[pensive music playing]
[narrator] Mining for gold on the Bering Sea
is all about dealing with pressure.
From the money...
Where's the gold, Mr. Gold?
Hand over fist hemorrhaging [bleep] money.
[narrator] To equipment...
[Kris] There's the new excavator.
Yeah, baby!
[narrator] To dealing with crew...
No bueno.
You know, if you're down here a little bit
and taking care of things like I asked you.
[narrator] It's enough to break
even the toughest miner.
It's starting to stress me the [bleep] out.
[Kris] I don't know what to tell you.
[bleep] man.
[Scott speaking]
[Vernon] I'm not out here
to [bleep] work on boats
all the time and scratch my ass.
[narrator] Now, as the stress of the season
reaches a fever pitch...
Come on, Kris. We're back!
Whoa! Medic.
Yee-haw!
[narrator] Who can keep their cool?
Reaper Nation [bleep].
Oh want an end to [bleep] now.
[Chris speaking]
[narrator] And who will wind up in the danger zone?
[Chris screaming]
[dramatic music playing]
[upbeat music playing]
[Andy] So what's the plan, Kris?
[Kris] Plan is simple. Get this thing in the water.
We just gotta keep pushing hard on everything.
Everything we gotta push hard.
[Andy] Well, I'm just ready to go in the water today.
[Kris] Okay. Good.
[narrator] This summer,
perhaps no one in the fleet
is feeling the pressure more than Kris Kelly.
[Kris] So is the pump engine inside mounted and everything?
Everything's all mounted.
[Kris] Mounted, tied down,
- everything welded into place? - Yup.
So far this season, we're coming nowhere
near our goal and it's making me nervous.
That's why today is huge.
Today, we're gonna turn this season around.
We're finally getting the all-in in the water
so we can finally get that crawler making gold.
That boat, I had to re-outfit the whole thing.
This is the centerpiece of my plan
to finally build an empire
and I'm stoked it's finally happening.
[Kris] We'll start just going through systems,
- getting everything running. - [Andy] All right.
[Kris] Andy's been working on it
and he said it's good to go.
I pray he knows what he's talking about.
[Kris] Daniel, start up the engine.
It's not charging. It still says zero.
So this battery's [bleep] dead.
[bleep]
When I put that battery on,
it was fully charged.
Okay. We'll get another battery.
Try to do it fast.
[Kris speaking]
[Andy] No. All that [bleep] I was gonna do that
on the water once it was in the water.
I don't even know where the TVs are.
[Kris] I told you to do that last week.
I want these edges cut off
so we can keep the little tips.
This whole nozzle part is coming off
and I'm replacing it with one inch bigger.
So we'll move more ground.
I told you to do this [bleep] last week.
You know, if you're down here a little bit
and taking care of things like I asked you.
So shock of all shocks.
There are tons of things
that's not ready on the all-in.
This can make or break our season right now.
And Andy's basically dropping the ball.
[Kris speaking]
[Andy] I'll go do that now.
I just hope he's more on top
of everything when it comes to the crawler.
Stand back, everybody.
That's good.
Andy, start the machine
so I can see what's going on.
[Andy] That's forward.
[Kris] Okay. That's the left track.
Okay. Let's see the next one.
[Andy] That's the second.
Okay. Try to move the nozzle.
[Andy] That's the nozzle.
[Kris] That's impossible.
That's one of the tracks moving.
I don't know why that is.
Well, here's the winch.
[Kris] The track's moving again.
I don't know what's going on.
How can every one work the tracks?
Yeah. I don't know, dude.
Well, if you were here more than [bleep]
one second, you know.
Well, if I go to use my winch,
it moves my track.
If I gotta lift my nozzle,
it moves my track.
[Kris] Am I [bleep] in trouble?
I don't know what's wrong.
Everything I've been working
towards is basically a dumpster fire.
And my brother never took the time to test everything
to make sure everything is working.
My brother clearly doesn't care about this like I do.
So once again, I'll do it all myself.
This is what I think is really what's going on.
So, you know, they...
The hydraulic fluid comes in
and it flows through all of 'em.
And when you pull on one,
that's when it diverts the hydraulic fluid
to that control.
So what's going on is,
it's not working.
[Kris speaking]
[man] Yup.
[Kris speaking]
[man speaking]
[Kris] You didn't notice [bleep] half a gallon
of [bleep] hydraulic fluid
pissing out of this [bleep] thing?
To be honest, I thought that was water.
- [Andy] There was, like-- - [Kris] You know what?
[Andy] Jeez, there was already hydraulic fluid there.
[Kris] I know, but if you would've spent a little time
on something that I made, that's a me thing,
you know, like [bleep] I don't know what to tell you.
[bleep] man.
But everything is gone to [bleep] over here.
[tense music playing]
[Kris] Unbelievable.
I thought today was the day
we're getting the crawler in the water,
finally unleashing my grand plan.
It's heartbreaking.
I'm gonna go on the Mistress
to try to get as much gold as I can
'cause we're in real trouble right now.
And I hope Andy can get his ass
in gear to get this system running as soon as we can.
[bleep] man, I told you a week ago
to check on this hydraulic system.
I hope after I get back from work today
after working 12 [bleep] hours,
I see something done.
This whole thing is[bleep] ridiculous.
[upbeat music playing]
[narrator] Just down the road...
[Chris] I'm ready to go. I'm just gonna go do it.
[narrator] though his season started off hot,
today, Chris McCully is a captain without a crew.
Last night, I had Cam and Bobby
work till like 12:30 a.m.
It's early in the morning right now.
There's no way they're awake, so
in order for me to get my dive in,
I need to find that fourth guy,
that tender dude.
To make the most gold possible,
I had Cam and Bobby dive last night.
So basically I don't even have any crew this morning.
I've been calling all over town
to find a tender,
no one would answer their phones.
I'm not blowing a day without diving.
Today, I'm gonna do something pretty insane.
I'm gonna dive solo.
I need a tender.
I've been blowing up all my contacts
and I can't find one.
But I'm not gonna let my day
be done just because I can't find a tender.
So I'm gonna go out there, I'm gonna do my dive,
I'm gonna put that dredge back on the gold.
That's the plan.
I'm ready to go.
The good news is,
I've got the most advanced dredge in the fleet.
Because of the Tata's hydraulics,
it's built for the one diver.
But really there's a huge risk.
There's no one to call for help.
