Message #255547

[Valerie]

'The Curse of Oak Island': Slow Going
By Chris Conaton 5 January 2014
Excavations

Beginning 5 January, the History Channel offers a new entry into the stranger and stranger realm of “tough men” reality programming. As other cable networks have already covered crab fishermen, lumberjacks, truckers, gold diggers, gun shop owners, motorcycle customizers, and oil drillers, The Curse of Oak Island takes up treasure hunters on a small island just off the coast of Chester, Nova Scotia, about an hour’s drive from Halifax.

The first episode is a mixture of intriguing mysteries and frustratingly drawn-out storytelling. We learn the basics in an eight-minute opening sequence: Rick and Marty Lagina are brothers from Michigan who have been obsessed with the story of Oak Island since reading a Reader’s Digest piece about it back in 1965. Turns out that the island has a history of attracting treasure hunters that dates back to the late 18th century. At that time, a couple of kids discovered a hole on the island that contained wooden beams about 10 feet down, and every 10 feet after that. Stories about this hole spread, and over the centuries, many attempts were made to excavate it and all failed. Six people lost their lives in the attempt, and supposedly there’s a curse that says seven people have to die before the treasure will be recovered.

That’s a nice setup, but History attempts to spruce it up with over the top horror music cues, whooshing sound effects, and ominous graphics that inevitably fall flat because there is nothing frightening in the least going on in the plot. Interviews with Rick and Marty explaining the outline of the story and treasure possibilities—lost works of Shakespeare! Captain Kidd’s pirate gold! Artifacts left by the Knights Templar!—are intercut with scenes of middle-aged guys standing around a snow-covered island in February. All hope that an oil well drill comes up with some evidence of man-made material by digging close to the so-called “money pit.” At one point, one of the men says to Marty, “You know, we should be doing this in August and July when we’re not freezing our **** ass off! Whose bright idea was this, anyway?” Marty replies, “Well, you gotta do ‘er when you gotta do ‘er, you know?”

Shortly thereafter, the show cuts to its opening credit sequence and then picks back up with Rick and Marty returning to the island in mid-summer. Clearly, we’ve been watching an edited version of Rick and Marty’s “proof of concept” video that sold History on the show. The reason they were on the island in February is because they needed to get the TV show approved so they could go into full production during the summer of 2013. The fact that the seams are showing this obviously less than 10 minutes into The Curse of Oak Island’s first episode is not a very positive sign. Sure, viewers will likely wonder about the winter setting as well, but Marty’s non-answer might raise more questions about the intelligence of the entire enterprise.