What 'Gold Rush' and other TV reality shows say about Oregon

Todd Hoffman in "Gold Rush." Photo: Discovery Channel

By Kristi Turnquist | The Oregonian/OregonianLive

From "America's Got Talent" hopefuls to "Gold Rush" miners, Oregonians have a habit of turning up in TV reality shows. For a genre that so-called experts predicted would dry up and fly away years ago, reality shows have demonstrated remarkable staying power. Which means we're likely to see even more Oregon natives or residents popping up on our screens, preparing delectable treats, belting out tunes, or doing their best to outwit, outplay and outlast their fellow competitors.

Oregonians may not go on reality shows to make friends – who does, right? – but plenty of them have made an impact, and helped shape an image of Oregon that’s been projected to viewers who aren’t from here, and only know what they see on TV.

Here’s a look at what some of our TV reality shows and stars have told the world about Oregon.

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Gregory Gourdet, George Pagonis and Doug Adams on "Top Chef." Photo: Bravo

We're one heck of a tasty place. And some people, weirdly enough, consider Pok Pok a diner, drive-in or dive.

Details: Considering our reputation as a foodie paradise, it's not surprising that Oregon chefs and eateries have been all over reality TV in recent years. Our resume includes appearances by Oregon cooks on "MasterChef," "Chopped" and the strong showings made on Bravo's "Top Chef," by Gregory Gourdet (Departure), who finished second in Season 12 and Doug Adams (Bullard) who finished third.

Naomi Pomeroy, owner/chef of Portland's Beast restaurant, has also clocked in TV time, including an appearance on Season 3 of "Top Chef Masters" in 2011.

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Other examples of Oregon strutting our culinary staff include the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives,” which brought platinum-haired host Guy Fieri to such Beaver State eateries as Ataula, Frank’s Noodle House, the Country Cat, Pok Pok and more. Not to be Debbie Downer, but since when are these restaurants considered diners, drive-ins or dives? Oh, well.

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Marriages may fall apart, but the reality show must go on.

Details: Matt and Amy Roloff made their Helvetia-area farm and offspring the stars of "Little People, Big World," which launched back in 2006. The show has been popular with TLC viewers who tuned in to watch as Matt and Amy, who both have dwarfism, dealt with operating the family business and raising their four children.

Viewers kept watching as the Roloff offspring grew up, got married and had their own children. Amy and Matt got divorced in 2016, but the show kept going, even as son Jacob chose to step away, and the 2018 announcement that son Jeremy and his family, wife Audrey and baby Ember, were also leaving the program. But TLC has said that "Little People, Big World" will return in 2019.

READ MORE: Oregon's Roloff family returns in "Little People, Big World"

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Todd Hoffman in "Gold Rush." Photo: Discovery Channel

We're a land of big dreamers, who strike gold and sometimes stumble into disaster. And we're not great at finding gold in the jungles of Guyana.

Details: "Gold Rush," the Discovery Channel top-rated series, is about men mining for gold up north. During eight seasons on the show, Todd Hoffman, of Sandy, Oregon, experienced success, along with some dismal failures. Hoffman left the show at the end of Season 8, but the show has continued, with the recent premiere of Season 9 finding Rick Ness trying to fill Hoffman's boots by taking on a new role as mine boss.

Related: 'Gold Rush' returns, but Todd Hoffman's theatrics are sorely missed (Season 9 review)

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Alek Skarlatos arriving at Portland International Airport on August 30, 2015. Photo: The Oregonian/OregonLive//file

We've got real-life heroes who reinvent themselves as ballroom dancers, and movie stars.

Details: Alek Skarlatos went from being an Oregon Army National Guard specialist who lived in Roseburg to being one of the heroes who stopped a suspected terrorist attack on a French train, to competing on ABC's "Dancing with the Stars," in 2015.

Skarlatos didn't win, but he and his partner Lindsay Arnold finished third, which wasn't too shabby.

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As if that wasn't enough, Skarlatos went on to play himself in Clint Eastwood's movie, "The 15:17 to Paris," which told the true story of how Skarlatos and his friends, Spencer Stone and Anthony Sadler, helped stop a gunman on a Paris-bound train. Skarlatos is also running for a county commissioner position in Douglas County.

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Tonya Harding and Sasha Farber in "Dancing With the Stars." Photo: ABC

We've got controversial newsmakers who reinvent themselves as waltzing ballroom dancers.

Details: Oregon native Tonya Harding made headlines in newspapers and tabloids back in the '90s, when her ex-husband arranged for an attack on Harding's figure skating rival, Nancy Kerrigan. After tons of publicity and media speculation about Harding, who competed alongside Kerrigan in the 1994 winter Olympics, Harding finally pleaded guilty to conspiracy to hinder prosecution. She was required to resign from the U.S. Figure Skating Association, and her career devolved into embarrassing off-screen problems and short-lived gigs as a boxer, and more.

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But Harding got an image boost and a comeback courtesy of the movie, “I, Tonya,” which starred Margot Robbie and won an Oscar for Allison Janney as Harding’s mother. A dark comedy that left viewers sympathetic to Harding as the victim of a bad upbringing, poverty and domestic abuse, “I, Tonya” made Harding a hot commodity again.

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She rode the wave of publicity to talk show appearances, and a gig on the first, abbreviated “Dancing With the Stars” all-athlete season. Harding and her partner, Sasha Farber, didn’t win, but were in the top three couples during the season finale in May 2018.

Related: Did Tonya Harding deserve to win "Dancing With the Stars'?

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Enchanted Forest. Photo: Beth Nakamura/The Oregonian/OregonLive

Enchanted Forest is more than a delightfully kitschy amusement park - it's scaaaaary!