There's no one up top to pull you up
in case of emergency.
And if you get tangled in between the lines,
and there's no one out there to help you.
You are truly on your own.
There's no one else.
Your life is literally in your own hands.
Here we go.
[tense music playing]
I know I'm taking a big chance.
I'm determined to make
that 300-ounce gold this summer.
And I'm not gonna pull that off
by just watching from the beach.
I can't find any help,
so let's roll some dice.
Looking for good help is difficult.
I don't understand.
Maybe I'm just an [bleep] you know.
Maybe they don't wanna work with me, so...
[laughs] I don't know.
Is it me or is it them?
[engine revving]
[tense music playing]
Oh, yeah. Look at how beautiful it is.
It's a good day.
All right.
I'm gonna go check this box,
see how the boys did this morning.
This is not gonna cut it.
We did like almost 12 hours yesterday
and the box is still kind of mediocre.
I think we could do better.
So I think I'll just make the initiative to go...
I'm gonna go try another spot.
I wanna go that way a little bit
because Bobby said last night
he ran into some worked ground ahead of us.
So we're gonna stay away from that worked ground.
[tense music playing]
The gold from last night
isn't really meeting my standards.
So I'm gonna start moving to the west
where I think there's a better chance
for fresh ground.
I'm gonna get ready to drop my anchor here
and I'm gonna get suited up, look for gold.
[machine whirring]
[tense music playing]
So [bleep] yeah.
[tense music playing]
Whoo!
[Chris speaking]
[dramatic music playing]
[Dave] How does it look out there?
- [Shawn] Looks good. - [Dave] Is it?
It's working like it's supposed to now.
- Can't wait to see it. - Yeah.
About [bleep] time you got something.
[narrator] A surprise visit from business partner,
Dave Young, has Mr. Gold suddenly in the hot seat.
We need something good to happen here.
It's about time.
This season's been one of the roughest
I can remember.
Gold's coming in
but we're way behind the pace
that I need to hit my goal.
It won't be easy.
I'm aiming for the biggest haul of my career.
He brought some nice weather with him.
I always do.
Every time I come, it's nice.
When I leave, it turns to [bleep] every time.
A couple years ago, Dave Young
was my main competition in Nome.
[man] Shawn, there you go.
New Mr. Gold in town.
[Shawn] But we ended up making a deal
and I took over the captain's chair
of the Myrtle Irene.
This is my third time refittin' this.
Just think about it.
[Shawn] Dave partnered with me
because he knows I can get the gold,
but he's pissed about the poor output this season.
That's why he came out here.
And if he doesn't see results,
he could kick me off the Myrtle.
[Dave speaking]
[Shawn] We're gonna take Dave out to check the box.
Hopefully, there's some gold in there.
The night crew's been out.
They hit a new stretch of the channel
that we've been on.
They think we finally tapped into some really good stuff.
I'm gonna take Dave to check it out.
I really don't like being babysat like this.
But hopefully, he'll see enough to get off my back.
[tense music playing]
Yee-haw!
[machinery whirring]
[Shawn] Not good.
Go on the hunt there.
[Dave speaking]
Where's the gold, Mr. Gold?
Should see more than that in there.
Dave come out,
he's hovering over my shoulder
wanting to see some big results.
And it's not there.
We got two layers of carpet,
so when we wash it down,
we wash all the silt out
and let the gold go down to the bottom.
When we pull these, we should see quite
a bit of gold in there.
If we don't, we're doing something [bleep] wrong.
[Dave] Yeah. Hopefully, it's on the bottom.
[Shawn] Is there some gold in the bottom of the mats?
For sure. But is it the big haul I need?
No.
This isn't gonna keep the wolves at bay.
[bleep] I was hoping it'd be lit right up.
[Shawn] Yeah.
[Dave] We'll see what happens.
[Shawn] I'm gonna move the Myrtle
to a real deep part of this channel.
It could be untouched
and hopefully it's the sweet spot
I've been looking for.
We need to satisfy Dave
and make that box sparkle
like a Christmas tree.
If not, my days on the Myrtle could be numbered.
Time to go find some gold.
[machinery whirring]
Shawn's just spinning us around,
so we go out deeper.
[machinery whirring]
We got into this channel
of big black gravel and big rocks.
If we can get into that,
then that box will light right up.
All right. Let's fire up.
[machinery whirring]
We're going diggin'.
[Shawn] We're back to huntin'.
Figure out where we're going.
There's a hell of a paystreak that ruts out right there.
It's a little deeper. Now we need to find it.
I need gold.
[narrator] While Shawn's feeling the heat...
[upbeat music playing]
[narrator] Back in the harbor.
[Vernon] Blue skies, blue seas,
what a... Yeah, nice day.
[narrator] Vernon Adkison's looking to finally get hot.
Gold down there on the bottom of the ocean just...
I can hear it right now. It's calling my name.
So far, this summer's been a giant bag of turds.
Every day, just another bite of out
of a great [bleep] sandwich in the sky.
If it continues like this,
there's no way I can get my underwater crawler
up and running by the end of summer.
Hell, I'll be broke.
But I'm getting this ragtag team in shape
and I feel like things
will finally be coming up Vernon.
It better because right now,
we're nowhere near hitting our goal.
And we're going back to that same spot we were...
- [man] That whole-- - ...that we were yesterday,
do some more serious prospecting.
We're sending Scott down first.
It's his turn.
Suit and boot time.
Really, we ought to send him down
first every day
because he's the experienced diver.
It's more likely he'll put us on the gold
and that might become the rule around here.
Scott goes down first.
[upbeat music playing]
[Vernon] We're here.
Time to go get some gold.
Hopefully, we find some gold, yes.
[upbeat music playing]
[Vernon] Let's do it.
The engines are humming and the systems are firing
on all cylinders.
We're way behind where we wanna be.
So now's the time to put on our big boy pants
and just get out there and kill it.
We're rockin' and rollin' pretty good.
Come on, let's go up top and take a look.
Mother Nature's trying to kill my positivity right now.
It may be blue skies,
but that doesn't mean that the wind
is not kicking into high gear.
[bleep]
[bleep] dammit.
With swells like this, I'm sorry to say,
it looks like we may be
temporarily derailed once again.
[Scott] We had dead flat calm,
then, white caps. There we go.
[Vernon] Hey, all y'all, come on up here.
[tense music playing]
The damn weather forecast,
believe it or not [bleep] lied to us again.
