Penn and Teller Bullshit! Season 6

If you haven’t ever watched this Showtime series you are really missing out.  Basically Penn and Teller, who are better known as magicians and Vegas entertainers, spend a half hour looking at a topic they consider to be B.S.  Most of the time it is a “sacred” cow that many in the mainstream wouldn’t think about discussing.  They try and interview people from both sides of the argument and pretty much just let them talk.  Of course sometimes I think they might have looked for the wackiest person they could find, and they certainly chose some topics that lent themselves to being ripped on.  But to be fair they are trying to be entertaining and they aren’t attempting to pass themselves off as the news.

One of the best episodes from the season (which only had 10) is the very first one on pornography.  Since it was aired on Showtime the can show a lot of nudity and they really take full advantage of this.  But underneath all the naked girls, Internet porn sites, and crazy conservatives making things up they do manage to make a few good points.  This and the episode they did on World Peace are the ones that seemed to be making the most serious points.  In fact as silly as it sounds the episode they did on world peace makes more sense to me than anything else I’ve ever read or seen on the subject.

Of the episodes that were just silly, but entertaining I have to say the one on Dolphins and the one on New Age Medicine were great.  Basically all they did with these episodes were to let the nut jobs talk about shakras, mother earth, and channeling your inner dolphin.  While I was laughing my butt off I was also kind of frightened.  While I think that many of the practitioners of this stuff are just in it to remove some suckers from their hard earned cash there might be a few true believers that really buy into it.  I also wanted to give honorable mention to another episode that they did on Sensitivity training that had a few really funny moments it is as well. 

Most of the episodes are either really good, or at least worth checking out.  But there were a couple that I just didn’t like.  There is one called Sleep, Inc. that looks at the industry that has grown up around the problems people have sleeping.  They show all the wacky solutions that are out there.  Most of which do look like complete bullshit.  But most of the episode is centered on them sending a guy with sleep problems to a mattress convention.  Found this one a bit boring.  They also did an episode called the Good ol’ Days.  Basically they spent 30 minutes trying to make the point that things weren’t as good as you might remember them being.  After some of the better episodes this one just felt weak.

I’m a big fan of Penn and Teller, as well as this show in particular.  If you can sit back and take it for the entertainment that it is meant to be you are going to have a good time.  And who knows you might just see something a bit differently then you used to.  I highly recommend Penn and Teller B.S. season 6. 

3 ½ out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer

© Copyright 2009 John Shatzer