'The Curse Of Oak Island' Season 7 Episode 8 review: Rick Lagina 'gobsmacked' at the team's new discovery
After the small Christmas break, History Channel returned with the episode of 'The Curse Of Oak Island', that promised "groundbreaking" discoveries in the promo. But if you're a veteran of the show, you know that these spectacular revelations just end up being one tiny piece of wood that might or might not belong to a crucial bit of 18th or 17th-century history.
Don't get me wrong, the show is highly entertaining and makes up for time spent staring at mud, with intriguing far-fetched theories that make the viewer raise an eyebrow and look politely befuddled.
In the episode titled 'Triptych', our ever-determined team spent most of the run-time digging and examining slush and dirt in a never-seen-before log structure, hunting for clues that might lead them to the mythical money pit. There is no historical record of such a find in any of their expeditions, and the team's enthusiasm knows no bounds. The first 'aha' moment is when they find a piece of "cool little piece of iron" and the team excitedly try to place it in history. It's a cribbing spike, which suggests further evidence that this log structure was made before the discovery of the Money Pit. But that's not the highlight of the episode. Not even remotely.
The team meets researcher and theorist Corian Mol, who like many historians believe that a French artist, named Nicolas Poussin, left clues to the Oak Island treasure in his paintings. The theory gets more incredulous. Using anagrams and geometric diagrams and Poussin's famous paintings, Mol shows that a geometric shape in one of the paintings could be pointing to the location of the treasure. In short, his paintings serve as a possible treasure map. This was actually quite fascinating and made sitting through men digging up endless pits of mud and dirt worth it.
The episode ends on the usual high as they come to the conclusion that the Money Pit could be 14 feet away from their digging sites. Well, could it be? At this point, I'm just prepared to see another piece of wood that might lead them in a completely different direction. Yet, Rick Lagina says that he is "gobsmacked" by their productive day.
Apart from the Poussin revelations, this episode did not have much to say, despite the usual exclamations of excitement and claims of new discoveries.
Can't wait to see what they unearth in the next episode.
'The Curse Of Oak Island' airs on History Channel, Tuesdays at 9pm.