Previewing Black Gold

Black gold in a white plight, won’t you fill up the tank, let’s go for a ride. I don’t care ‘bout no wheelchair, I’ve got so much left to do with my life.

Black Gold is no longer just a rocking Soul Asylum song; it is now a reality show on TruTV. Excuse me, it is not reality, it is actuality as the slogan for the former Court TV goes. Of course both refer to oil. Now I am not sure if a show following a bunch of Texas millionaires drilling for the natural recourse when the national average for a gallon of gas just broke four dollars, but the show premieres tonight at 10:00.

The show follows three drilling rigs in close proximity in West Texas that all set up shop at the same time looking to find a pocket of oil two miles under the surface. The process takes about fifty days and despite the millions of dollars it costs to drill in each location, each rig is not necessarily guaranteed to find any oil. Yep, on of the reasons why oil costs so much because it is still a gamble to fins anything.

The Longhorn is the veteran rig, both in terms of the rig, it is sixty years old, and the men drilling. The Viking is the new kid on the block in its first dig but it is complete with new technological advances. The Big Dog is by far the most powerful of the three by twenty-five percent, but is also manned by the least experienced driller.

There is plenty of action on each of the rigs as they drill in extreme heart, high winds, and nasty rain storms. And there is also action that isn’t supplied by Mother Nature with a loitering company guy hanging out at one rig and one driller and most of his crew getting canned within the first episode.

The oil men have plenty of great stories, like the driller with hands that looks like your high school shop teacher who is in a club of only eighteen other people (ones who survived falling off the top of the rig), with as many bleeps per episode as The Osbornes. My personal favorite being Peanut, a worm (least experiences guy on the rig) who almost gets himself killed or fired multiple times in his first week on the job.

The show comes from the guy that brought us Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Trucker so if you are a fan of either; Black Gold should be right up your alley. But just some things you should know first, there has been a lot made of Matthew McConaughey’s brother Rooster being on the show, but Rooter is one of the guys on the rig but just a pipe salesman. Also no one promises to drink another driller’s milkshake up. But here is a fun fact: Black Gold isn’t the first time cameras descended on Odessa, Texas; the city is where the movie and book Friday Night Lights were based in.