[Vernon Speaking]
Yeah.
So, Kevin, why don't you shut the engine down
[bleep] all right.
[Kevin speaking]
[Vernon] The engine... The pump engine went down.
Things are starting to, like, snowball on us now.
This was supposed to be our big day,
but now it's going from bad to worse.
[Scott speaking]
The alternator just cooked.
I'm like, "Oh, this is gonna be like...
I'm gonna get like five, six hours...
[laughs]
[mimics buzzing sound]
Wrong answer.
I'm getting none.
It's not unusual in mining
to experience the domino effect.
Once one thing goes wrong,
it all goes to hell in a hand basket.
Tell me what happened to that alternator.
[Kevin speaking]
It's too bad about that damn alternator.
That's the third one
that we've blown out lately.
We blew two out last winter
and now we've just blown another one out.
It causes delays.
So the only thing to do is just
go on back to the dock, get the gear up.
There comes a time when you just gotta realize that,
you know [bleep] ain't going your way.
I've been doing this long enough
to know when my goose is cooked
and today it's well-done.
[groans]
Well, that's down.
We might as well bag it.
Let's go work under the calm water.
[Vernon] All right, pull it up.
The only feasible thing to do is to head back to town.
Everybody's getting frustrated.
You can't get the gold if you're [bleep]
damn having to deal with weather
and breakdowns every time you turn around.
Some days you get the bear,
some days the bear gets you.
[tense music playing]
[narrator] Throughout Nome,
the captains are feeling the pressure.
And in the harbor...
- [Emily] Just with you-- - [man] Hold it because we're gonna have
to lift the whole thing out.
[Emily] Real heavy.
[man speaking]
[Emily] Yeah.
[narrator] The Eroica team's trying
to put it all together
and kick it into high gear.
[man speaking]
All done.
This season we're in a tough spot.
We're starting all over again
and looking for a new dive team.
We set a lofty goal for the summer.
Winter tapped a lot of our resources.
Luckily, we found Mandy.
[Mandy speaking]
[Emily] Whoo-hoo!
There's a lot riding on her.
She's kind of the anchor for the whole team right now.
We've fixed the...
We've fixed the lay fly, we fixed the foot valves.
[Emily] Damn.
That's no bueno.
This is kind of out of nowhere and it's really bad timing
'cause we have literally no other divers.
She's probably gone for the rest of the summer.
It's a big blow to the season.
We were really relying on her,
puts me in a really bad spot.
You're doing awesome on the boat.
Obviously, you've always got a job if you wanna come back.
Super grateful for the opportunity.
It's been amazing diving with you guys.
Mandy's agreed to do one last dive
before she flies out tonight,
but that does present some complications.
We're going to what, 25 feet you said?
Yeah, about 25.
Your body needs to adjust
to surface pressure after a dive,
so going too high up in the atmosphere
like a plane ride too soon after diving,
you could blow an eardrum.
So she's gotta be on a really strict time limit.
[man] Three and a half hour dive hopefully.
[Mandy] Three and a half hour dive?
Okay. Just get, you know,
- last little-- - Last little hurrah.
- Yeah. - [Emily] Hell yeah.
Get a little bit of gold.
At least I go home with something.
[Emily] Hell yeah. No, I know.
- That's... - Memories.
[Emily] ...more than many who have come to Nome.
Yeah. [laughs]
Many have left Nome empty-handed.
- [Mandy] True story. - All righty.
Once Mandy leaves, I've got no divers,
so I need to figure out what to do right away.
In the meantime,
time is short, so I hope she's on hot gold.
All right. Let's go mine some gold.
It's Mandy's last day, so we're hoping
we can get her on some nice shining metal
before she leaves town.
[man] Drop.
[machinery whirring]
[tense music playing]
Mandy got on a nice pocket of gold,
so I'm hoping she can get down there
and suck out as much as she can
in the few hours she has left.
[Mandy speaking]
[tense music playing]
[Mandy] My last dive, guys.
Let's make it count.
[Jane] Have a great last dive.
[Mandy speaking]
[Jane] Whoo!
[Jane] Mandy, how do you find mining for gold
different from commercial diving?
[Mandy] I don't know if I like this
more than commercial diving,
but I definitely like it.
[Jane] Wrong answer,
you like mining better than commercial diving.
[Mandy speaking]
[Emily] Mandy, you love gold.
It doesn't matter if it's not the tropics.
Yeah, yeah. We're got to get her
in the spirit of things, you know,
she's too polite and Canadian.
- [Jane] I know. - She's gotta show some real,
like, thirst for gold.
[Emily] Mandy, how much do you love gold?
[Mandy] Do I love gold?
I love it.
I love the people.
I love the ingenuity of this industry.
- Nope. Nope. - No. No.
[Mandy speaking]
Boo. Boo.
[Mandy speaking]
Oh, oh, oh.
[Mandy speaking]
Wrong.
And you love gold.
[Mandy] Gold's pretty awesome.
There it is.
[Jane] Are you seeing any gold?
[Mandy] Right now, I'm just trying to clear away
a lot of that top sand, so I can see the rocks,
clearing a pit.
[Mandy speaking]
Yeah, there's some gold on top of the clay.
There's some gold.
You can see it right underneath
some of these rocks.
I love gold!
Yeah!
[Mandy] I love gold!
[narrator] Emily's team is on the gold.
But 12 miles west...
[Shawn] Where are you hiding?
[Shawn speaking]
[narrator] Shawn is still on the hunt,
desperate to save his season
and potentially his seat aboard the Myrtle.
We'll keep looking for it. We'll find it.
We'll get on it eventually.
[Dave speaking]
We need to find a lot of gold.
[Dave laughs]
[Dave speaking]
[Shawn] It's tough enough moving this beast around
on a regular day.
But it's even more nerve-wracking
having Dave looking over my shoulder,
checking out every bucket,
wanting to see gold.
The pressure is on big time.
Hopefully, we can find something here.
I don't know how many samples I've done now.
Here's another one.
[Shawn speaking]
[Dave] Uh-huh.
[Shawn speaking]
[Dave speaking]
[Shawn] Yeah!
We're back in business.
Finally. Thank you.
Thank you, Bering Sea gods.
Finally got into some good ground.
Now it's time to just load up the box
as long as I can.
Put a monster number on the scale,
put a big grin on Dave's face.
We've been dealing with broken spuds
and mechanical problems
and it's starting to stress me the [bleep] out.
