Gold & Greed: The Hunt For Fenn’s Treasure, directed by Jared McGilliard, is a three-part docuseries that examines the frantic years-long search for a treasure hidden somewhere in the Rockies by Forrest Fenn. In 2010, Fenn, a Santa Fe-based art dealer and former fighter pilot, decided to put somewhere between $2 million and $5 million worth of gold coins and other valuables in a box and hide it somewhere in the wilderness.
GOLD & GREED: THE HUNT FOR FENN’S TREASURE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Scenes of the Rocky Mountains.
The Gist: At the time Fenn hid his treasure, he was 80 and had been diagnosed with an advanced form of cancer; he figured he’d die next to the treasure. But when he recovered, he decided to self-publish a memoir, thinking that the best way to attract readers is encode directions to the treasure within a poem in the book.
By 2013, Fenn’s story got national attention, with the adventurer making regular appearances on the Today show to give new clues. Hundreds of thousands of would-be treasure hunters started swarming the massive Rockies region.
The first episode follows three such hunters: Justin Posey, who trained his dog to sniff out the brass that the box was made from; retired engineer Cynthia Meachum; and The Hursts, a father and two sons who lived near where they thought the treasure was. All three interpreted the poem in ways that sent them to wildly different places. Also interviewed is Ben Wallace, who wrote a story for New York about the hunt after the treasure was finally found in 2020, shortly before Fenn’s death.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Gold & Greed has the same irreverent tone as docuseries like Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?
Our Take: The idea behind Gold & Greed: The Hunt For Fenn’s Treasure is to illustrate what Posey explained was apophenia, which is the tendency of the human mind to find patterns that aren’t actually there. Fenn didn’t help during his many media interviews by throwing in clues and things about his nature that may have thrown people off the trail, but as we saw from the three treasure hunter groups interviewed in the first episode, it was easy to read too far into Fenn’s poem and interpret it in many different ways.
The search became a frenzy, with people searching in rough terrain and weather when they were not prepared to do so; several people died while searching, which brought heat on Fenn to reveal the location. The deaths are treated with the proper reverence, but it’s part of the overall picture of just how crazy people’s theories about the treasure’s location became the longer it was still out there.
By focusing on three sets of hunters in the first episode, McGilliard is able to boil down exactly why the search took so long, without overwhelming the viewer with dozens of perspectives. Christopher Hurst and his dad were especially fun to watch, especially given the way they seemed to talk simultaneously like they were twins. We also loved it when Christopher said “We’re rednecks, but not stupid rednecks.” Meachum, an active retiree, got to know Fenn personally. Posey, a software engineer, created a program to analyze microexpressions Fenn made during his interviews to see which ones were truthful or not.
What intrigues us the most about this story is just how the treasure was found, and later rehidden for a whole new group of treasure hunters to find.
Sex and Skin: None.
Parting Shot: “My advice is that if someone gives you a ticket to ride, take the ride,” Posey says about this adventure.
Sleeper Star: We want to see the Hursts for the entire three parts of the series.
Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find; in fact, we enjoyed how each of the three sets of treasure hunters were represented on a map by symbols: A camera for Meachum (she used to work for Nikon), a dog for Posey and a pickup truck for the Hursts.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Whether you remember the search for Forrest Fenn’s treasure in the 2010s or not, Gold & Greed: The Hunt For Fenn’s Treasure is a fun three hour look back at just how crazy the search was — and how it might be crazy now that it’s been hidden again.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
The post Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Gold & Greed: The Hunt For Fenn’s Treasure’ On Netflix, A Docuseries About A Real Life Treasure Hunt For $5 Million Worth Of Gold Coins appeared first on Decider.
