If only.
Don’t be fooled: The eighth and final season of Penn and Teller’s saucy and scintillating Showtime program may have made its appearance on home video just a short time ago, marking the end of the popular duo’s televised crusade against misinformation, superstition, and general bullpucky of all stripes—but that doesn’t mean the battle has been well and truly won.
No, it only means that supernatural hoo-ha, pseudoscientific “evidence,” dishonest blather, and general humbug will have two fewer conspicuous adversaries on the airwaves. Rest assured, Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t! might be over, but yes, actual B.S. will continue to enjoy a vigorous existence pretty much everywhere you go.
I’d say please don’t ask me to provide the evidence for that, but I know that’s unnecessary because we all believe ourselves to be targets. I’ll bet many of you are convinced you’ve been the victim of B.S. even today. Just as confidently, I’ll predict some of you may have peddled a generous helping of it. The fight against rampant B.S. can be intimidating indeed…especially when part of the battle must often be waged from within.
But let’s cast aside this oh-so-fashionable pessimism for a short while, and take an appreciative look at, yes, the public service these Vegas headliners performed by offering the nation their intelligent, off-color, and very provocative series.
Inspired by fellow magician Houdini and his passionate crusade against what he called “humbug”—which was originally to have been the title of this program, until it was determined to be too archaic a term and less expressive than “Bullsh*t!”—the loquacious Penn Jillette and his always-silent partner Raymond Joseph Teller created a genre-defying series that effectively channeled their expertise at comic showmanship and stage illusion into truly outrageous (and yep, educational) programming that tackled some of society’s hoariest superstitions as well as its most enduring moral quagmires.
Penn & Teller: B.S.! (as it is sometimes alternately labeled) ran from 2003 to 2010 on the cable station Showtime, which allowed P&T the latitude to employ both righteously indignant profanity and male/female nudity—the latter a device that admittedly overtook the show to an excessive degree, with the baring of skin eventually worked into nearly every episode no matter how hilariously irrelevant it may have been to the topic at hand.
Because many of their subjects veered into the realm of politics and morality as well as science and superstition, viewers who may have been unfamiliar with the pair’s political leanings quickly discovered them to be fairly straightforward libertarians at heart—which meant they were equal opportunity offenders to both the farther left and right sides of the traditional spectrum.
So, in any given season, after watching them cheerfully dismantle the nonsense surrounding UFOs, astrology, or cryptozoology, you might also see P&T taking on New Age-y healing techniques like reflexology and magnet therapy (“Alternative Medicine”) as well as hugely popular liberal traditions (“Recycling”), while railing equally hard against such popular conservative bulwarks as the veracity of the Bible (“The Bible: Fact or Fiction?”), “traditional” marriage (“Family Values”), and, in one of their most powerful and sensitive episodes, capital punishment (“Death Penalty”).
To their everlasting amazement, Penn and Teller continued to find many interview subjects hostile to their own views who were willing to step in front of the cameras despite their awareness of the show’s acid nature—possibly because they believed their arguments to be bulletproof or were seeking fame and attention wherever they could find it, but there’s also something to be said for the degree to which P&T usually played “fair” and did their level best to present opposing arguments coherently and unmolested. That is, until Penn would see fit to drown out their dialogue with a profane denunciation—“Motherf***er!” and “A**hole!” being two of his more popular refrains.
The concept of “equal time” actually counted for something here. P&T gave just as much air time to UFOlogists and Feng Shui experts as they did to educators, scientists, and celebrity guests such as Skeptic magazine editor Michael Shermer and The Amazing (James) Randi. Sometimes more, all the better to hang themselves.
I found myself in agreement with the duo more often than not—and even when my disagreements with P&T were severe, or I felt serious evidence for their position to be lacking or not as much constructed in the tradition of rational skepticism as they might assert, their thoughtful presentation nevertheless always commanded my respect. Plus, they’re funny as hell.
Here’s a selection of my favorites from the series:
Season 1: Talking to the Dead, Creationism
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Their first episode remains one of their finest. The “talking to the dead” industry is something that particularly angers Penn, and he shows it full force during his takedown of popular mediums such as John Edward and James Van Praagh. In this premiere episode, he also does a stellar job of laying out the legal foundation for the entire series, the explanation for why he is restrained from calling people “frauds” but is on perfectly safe legal territory calling them “c**ksuckers.”