Wanna get as much gold in the box as possible.
Every bucket adds a little bit more to that pot.
And right now the pot's pretty skinny.
So bada-boom, bada-bing, digging some gold.
[intense music playing]
[Kris] No more excuses.
This is our time to shine.
[laughs]
Yeah, baby!
Reaper Nation [bleep].
[narrator] After failing to get his crawler in the water,
Kris Kelly's not drowning in his tears.
Instead, he's unveiling
a brand new weapon in his arsenal.
This is gonna be a proud moment.
[Kris] Last year, this was a dream.
Today, it's a reality.
It's kind of just like a big toy.
Oh, I [bleep] love it. I love it.
So look, the underwater crawler
is not going in the water today.
And my brother's an idiot.
But there's big news in Reaper Nation.
Our brand-new
state-of-the-art excavator is here,
which is good 'cause the last one
was always giving us problems.
[engine choking]
[Kris] What [bleep] is going on? [bleep].
I thought this machine was gonna save my season.
We're gonna have a reliable machine
for the next 10 years
and with no excuses.
Hell yeah, baby!
Come on, Kris. We're back!
This bad boy is all part of my plan
for world domination this summer.
And with the all-in, I owe a lot of money
and that's why I need to get as much gold as I can.
So we have to kick into a higher gear,
like, immediately.
[man] [bleep] yeah, Kris!
[Kris] That thing is [bleep] vicious.
Eight feet longer in depth
and a half a yard bigger bucket.
I think it's [bleep] beautiful.
It looks like a Cadillac up there.
There's the new excavator on the barge.
Wow. I'm impressed.
[man] Yeah!
[Kris] Everything works great.
We got the new excavator on there.
I can feel the money that we're gonna make.
Reaper Nation is going to the next level
and we're gonna [bleep] take over this country.
Hey, come on. Let's get on the barge. Let's go.
The excavator's not the only thing that's new.
We got two operators, Joe and Carl.
But to work the Mistress 24/7,
we really need a team of four operators.
So we're bringing two new guys.
Well, one of them is not really new.
Our old operator, James, is back.
Don't spill any drinks in there.
The thing is [bleep] so new.
It's safe to say our working relationship
in the past has been good, bad, stressful.
James, how long until we go?
- Minutes. - [Kris] Minutes.
It's absolutely loaded.
This is definitely some of the better gold
I've seen in years.
[Kris] We're in it. We're in it.
[James] Hell yeah, of course.
Yeah, baby!
I'm going out with or without you.
Either you're getting on this boat
- or I'm gonna drive away. - [James] Then go.
You know [bleep].
We don't [bleep] want you
and this [bleep] bull [bleep].
Look, with everything I got going on this season,
I need a proven hand on that barge no matter what.
James brings peace of mind.
I know James isn't gonna [bleep] the boat up.
We also got a new operator, Otto.
We're gonna give him a shot and see if he's worthy
of Reaper Nation.
[Otto] Okay. We're ready to rock and roll.
[Kris] Let's do this.
Water's flat, nice and calm.
Looks like a beautiful day for mining today.
I'm excited.
Let's try out the new Cat today.
Let's see what this new Cat can do.
[upbeat music playing]
We're gonna get gold, I guarantee you.
That's... My specialty is getting gold.
This[bleep] will make money anywhere, you know.
It's nice to be back though.
[Kris] Yeah, buddy. I'm glad you're back too.
I really am. You know what?
You're gonna bring me peace of mind.
You know, that you're gonna make me feel safe,
that I can turn the boat over at night
and have that ship still get gold.
Okay. We're on our spot. Drop the spud.
[intense music playing]
[Kris] Let's start the wash plant up.
[machinery whirring]
[Kris] Okay. I'm up and running.
Let's go.
[intense music playing]
Did you see that?
Come on, James. Let's do it!
Holy [bleep].
He's gotta dump the material up there.
He's dumping some on the deck,
but it's a new machine.
He's getting used to it.
So we'll see what happens.
[Kris] Beautiful!
Now we can make some[bleep] money.
Every excavator's a little bit different.
James is gonna take a little while
to make things work
but James is rocking now.
[James] Yeah, this is nice!
[Kris] Now it's time to sit back,
relax and watch this gold pile up.
First pan of the day,
I just wanna see what kind of gold we're getting.
We got gold.
It's got 40 colors.
And that's all that matters.
I think James is gonna last for the rest of the season.
[man] I agree. We're killing it. Good job.
Good job? This is us.
Everything from today on will be amazing.
[narrator] While Kris relishes the return of a crew member,
across the water...
[Chris speaking]
Whoo!
[narrator] Chris McCully is relishing
being a one-man show.
[Chris speaking]
[deep thump]
[screaming]
[bleep]
Here's the problem with diving solo,
everything falls on your shoulders.
Even though I'm in underwater,
everything topside is also my responsibility.
If I had a tender,
he'd be the one to getting this jam out.
But without one, I have to stop diving, run up,
and try to ram out whatever's stuck in the jet.
[bleep]
[screaming]
I [bleep] called every [bleep] body in town,
asking to pay them on [bleep] day,
same day I would give him cash,
like 300 bucks for [bleep] sakes.
And I can't even find nobody.
And now I have a nasty jam in the jet.
I'm getting pissed off.
I'm [bleep].
[bleep] [bleep] you.
[bleep] stupid [bleep].
This really sucks.
No way I can get this jam out myself.
That rock is way too big and way down deep.
The gear has to be taken apart
and that is not a one-person job.
[slams]
So I'm gonna call my crew
and tell 'em, "Get out here."
Working solo is not cutting it right now.
[cell phone ringing]
[man speaking]
I'm out here by myself [bleep]
got a [bleep] stupid jam
and now I'm still [bleep] jammed up.
- [man speaking] - [Chris] Yeah.
I need you guys' help here
because I'm [bleep] sick and tired, dude.
[man speaking]
[Chris] Meet me at the harbor
as soon as possible, all right?
[man speaking]
This is the kind of gamble
that I took with being a solo diver
and this is the kind of thing that could happen.
Even though there's good gold,
it looks like that my gamble...
wasn't worth the reward.
I'm being punished.
Someone's punishing me right now.
I'm feeling [bleep] hopeless, dude.
[dramatic music playing]
[Mandy grunts]
[Jane] You doing okay?
[Mandy speaking]
Good. Awesome.
