DVD REVIEW

Penn & Teller - Bullshit! - The Complete Fifth Season

Paramount Home Entertainment || Not Rated || May 20, 2008

Synopsis

Penn & Teller: Bullshit--The Complete Fifth Season carries on the comic magicians' Showtime series in which they debunk one or another contemporary myth or collective assumption about the way in which we live.


Critique

George Carlin is dead.  He died two days ago.  Back in 2000, he put out an album called You’re All Diseased in which he did a bit called “American Bullshit.”  It’s one track on the album, but it really rounds out the last section of the album (culminating in one of Carlin’s sharpest, most biting, funniest, bravest pieces, titled “There Is No God”).  I’m not saying that bit directly influenced Penn & Teller’s TV show – maybe it did, but who knows – but the sentiment certainly lives on.  The two magicians took the ball and ran with it whether they knew it or not.

I love Penn & Teller.  Ever since my parents went to see them in D.C. in the late ‘80’s and gave me a sense that the show was for adults only, I knew they had to be something special.  Anything not fit for children is something worth seeing.  The two carry on the tradition of Houdini, who debunked his imitators, Spiritualists (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle most famously), and fakers everywhere.  In their act and in this show, Penn & Teller carry the master’s torch.

Bullshit! is a great show.  They did an episode in a previous season about abstinence, which showed abstinence-only education and the thinking behind it to be the ridiculous failure that it is (including a hilariously frightening moment where a group of young people who have committed to abstinence talk about how they plan on not using condoms when they finally do have sex).  There was another episode about bottled water where they went to a bistro somewhere and served yuppies new “exclusive” brands of water with names like Agua Cuolo and Merde, both of which came out of the same hose behind the restaurant.  The yuppies all loved the water, by the way.

The show’s fifth season takes on some more unlikely targets.  Abstinence and bottled water, psychics: many people buy into that stuff, but a wide segment of the population already accepts that there is a heavy amount of bullshit there.  Season five gives us some juicier meat: handicapped parking, breast cancer hysteria … Mt. Rushmore!  I can already read your mind: how can Mt. Rushmore be bullshit?  Penn & Teller will show you.

“Obesity” takes to task the idea that there is an epidemic of obesity plaguing America.  That BMI that determines whether or not you’re overweight: not an accurate measure at all.  “Wal-Mart” says, hey, Wal-Mart isn’t the greatest company in the world, but is it really all that bad?  “Exorcism” is an episode that Penn, an outspoken atheist, seems to take particular delight in.  This is one of the funniest episodes in season five.  The so-called exorcists depicted here are impossible to believe, which makes all the more frightening the fact that people actually believe it.  (Best line in “Exorcism”: “Gee, demonic possession sounds a lot like, uh, life.”)  Nuclear power isn’t all that dangerous, hybrid cars aren’t all they’re cracked up to be, anger management doesn’t work, and the handicapped movement might actually be doing more harm than good.  (The episode “Handicapped Parking” features a handicapped man who is against the Americans with Disabilities Act.)  Every episode features a hilarious look at the unpopular side of the argument.

Public opinion, widely held beliefs, when they reach a certain point, cease to be opinions and start to be taken as gospel truth.  Wal-Mart isn’t such a great company is now beyond mere opinion.  Wal-Mart sucks; that’s a fact.  These facts become idols in themselves.  Penn and Teller aren’t trying to change anyone’s minds.  The idea is simply to make you think.  THINK!  What a novel idea …

So if you’re not afraid to look at things from a different perspective, to have your beliefs put to the test, to think about things you may have previously just blindly accepted, Bullshit! is the show for you.


Video

Bullshit! is presented in the original full screen format.  The presentation is average; it looks like anything else on TV.  The picture isn’t terrible, but there is also nothing particularly great about it.


Audio

This DVD set offers tracks in 5.1 Dolby Surround, 2.0 stereo, and Spanish mono.  The presentation, like the video, is average.  The levels are clear and well balanced, but, again, it sounds like anything else on TV.


Special Features

None.  Apparently, to Penn and Teller, special features are bullshit!


Final Thoughts

Bullshit! is a hilarious, thought-provoking show, unrelenting in its skepticism and relentlessly skewering every widely held belief the series covers.  The DVD presentation could be better, but the show itself is a must see.

VERDICT: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

 

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Review posted on Jun 25, 2008 | Share this article | Top of Page

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