the extreme.  When a veteran like Gerald yells at a new fish, it isn’t because he’s going to miss a sale at Macy’s.  It’s because he’s already missing the tip of his little finger, and there is no margin for error here in the really real world.  See the clip below.

Once you get past the training, you have to be ready for your employee review, which might come at you at any time.  I can tell you I would probably find myself in the same boat with Cheston here, largely because when the heat is on every second of the shift, there isn’t a lot of time to explain things.  Roughnecks don’t babysit, as Gerald explains at one point, and when the majority of the instruction you’re going to get is by way of the, “You better figure it out,” theory, the employee reviews can get a little rough.  See Cheston’s review below.

As if these roughnecks needed more pressure, they learn in the first episode that due to complications with a land lease, they have just 50 days to finish four holes.  It is readily admitted that this is a near impossible task, and impossible or not, according to Rooster McConaughey who is a veteran of the drilling world, “it’s never been done before.”  Not only does the amount of drilling required go beyond what seems to work out on paper, you’ve also got to build in time to move the 130 foot derrick somewhere.

An already tense routine that keeps everyone at their boiling point at all times is now turned into a situation that might even send the old hands into a tailspin as their extremely difficult “normal” job becomes Herculian.

truTV is making a big play to rebrand, or perhaps invent, a sub-genre of reality television which they want to call Actuality television, and Black Gold is a prime example of what the theory behind this move means.  Actuality television, or Real-Life television, is about creating something as near to a documentary as possible, while maintaining high levels of viewer engagement, mainly by way of the subject matter.  By contrast, reality television is actually staged and/or manufactured, whether it’s in the show’s initial situation design, or the work of producers manipulating what makes it to your screen.

Good, bad, or ugly, this is the real life of these men, and more importantly, these real people are “real” people.  The day-to-day lives of the rich and tedious might be interesting to some, but if you want to really explore reality, these are the shows you’re looking for, and Black Gold is one of the best.

Having already proved itself a winner with its first season, Black Gold kicks things up a few notches with its second run.  I highly recommend checking out the nearly unbelievable lives of these roughnecks.  If you’re a fan of Deadliest Catch or Ice Road Truckers, you should already be watching.

Take a look at this preview spot, and make sure to tune in Wednesdays at 10:00 pm.  In fact, you can schedule your Tivo recording here.

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