[narrator] Before she flies the coop,
Mandy Hammerson makes the most
of her last dive of the season.
Mandy's doing good.
She found some gold, sounds like.
Woo!
Her last dive, unfortunately,
but she's gonna have a taste of the gold fever,
so hopefully she'll be back.
She had to limit her dive
to three and a half hours today
because it's not safe to dive too long
before a flight.
- Let's wrap this [bleep] stuff up. - Okay.
Hey, Mandy?
[Mandy speaking]
[Emily] How fast can you suck up that paystreak?
[Mandy] I'm going as fast as I can now.
[Emily] Mandy, I know it sucks but
we've got to pull it.
[Mandy] No worries.
[Emily] I'm sorry you had to leave
that awesome paystreak.
[Mandy laughs]
[Mandy speaking]
[Emily] We're happy to have you, Mandy.
Mandy's gonna fly home to be with her family.
And she kinda leaves us in a tough spot
because right now, I don't have any other divers I can pull.
So it's gonna take a little bit of work
to get one up here.
I know. We're kinda back to square one.
[narrator] While Emily is losing a crew member...
[Chris] Bobby!
Come on, Bobby.
[narrator] Chris McCully is having
crew troubles of his own.
I texted Bobby. I can't wait for so long.
I'm wasting time.
I called him like 45 minutes ago
to get ready but...
I don't see him. Do you see him?
MIA.
Let's move on.
There ain't got too much good waiting for somebody.
Things are really screwed right now.
I really need a three-man team to get this jam out.
This equipment is so heavy.
But hopefully me and Cam can pull it off
but it's going to be dicey.
[Cam] Are you gonna pull the hose out first?
[Chris speaking]
[Cam] All right.
[Chris speaking]
[Cam speaking]
[Chris speaking]
That's why I was like...
[grunting]
Doesn't wanna go at all.
[Cam speaking]
[Chris speaking]
That was a nasty jam. Sick, dude.
There's no way I could have got that one out myself.
Now, we're gonna have to attach the hose
and get back in the water.
Again, I really need three people,
but it is what it is.
Yeah.
[Cam] Yeah. Yeah. Go.
[Chris speaking]
Here you go.
[Cam] Okay.
[Chris speaking]
Yeah.
I knew we'd be able to get it with just two of us.
[Chris] After diving and dealing with all this,
I'm spent.
This day took everything out of me.
Cam's gonna go diving now
and he's gonna get us on the gold.
And, finally, Bobby got back to me.
Good news is he's ready to dive too.
So I'm gonna bolt to shore
and bring him right back out here.
Hopefully, we could salvage something for today.
But I gotta be honest,
I'm not really so sure
if I'm gonna be diving solo again.
Follow that track.
It's gravelly.
- Hard-packed gravel. - All right.
And you see all the coarse pieces in there,
it looks pretty good.
You know you're there when you hit it.
I'm like--
Dude, put all these in your pocket.
- What? Those rocks? - Yeah.
[chuckling]
Yeah, buddy. Get money.
Okay. What a day, man.
Cam's down in the water.
I'm all ready to go back home.
I did what I could do.
So let's go pick up Bobby and then we're out of here.
All right.
Even though it started off a [bleep] morning,
at least, I got the boat back on the gold, you know?
So Cam's diving down there and I'm ready
to pass this skiff on to Bobby.
So I did the best I can today, so I feel better.
I feel comfortable leaving them
on this spot, so...
Here we are, pulling up.
Mr. Bobby!
We're onto something, dude.
I got into some really good ground.
- All right. - So I moved the boat
- completely booked because... - Okay.
...this morning I checked the box
- and it is just completely... - Yeah. [exclaims sadly]
...disheartening, you know?
So stick through the cracks.
Just keep moving.
Once you get into these cracks,
it pays so much in that little cracks.
- [Bobby] All right. - [Chris] All right, buddy.
- All right. - Kill it, man.
- Love you, bro. - Okay.
I got a nasty jam, you know, but I'm so lucky
that I left the boat on a good ground, you know?
So that's all that matters.
At the end of the day, these guys are gonna suck up
some more gold tonight.
Wow. I got punished today.
[dramatic music playing]
[Kris] The new excavators, like, begins tonight.
It slices and it dices.
[man] James doing his job. He's doing good.
[Kris] It's good, man. It's all good.
The sluice box is handling it too.
[man] Oh, yeah.
[narrator] The arrival of a new excavator
and their former operator, James,
means more material is arriving
in Reaper Nation's sluice box.
[Kris] Yeah, baby.
[man] That's unbelievable.
[Kris] I love it.
Let's put him on the stopwatch.
We wait for him to stop dumping
and then as soon as he starts swinging, we hit start.
Okay. Now, we see how long it takes him
to do a cycle time.
Thirty-four seconds.
- That's [bleep] good. - That's good.
That means we're moving
about 90 yards an hour right now.
The most we've ever moved.
That's [bleep] perfect.
To run this operation 24 hours a day,
seven days a week, I really need,
at least, four guys to pull this off.
I've got two already with Carl and Joe.
Now, James is back
and he's absolutely killing it.
Your cycle time was 35 seconds.
That's great.
You [bleep] killed it.
Wow.
[James speaking]
[Kris] See, we got gold all the way
along our first ripple,
all the way down to the fourth ripple.
Holy [bleep], biggest picker of the year.
Real dirty gold.
'Cause it's in there with all the black [bleep],
so that's why it's got black stuck to it.
But that's the biggest chunk of gold we found this year.
Okay. Get ready for a crash course in life.
Now, it's time to see how the new guy does.
Otto came up all the way from Michigan
to try out for me.
So let's see if he's got what it takes
to be part of Reaper Nation.
So do you know anything about gold mining at all?
[Otto speaking]
Okay. Beautiful.
That doesn't really matter, to be honest with you.
So, right now, we're actually lucky
there's gold as far as your stick can go down.
So all we're doing is just working an area.
Gold mining, and this operation,
especially, it's all about quick cycle times.
Under a minute.
So let's just see what you can do.
Let's start everything up right away.
That's sounds good. Thank you.
[machine whirring]
[Kris] Hey, we're ready.
So take a scoop
and let me see what we're working with.
Okay.
All right. We're gonna time this
and we're gonna start to see what his cycle time is.
[bleep]
I don't know why we're going so slow right now.
So there's a big difference between Otto and James.
One guy is superfast.