Details: The "Ghost Adventures" crew visited the amusement park in Turner, Oregon, for an episode this summer investigating whether the park was merely the happy home of "Storybook Lane" and and the "Big Timber Log Ride," or if there was something more creepy going on behind those cheerful exteriors.

Related: Oregon's Enchanted Forest featured on 'Ghost Adventures' Saturday

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We can carry a tune.

Details: Oregon has sent various would-be songbirds to "American Idol," including Kristy Lee Cook, Aubrey Cleland and Lovey James. We've also seen local talent represented on "The Voice," including Taylor John Williams, and current contender Natasia GreyCloud.

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Frank Fritz, Mike Wolfe, Linda Leek and Zane Leek in Oregon on "American Pickers." Photo: History Channel

We've got valuable stuff tucked away.

Details: A 2017 episode of the History Channel's "American Pickers" saw Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz come to Oregon for what the show's publicists said at the time was their most expensive pick yet. The pair visited two families in Oregon, including one visit to a family in the Salem area in which they agreed to spend more than $90,000 for antique motorcycles and other items.

Related: 'American Pickers' comes to Oregon for its most expensive pick yet

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Photo: Meredith Nierman/PBS

The PBS series, “Antiques Roadshow” also made eyes pop when, during a segment filmed in Eugene in 2011, a Norman Rockwell painting was valued at an estimated $500,000.

And then there was the notorious goof, when an appraiser eyeballed what was described as a "grotesque face jug," and determined it was worth an estimated $50,000. Turned out the item, featured in an episode that first aired in early 2016, was actually the work of a Eugene high school student. Rather than an 19th-century antique, the clay thingamajig was made in the 1970s in a Churchill High School ceramics class.

Related: 'Antiques Roadshow' goof, appraising a '70s Oregon high school art project at $50,000

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We've got talent - sort of.

Details: The hit summertime variety competition, "America's Got Talent," saw the McMinnville sibling band, We Three, make it to the 2018 semifinals, but miss out on moving ahead to the finals.

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That was still a stronger showing than the one made by Samantha Hess, Portland’s professional cuddler, who made it through the first round on the 2015 season, but got the boot after her second appearance.

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And how could TV reality shows not include the Unipiper, the Portland musician known for riding a unicycle and playing fire-spewing bagpipes? Sure enough, the Unipiper (aka Brian Kidd), did his unipiping thing on the first episode of 2017’s “The Gong Show” revival.

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Just because you're in Portland doesn't mean you don't behave like a jackass.

Details: In 2013, our fair city had the dubious distinction of being the location for "The Real World," the MTV series that was, to be nice about it, way past its prime. What happens when seven strangers picked to live in a house have their lives taped, stop being polite and start getting real?

A whole bunch of dumb, mundane and embarrassing behavior, as the few viewers who watched “The Real World: Portland” discovered. From a home base at a loft in the Pearl District, the whoppingly uninteresting cast members partied, got drunk, “worked” at a Pizza Schmizza outlet, fought and otherwise acted like fools.

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Lauren Bushnell and Ben Higgins in Portland for their "hometown date" on "The Bachelor" Season 20. Photo: ABC/Levy Moroshan

We're romantic - kind of.

Details: Considering "The Bachelor" and its assorted spinoffs have been on ABC for what feels like forever, it stands to reason that Oregon would offer our share of guys and gals looking for love (or whatever) on "The Bachelor," "The Bachelorette" and so on.

Most notably, Season 20 of “The Bachelor” ended in 2016 with Ben Higgins proposing to West Linn’s Lauren Bushnell. The engaged duo stayed in front of reality show cameras for their own spinoff series “Ben and Lauren: Happily Ever After?” But the question mark hinted at what was to come, since Bushnell and Higgins broke up.

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We love our ink.

Details: Oregon has sent has sent tattoo experts to "Ink Master," the TV tattoo competition, including Joshua Hibbard and Austin Rose, who recently went home at the end of the seventh episode of the current season, on the Paramount Network.

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We're stylish.

Details: For a city that doesn't make a big fuss about fashion, Portland helped make reality TV look good. "Project Runway," the design competition, has made it work thanks to an array of designers who went on the show while living in Portland, including Michelle Lesniak (who won "Project Runway" Season 11), Gretchen Jones (who won Season 8) and Leanne Marshall (who won Season 5).

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We go fishing.

Details: "Deadliest Catch: Dungeon Cove" was a short-lived spinoff of the long-running Discovery Channel series "Deadliest Catch." The 2016 series followed captains fishing for Dungeness crab off the Oregon coast. The show didn't catch enough viewers, apparently, because it only lasted one season.

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Members of the "Beastly Banshees" team, Tom Lindskog, Corinna Macguire and Joshua Simpson, on "Halloween Wars," Season 8. Photo: Michael Moriatis/Food Network

We've got first-class pumpkin carvers.

Details: Eugene high school teacher Tom Lindskog showed a bit of his pumpkin-carving prowess on the current season of "Halloween Wars," the Food Network series featuring teams of three who compete to create spectacular spooky displays. Lindskog did some impressive carving, but his team didn't make it to the finals. Boo!

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We're creative.

Details: In 2010, Oregon native-turned-Los Angeles resident Emily Henderson was named the winner of "HGTV Design Star." Judges praised Henderson's "quirky style" and her "distinct and original voice as a designer."

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We outplay, outlast and outwit other outdoorsy types - or try to, anyway.

Details: Oregonians have a reputation for knowing our way around the outdoors, and we've sent competitors to the long-running "Survivor" competition to try and prove it. Among them was Laura Morett, who competed on her own in 2009, then returned in 2013 with her daughter, Ciera Eastin, in 2013.

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