Reviews Of Blah: The Curse of Oak Island S05E03

Synopsis

New evidence of a European presence on Oak Island exhilarates the team, until alarming news threatens to shut down the entire operation.

What I thought

Craig and Jack visit the geologist they hired to go through the spoils from the Money Pit Geotech holes who is lurking nearer with his dishes of muck and stones. These Geotech holes go up to 200ft but so far they’ve only done 10 holes out of what I think was 40 odd. All the spoils from the drill holes come down shaker bed and get checked out by the geologist. A Plastic PVC pipe goes down to keep holes intact. In an area where previous treasure hunters say they encountered a vault and then a massive metal plate, the driller is at 165ft ish and there’s fragments of metal coming up in the spoils as well as it being impossible and harder to drill. They can’t get any further on this hole, so they stick the plastic casing down. To prove he’s a geologist and enamored only with rocks, the geologist completely ignores all the excitement of the metal finds that the gang are oozing over. Lol.

Rick, Marty and Gary the metal detectorist extraordinaire are on Lot 16 again. This are used to have spoils from the money pit dumped there in the 1960s when a previous treasure hunter dug a super massive pit which later collapsed. He basically just gave up and left the spoils behind. Almost as if by magic, Dave Blankenship appears from nowhere to join the three. The first find is a broken nail, and no, not from Gary’s fingers. Then things improve remarkably as they find two coins, which Gary thinks shows Charles II’s head on. That’s about 1660 ish; 1673 they reckon one reads. We then get reminded by our narrator of Captain Kidd, pirates and a few other random theories just to fill in time and make us all lick our lips. A quick trip follows to see Dan Blankenship to show him the coins. He’s pleased. So, English were there, Spanish, who else on this island? We’ve seen coins before. We all need to see something else that’s tangible, other than coins.

Politics comes to Oak Island in the form of a Heritage and Culture letter to Rick. Back in 2010, Rick and partners got a Treasure Hunting Act from the Canadian Government to essentially do what they liked on island (and hell yeah, they have!) except in sensitive areas like the swamp, coastal areas and a few small “foundation” areas. Seems them discovering these artefacts on Samuel Ball’s land last season has stirred a few at Heritage department. Most likely watching last season on TV has given some heritage people palpitations. Rick and Marty have a meeting with that department to find out what’s up and then come back to the pub to discuss with the others. Finally, some sense it seems is coming to proceedings. The heritage people don’t like the gang digging up everywhere like they have so Rick/Marty propose hiring an archaeologist to accompanying all future digs as a way to satisfy the heritage people. Whoop! This really should have been in place ages ago! All this random digging, even though there’s been years of it before, has always worried me. The next day after, archaeologist Laird arrives, who we’ve seen numerous times assist the team in past. He’s now on board and their official archaeologist. Yippee!

The next day, apparently, and Rick, Marty, Gary and Laird are at Lot 24. This is where they found those artifacts last season related to Samuel Ball. Uh oh, there’s some trees in the way, which means Marty is let loose with a JCB. Poor trees. Guess they aren’t important ☹ Could have been worse, at least it wasn’t Jack! The area would be nuked if he had the JCB controls. So, Gary goes searching. What do we find? A Spoon bowl, 18^th century. Ok, that’s definitely a spoon. Then there’s a lump of iron, which could have been for anything, before we find a bit of a plot. No, I mean pot. Things all add up to someone having been here at some point living. When they lift up another stump of a tree, there’s organised stones everywhere, causing Laird to blow his top and shut down any further digging. Rejoice for Laird! This guy is what they needed from episode 1 season 1 to be there lurking and checking everything out. Laird thinks this could be foundations for a house or wall. It’s something though for sure. He’s also got lots of red tags scattered over the area as if it’s a crime scene. I love this guy!

Rating 6/10 - Some 17th century coins aside, a possible house where Samuel Ball lived and some welcomed stringent archaeological presence on site, this episode makes steady progress towards some answers.