The other guy is extremely slow.
It's like having a 90-year-old
in the excavator.
[bleep]
[man speaking]
[Kris] Yeah.
I'm gonna get down here and I'm gonna put
a little bit of pressure on him
and we're gonna see if that helps out,
because I can't sit by
and just watch it keep going like this.
Swing this [bleep] faster, 'cause the truth is
you're about four times slower
than the fastest person.
So, you know, like 45 seconds
is the target time that we're looking for
and you're pushing over two minutes.
Okay. Good.
[machine whirring]
We're on gold, but we're just not moving
the volume of material that we need to.
So either he's gonna pick it up
or he's not gonna pick it up.
Nothing I could do.
But it's not looking good for me.
[narrator] As Reaper Nation stumbles,
back in the harbor...
[Vernon] It's extremely frustrating.
Yeah, it's, you know, a typical day in Nome.
[narrator] ...the hits keep coming
for Vernon Adkison.
It's not...
Today is a day we could be out dredging,
but I've got no divers.
You know what they say rolls downhill.
We've got an avalanche of that stuff right now.
We had an alternator problem
and then the waves were choppy for a bit.
Now, my lead diver, Scott,
has to attend to a family emergency.
That leaves me with one diver, Emil,
the kid who can't speak English.
I'm not sending him down
until I've got another diver on board.
It's just not safe.
Right now, I'm just dead in the water for divers.
Boat's ready to go. I got gold on my claim.
I get tired of doing maintenance all the time.
We're up here to mine gold,
not to never-endingly do maintenance.
I'm tired of doing frigging maintenance.
I'm starting to think that the Bering Sea gods
might not like me very much.
I don't know why.
I've never done anything to them,
except maybe try to snag some of their gold
and I certainly haven't poached enough
for them to be this pissed off.
Right now, the whole diver situation is up in the air.
I got a couple of possibilities.
[man] Okay.
[Vernon] But I don't have a guarantee
that they'll actually get their sorry asses here
and go with us when the time comes.
It's not the way it works with divers up here.
They're notoriously undependable.
It's always been tough to find help in Nome,
let alone good help.
And it's only gotten worse in recent years.
Time to run through the old Rolodex
and see if I can get somebody up here ASAP.
Really short on divers,
so I gotta make some calls and see if I can get
some divers headed this way.
Larry St. Clair, he was with me last winter.
[upbeat music playing]
Give him a shot, see if he answers up.
[phone line ringing]
[Larry] This is Larry. Leave a message.
No. Larry's not answering.
I could call the Garys,
OG and NG,
New Gary.
[woman] Your call has been forwarded
to an automatic voice message.
New Gary is incommunicado.
This is Gary Panos.
Old Gary.
[phone line ringing]
[woman] I'm sorry. The person you are trying to reach
has a voicemail box that has not been set up yet.
No Gary Panos.
I went right down the list.
[bleep] them divers.
It's getting me [bleep] damn aggravated.
I ain't dealing [bleep] all going on.
Every hour we are... we're not out there dredging,
it's costing us gold.
I'm not out here to [bleep] work on boats all the time
and scratch my ass.
Hand over fist hemorrhaging [bleep] money
and the boat's tied up here at the dock
when we ought to be out there dredging.
The thing I dislike most about gold mining
is depending upon divers.
Most of them aren't much more than glorified paperweights.
I wanna get out there and mine.
But you can't do it.
You can't go dredging without divers.
And that's another very good reason for me to get
my other rig put together.
This is exactly why I bought that crazy school bus dredge,
so that I can have a launch pad for the underwater crawler
and eliminate the diver from the equation.
The problem is I need gold to pay for that update
to the dredge, and right now I'm stuck.
And if I don't start getting gold,
I'm never getting out of this mess.
It's becoming more and more apparent to me
that that's gotta be the way for me to go.
I can't always be at the mercy of these divers.
Goddamn divers.
[dramatic music playing]
All right. Here we go.
[narrator] Without a diver,
Emily's moving from sea
to land in her efforts to keep the gold coming in.
[Augie] Oh, we made it.
This is it.
- [Emily] Is there gold here? - Oh, yeah.
There's good gold here.
My options are limited right now
without a diver in town ready to go.
So, in the meantime, Jane and I are gonna try something new.
We're gonna go try a river out.
While we're down for divers, we gotta make gold somehow.
So this is the way to do it.
Has the... Has it worked before?
They did run some hydraulic lines back in the day.
My friend, Augie, gave us a tip
for a spot on Nugget Creek.
Some of the early miners found gold there
a hundred years ago.
So I'm guessing there's still some left
and we're gonna go find it.
[Augie] You guys can just go ahead
and work the spot right here.
[Emily] We can get into our wetsuits and...
- [Augie] Yup. - [Emily] ...wade around and dig some holes.
[Augie] Sounds good. I got the dredge up there.
You guys take it. Do whatever you wanna do.
Hope you guys find something.
I read a book about mining on the Bering Sea,
but I know absolutely nothing about river mining.
So I called up my friend, Pioneer Pauly.
Lift with your back.
Lift with your back, not your knees.
He's like a social media gold miner.
Like hits the rivers all the time around Vancouver.
He's gonna show us the basics.
[Jane] Everything okay?
- [Emily] Say that-- - I'm good.
[Emily] Emotionally or physically?
- Oh. - Medic.
[bleep]
There's definitely gonna be a learning curve,
but I'm up for it.
Up. Lift.
[grunts]
Okay. All right.
- Let's suit up. - All right.
Good job, team.
We're not diving down 30 feet
with hot water pumping through our suits.
So we're gonna get into some nice thick neoprene,
Jane and I,
and jump in the river.
- I feel like this. - Well, you look great.
The last person who wore that was my dad.
How do you feel?
Ridiculous.
All right. We all good to go?
- [Pauly] I think so. - Let's go pan some gold.
[Pauly] I just... I don't know.
Don't look at me.
[Emily] Go.
I'm fine.
Move along, Emily. Move along.
Everything is fine.
This feels good.
- I found something, yeah. - You think you found something?
Slaying it.
River dredging and ocean dredging
aren't that different, but... You know,
except they're like completely different.
You know, on the river, you're diving a couple feet,
have a little 4-inch hose.
You don't find the kind of hotspots that you see on the Bearing Sea,
but there is money to be made relatively quickly and easily.
- You look good. - I got it.
You got it.
Okay. It's not as bad as I thought.
