Penn Jillette and his silent partner Teller are two long-time magicians and comedians noted for their skepticism relating to all things.  These two have seen too much (and done most of it) relating to deception, misdirection, and outright trickery to believe anything without good reason.  Bullshit! is their forum for exposing phony people and stupid ideas, especially if these people or ideas have gained a modicum of acceptance in conventional wisdom.

CRITIQUE

Penn & Teller have a fairly established style for their show at this point:  Make their points with data and interviewees, and make the other guys look like stupid assholes.  They have taken some heat in the past over unjust criticisms (second hand smoke from season one), but instead of ignoring it they owned up to their mistakes on the next show.  That’s a far cry from the smug pontification usually found by talking heads trying to support their political viewpoints.

The fact is that these two are not talking heads—they are magicians, and therefore know better than most how people can trick us into believing ideas that are unsupported, silly, or just plain incorrect.  That doesn’t mean they’re the final word on a subject or that they’re even fair to many of their subjects (they aren’t).  It does mean that they make an effort in earnest to present ideas that would generally go unheard, and challenge ideas that have stood up without any good reason.  That political incorrectness is the real theme of the show.

Season three offers another thirteen episodes for your viewing pleasure.

Circumcision:  Circumcising male babies is common practice in the United States, but there doesn’t appear to be any good reason for it.  We do it this way because we’ve always done it this way is a logical fallacy, and the medical arguments for it also appear to be dubious.

Family Values:  Some say the traditional family is what keeps anarchy from breaking out on city streets.  Some say it’s been working for five thousand years, so why change it.  But that leaves us to wonder what a traditional family is, why it would be so much better than anything else, and if it really is, today or in the past, traditional.

Conspiracy Theories:  Penn & Teller take on theorists who believe there was no moon landing, that 9/11 was a government conspiracy, etc.  Too easy.

Life Coaching:  Life coaching is a hugely lucrative industry, both in terms of personal coaching and in terms of selling books.  But it’s not what you sell so much as how you sell it, and coaches have done an excellent job of selling essentially nothing for a whole lot of profit.

Holier Than Thou:  Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama are revered throughout the world for their spirituality and selflessness.  Penn & Teller have a different take on all three when they look past the celebrity and into the facts.

College:  College is overrated.  Overrated as an institution of higher education where young people go to better themselves, and overrated as a means of securing a job afterwards.  This split theme doesn’t do well in a half-hour show, and the focus simply becomes “Political correctness is bad.”

Big Brother:  In one of the more confused episodes, Penn & Teller present a pretty strong case against the Patriot Act and uses of new technology to take away privacy, then casually dismiss them as impossible to utilize.  This episode includes their best social experiment since the bottled water gag in season one.

Hair:  The business of hair is a billion dollar a year industry.  A funny and engaging episode about how over-emphasized hair is in day to day life.

Gun Control:  One episode that could just as easily have gone in the opposite direction.  Penn claims that the founding fathers wrote the second amendment specifically planning for the next violent overthrow of the American government (not if this would happen, but when).  They’re essentially using a strawman fallacy here, arguing against the idea that guns should be “banned” rather than the huge majority of opposition that merely wants smarter regulation.

Ghostbusters:  It turns out that ghost hunters and paranormal researchers are bullshit.  Also a pretty easy topic to cover, but funnier and more insightful than the episode about conspiracy theories.

Endangered Species:  Not against endangered species themselves or the idea that some species are endangered, but against the Endangered Species Act of 1973 and the bad policies it continues to create.

Signs From Heaven:  As skeptics and atheists, Penn & Teller are naturally going to immediately call bullshit when someone claims they see the Virgin Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich.  This episode goes beyond the religious to trace the financial motivations behind these religious icons, so even the truly religious have to question what’s really going on.

The Best:  The needless pursuit of luxury and status symbols, as well as the idea that there is a “best” of much of anything.  Not their “best” episode, as there’s so much ground to cover with this theme, but still a good one.

THE VIDEO

Bullshit is presented in fullscreen format, the same way it was shown on Showtime HD.  The video quality is great.

THE AUDIO

Bullshit is presented in 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround Sound with a 2.0 Spanish track and English subtitles.

EXTRAS

There’s a photo gallery and filmographies for Penn and Teller.  There are also a few trailers if you consider advertisements as extras (I don’t).  In other words, you’re buying the series and that’s it.

FINAL THOUGHT

Bullshit! is some of Penn & Teller’s funniest work.