The Chris Doumitt Moment That Went Too Far On Gold Rush
While various cast members have come and gone from gold mining reality series "Gold Rush" over the years it's been on the air, former carpenter Chris Doumitt has stuck around since its very first season. As viewers are well aware, Doumitt has a colorful personality, including, for example, his love of cigars, which led him to start his own cigar brand.
In one standout moments from throughout his tenure on more than 11 seasons on "Gold Rush," Doumitt helms the repair of one of boss Parker Schnabel's pumps. The Schnabel team then uses that pump to secure an amount of gold worth a grand total of $600,000. So, while Doumitt may have started "Gold Rush" as an amateur miner, his expertise has become critical to this and other big moments over the course of the series' run.
That said, Doumitt's personality has earned him the criticism of some "Gold Rush" fans on at least one occasion, where he perhaps took what he may have thought was a lighthearted joke a little too far.
Chris Doumitt jokes about face masks
In a thread shared to the "Gold Rush" subreddit titled "Doumitt and his clueless comment about masks and farts," user FortCharles recounted how in a Season 10 episode — likely filmed around the start of the ongoing pandemic's prevalence in the US — Chris Doumitt questions the efficacy of face masks. "While wearing his joke cigar mask, [he] made a comment to the effect that farts go through underwear and pants, so why would anyone think a mask really stops the virus?" they wrote. "Don't listen to Doumitt... the producers shouldn't even have let that piece of bad advice make it on the show." Their thread was upvoted 29 times, indicating that a number of their fellow users agreed that the moment likely wasn't worth including in the episode.
In response, user Bamrak commented, "Taking advice from a gold miner about Corona is up there with taking advice from people on Facebook and Reddit." That comment was upvoted more than the original post.
While outside of the context of a TV show this theoretically could have been either genuine inquiry or a crude joke shared with friends, it's not so much Doumitt's question as the fact the show's producers included it in the final cut of the episode that drew criticism from these and other Reddit users. Nevertheless, this is arguably the Doumitt moment that most took things too far from throughout "Gold Rush" history.