[Emily] That's 'cause you're wearing a wetsuit.
No. There's a hole in my boot.
- [Emily] What? No. - [bleep] hole.
Okay. It's fine.
There you go.
- [Pauly] Hold that pan. - That's respectable, huh?
[Jane] So you wanna get by the bank?
[Pauly] When you see rocks that are packed in like that,
that means they haven't moved in a long time,
giving nature a chance to build up materials.
It's a good place to cast.
There's a hole in this mitten too.
[laughs] Oh, no.
- It's, like... Yeah. - [Emily] Do you wanna change?
No. Nope. Nope.
I'm happy to suffer today...
- [Emily] Aw. - ...because you're gonna get
a nugget and that's gonna be all worth it.
[Emily] Well, dammit, Jane.
[sighs]
[Jane] Oh, look at that.
[Pauly] I think there's a little piece of wire gold.
[Jane] I'm liking it.
We're gonna get gold. It's all gonna be worth it.
Should we move the dredge?
Yeah. Let's set the dredge up.
[Pauly] Good.
We found some traces of gold in the river,
which is awesome, and it was pretty easy,
but it's just nothing like what you see on the Eroica.
So we're gonna do a little dredging on the four inch
and see what's here.
Hopefully, it's enough to make some cash
while we're down a diver.
[machine whirring]
Maybe you'll see some gold.
Hopefully... I [bleep] hope so.
[dramatic music playing]
[narrator] Back out on the water...
[Kris] You're getting it under a minute,
so you're doing better.
Let's try to keep with that.
The cycle time is everything,
45 seconds would be beautiful
if you could make that happen.
Just do exactly what you're doing.
Simplifying your movements and trying to get
your cycle time 45 seconds.
Yup.
[narrator] After a shaky start
practice makes perfect may be the motto for Otto.
We're gonna time him again.
See how things would go.
[machine whirring]
Come on.
[Kris speaking]
Woo!
Yeah, baby!
Yeah!
Finally, we're really getting everything down.
I'm always in a better mood when I'm making gold.
- [man] Me too. - Yeah.
Right now I'm hoping for under a minute
and he's doing double that.
I gotta be honest, I was real worried
with Otto doing his first couple scoops.
But the guy's really working hard
to learn and improve, and, at this point,
he's as fast as James.
I may have hit the lotto with Otto.
[Kris speaking]
[man speaking]
[Kris] Yeah.
[man speaking]
[Kris speaking]
Oh, dude.
[Kris speaking]
[man] Yeah.
[Kris] You know, the pressure was on
and Reaper Nation came through.
With the team of operators we have,
we're gonna be able to run the Mistress
all day every day.
The dream is becoming a reality.
We're gonna be giants.
[man speaking]
[pensive music playing]
[Vernon] X-Wife?
That name has got to go.
That is a bad luck name.
[narrator] Down his lead diver
and unable to mine,
Vernon Adkison's focusing his efforts
on the future.
The reason we're on the beach over here right now
is because of that name.
I wanna rename it the El Dorado.
Oh, yeah.
It'll fit in there.
We'll sand that off,
we'll get some gray paint,
and we will perform the necessary ceremony
and rename her,
then she'll be a good luck boat.
Divers are killing me.
They're preventing me from getting gold right now.
That's why I got the X-Wife in the first place.
We need a strong rest of the season
to pay for the modification
we gotta make to the X-Wife.
Since we can't mine today,
I'm gonna rename the X-Wife
and see if we can't change our luck.
Changing the name on a boat is a process.
If you don't do it right, it's definitely bad luck.
It's considered to be bad luck
to change the name on a boat.
If you do it, you gotta do it right.
You gotta have a purging ceremony.
First things first,
we got to obliterate the old name.
Then we'll paint in the new name.
Then we will make a sacrifice.
And then that'll be it.
It'll be the El Dorado.
El Dorado is the mythical city of gold.
I've always said that
it takes gold to attract gold.
So I can't think of a better name
and I would love to see a city's worth of gold
in my sluice box.
All right.
Okay, guys.
That's good enough for the girls we go with.
I like that better than the X-Wife.
Okay. Let me go get some bubbly
to do the sacrifice.
[Vernon speaking]
We'll sacrifice some champagne to Poseidon,
the sovereign of the seas.
It's supposed to be...
from east to west,
from south to north.
And now we can have a toast.
Here's to the El Dorado.
May she bring us fair seas
and following winds
and lots and lots of gold.
Fingers crossed, we did everything right.
It's hard enough up here
without pissing off a bunch of sea gods.
Give her a little drink here.
With as few ounces as I have banked right now,
I need my season to turn around fast.
Hopefully, this is the moment that happened.
We got the job done.
Let's get out of here.
[intense music playing]
[narrator] Back out on the water...
[Shawn] This spot is exactly what we've been looking for.
Just about got a full cut done.
I have a feeling this is gonna look good.
[narrator] Mr. Gold is living up to his name,
scoring big when he needed it most.
[Shawn] This is looking good. We need to keep it up.
This deep section of the channel
is exactly what we needed.
I'm optimistic this ground is good.
This should get Dave off my back
and put us right on track
for the 3,000 ounce goal.
I just need Mother Nature to cooperate.
Weather is picking up.
I wanna get as much gold in the box as possible.
[Dave speaking]
[Shawn] Holy [bleep]
[waves crashing]
[Shawn] These waves are starting to get big.
[Dave speaking]
We're in a [bleep] I don't wanna tear
these spuds up again.
These waves are picking up real fast.
That could be bad news for the Myrtle.
We just fixed up these spuds.
The last thing I wanna do is damage them again.
Man, they're picking up pretty quick.
We're gonna tear the spuds up if we don't get out of here.
It's time to go.
It's starting to get a little rough.
I don't...
I'd rather not tear these spuds up.
Yeah, I think it's time.
Yeah, we got a few more buckets in.
Hopefully, put a little bit of gold in the box.
We'll survive to mine another day.
[bleep] around [bleep] around,
pretty soon you're not around.
The gods may have shut us down,
but I think we got some serious gold in the box
while we were at it.
Dave's here.
It'd be nice to see some gold.
Let's go!
[Shawn] Cleanup is the fun part of the job.
All right. That's all in here.
Real fine but it's in there.
Yeah, there's a bunch of them right here.
And a bunch there and a bunch there.
Pull these car mats and see what we got.
There's gold in there.
It should be pretty good.
[Shawn] There could always be more but there is gold in there.
How much? We don't know
till we're done doing the cleanup.
Time to clean some gold.
[Vernon] Sometimes I resort to having a cocktail
and trying to forget my woes.
[groans]
[narrator] And now another episode
of Social Hour with Vernon.
Let's see what the trolls have to say today.
At NoseHoseBlows...
I don't think I'm gonna give it to you.
What I really plan is I'll douse
that son of a bitch with gasoline.
I get out there about 4 or 5 miles,
out of the policing zone,
'cause I wanna be in compliance.
And then I'd torch that son of a bitch off
and go up in a blaze of glory.
[explosions]
[sighs]
I would if they wanted it.
Ah, hands off. I know how you are.
Everybody will get a taste.
Trust me.
They might be a little smarter
than all that.
Hug, hug, hug.
I don't know.
Either that,
I'll find myself a nice cave up in the mountains.
Go in there with my Harley
and my Indian,
all my guns, my dog.
I won't require my wife to go with me.
A couple of thousand years from now,
they'll open up that cave and I'll be sitting there
on my Harley, and they'll say, "Hmm,
he must have been a chief among his tribe."
[narrator] This has been another episode
of Social Hour with Vernon.
So we'll flip a coin and see how that works.
[upbeat music playing]
[machinery whirring]
[Emily speaking]
[Jane speaking]
I'd rather be out in the ocean, for sure,
but if we find gold here
when the ocean is pissed off, we can come out.
We can be making money inland.
[narrator] Without a diver,
Captain Emily and first mate Jane
are river mining
to try and keep the gold flowing.
[Emily speaking]
Jane is gonna take to river diving.
She doesn't even know it yet.
I don't get this diving thing. It's not for me.
[Jane speaking]
Yeah, your air looks good.
[Emily] So the good news is that we got Jane
into a wetsuit, which I never thought that would happen,
but she's probably not gonna be my new diver.
It just feels good to be putting
some gold in a sluice box somewhere.
[Emily speaking]
[Jane] Do you see some?
- [Emily] Yeah, actually. - [Jane] What?
[Pauly] Oh, we got... Oh, wow.
- [Jane] Hey. - [Emily] It's not that bad.
Yeah. That's cool.
- Oh, my gosh. - It's way better than
- I thought it would be. - Yeah, when I first started--
Oh, my God. There's one there, too.
Huh.
I'm surprised to see that there is
this much gold in the pan.
Knowing it's here, we can always come back
if mining in the Bering Sea isn't an option.
[Emily speaking]
Well, maybe we should just put another long day in here or something.
[Emily speaking]
It's nice to call an audible and have a payoff,
but this is definitely not the level of gold we need
to see this season to pay off some of our debts.
I've got to scour Nome to find new divers as soon as I can.
[Jane] This has been a really fun adventure.
[narrator] Back in Nome...
[Chris] The gold cube is primed.
All right. Let's try the first scoop,
see how she goes.
Yup. You see that?
- Yeah. - It's not bad.
[narrator] For Chris McCully,
it's the power in numbers
that did the trick.
And now he's hoping to see
a big one on the scale.
Even though we didn't have enough hours on this one,
at least, it's looking pretty good so far.
[Chris] Well, that's good to know.
So diving solo did not pan out the way I hoped.
In fact, I had to drag these guys out
in order for the day to count.
[man] See how that looks.
[Chris] Oh, okay. All right.
On the bright side, I was able to put us on some good gold.
We got three dives in.
Jury's out whether I should dive solo again,
but let's see what's on the scale.
I'm gonna weight it out in grams
and then I'll convert into troy ounces.
So here we go.
[man speaking]
[Chris] There's 30, 50,
60, 80,
131, 160, 190.
There's 200 grams...
225...
260.
There is 300. Okay. Nice.
Cool.
328 grams.
That translates into...
10.54 ounces.
Wow.
This is really, really good outcome.
[narrator] 10.54 ounces
banks the youngest member of the fleet
about $20,000.
- Wow. - Yeah, dude, I like that.
[narrator] And putting the band back together,
paid dividends for the McCully team.
In order for me to get more gold, I really
just have to come up with a better strategy
on how I can find these hardworking people
with me and showing up to work
and pounding their hours in the box, you know?
So the next round is gonna be bigger.
I want it to be a bigger cleanout.
- Thank you, man. Thank you. - Yeah.
- Thank you. - Thanks for showing up [bleep].
[laughter]
[Chris] It's never enough.
[chuckles]
[narrator] Down the road...
[Shawn speaking]
[narrator] After his latest run on the Myrtle Irene,
Shawn is looking to post the big number on the board.
[Shawn speaking]
The season's felt like a pressure cooker,
so it's nice to see Dave feeling good about things.
[Dave] Look at that.
[bleep]
- [Shawn] There you go. There you go. - [growls]
[laughter]
Hopefully, we break a hundred ounces
on the scale and there's something
to truly be smiling about.
- [Dave] Let's see how much. - Yeah.
20.
30...
40.
[Shawn] Here we go. Come on.
[Dave] 50.
Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
- 108 ounces. - [cheering]
[narrator] 108 ounces
is worth almost $200,000.
Get a picture of that.
[narrator] And Mr. Gold
may have righted the ship.
[Shawn] It's nice to see it pay off.
Definitely didn't come easy,
but we got our legs under us now.
We got some momentum. We're gonna keep going.
Pressure was on with the big guy here
and that's usually when I perform the best.
Hopefully, this gets us back on track,
but what's most important right now is Dave's happy.
Now, we need to keep this level of production
going the rest of the season.
[Dave] Let's fill that tomorrow, okay?
Two of them.
[Dave laughs]
Good job.
- Yeah. - [Dave] Thanks.
[Shawn] Now, it's time to go have a Crown and Coke.
- [laughter] - [Dave] Yeah.
[narrator] Shawn pulls away from the pack
with the biggest cleanout of the summer.
Next time on Bering Sea Gold...
Maybe I have like a... Kind of a gambler mentality.
I'm just all in, dude. Why not?
[Shawn] First time in shallow with the Myrtle,
up in here close to shore.
We don't wanna get stuck.
[man speaking]
[Chris] I'm out here by myself.
This is the borderline right here
and I'm pushing it.
[Kris speaking]
Nothing ventured, nothing gained.
[man] Oh, hit the deck!
What?
[dramatic music playing]