Their show on creationism was not only one of their most brave (considering where the majority of America stands on its views concerning the existence of a conscious Creator), but also one of their most well-argued in terms of tough yet fair-minded religious, scientific, and Constitutional debate.
Season 2: PETA, War on Drugs
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For P&T, the animal rights organization is one teeming with hypocrisy at the very least, and complicit with criminal activities and/or domestic terrorism at the very worst. As rightfully disturbed as any meat eater is by the sight of animal cruelty, I couldn’t help but be outraged by their eye-opening exposure of PETA and its relationships with convicted arsonists who school children in the construction of bombs as well as “liberation” advocates who compare themselves to Jesus or equate the hunt and/or slaughter of animals for food with slavery and the Holocaust.
Likewise, their takedown of the “war on drugs” delivered just as effective a critique of modern drug laws and the rather clownish (when not definitively un-American) behavior of Arizona’s swaggering Sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Season 3: Conspiracy Theories, Holier Than Thou
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For those too impatient to wade through Popular Mechanics’ definitive rebuttal of the most popular 9-11 conspiracy theories, P&T offer here a revealing argument against embracing the paranoid ravings that poisoned investigations into the circumstances surrounding the attacks. And, if you never thought that anyone could forcefully conduct a genuine discourse on Gandhi’s peculiar sexual habits and his unpalatable remarks about race or Mother Teresa’s questionable embrace of human suffering…well, you may still not believe it, but here it is.
Season 4: The Boy Scouts, Prostitution
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Was there ever a “sacred cow” that P&T dared not rip apart? We may never know about the subjects they chose not to address (although Scientology was apparently something they were getting around to—or not, as the case may have been), but when you go after an institution as beloved as the Boy Scouts, you’d better have some serious ammunition…and a sense of humor doesn’t hurt, either. This episode contains one of the most entertaining in their series of “Bullsh*t Experiments,” as they pit three heterosexual young men against three gay young men in completing the most basic of scouting challenges. Guess who wins?
Given all the nudity that Penn and Teller gleefully showcased throughout the series’ run, it’s during their study of sex for sale when it seems not just titillating, but relevant (and titillating all the same).
Season 5: Exorcism, Anger Management
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You might think that P&T were scraping the bottom of the barrel by the time they got around to debunking exorcism. But, when you have the current Pope endorsing classes on demonic possession and a recent survey declaring that 68% of Americans believe in the actual existence of the Devil, it doesn’t seem like such an outlier of a topic.
And just as the speaking in tongues and waving of arms and dousing of heads is portrayed as little more than placebo and stage production, many current gurus of anger management are shown to be just as ill-equipped to successfully address rage in its more conventional forms.
Season 6
I managed to miss the entire sixth season. But I’m sure looking forward to catching up with the “War on Porn” and their ideas about “World Peace.”
Season 7: Video Games, The Apocalypse
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I’ve long since dispatched with the patience (and skills, I must say) for video games, but I’m not old enough to be fuzzy about whether or not playing them turned me into a sociopath. You could easily substitute comic books or violent movies into this same set of arguments and both sides sound basically the same. They’re all popular scapegoats for shocking antisocial acts whose origins are usually more complex, and this episode provides one of many great illustrations of the correlation-doesn’t-equal-causation rule.
Meanwhile, if you’re reading this now, congratulations! You just lived through the latest prediction of the apocalypse (which was May 21, 2011, for those of you just emerging from under the rock). We will no doubt soon be wasting valuable time discussing our next certain date with doom (Mayan calendar fans, prepare yourselves), and when that prediction fails to materialize, there’ll be another. And another…
Season 8: Cheerleaders, Vaccinations
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The final season opens with a study of cheerleading, and why the incredibly dangerous activity should be considered a sport, contrary to the wishes of some feminists advancing certain legislation that has “good intentions” but horrible consequences. This program is a sterling example of how the duo can take what appears to be a frivolous subject and transform it into something you realize you probably ought to care more about.
There are few (if any) matters one should care more about than the health of children—which is what makes the final episode about vaccinations an appropriate way to conclude. The only downside to just how clearly P&T lay out the scientific evidence for the benefits of vaccinations is the realization that for some, facts just get in the way.
Yes, facts will continue to be ignored by some—but not all—of those promoting ideas based less on rational thought and human compassion than on false promises of “truth” and agendas centered on power. But we are only human, and therefore usually amenable to persuasion. Penn and Teller’s best “trick”—because it wasn’t one at all—was to always advance the notion that they did not judge those who believe what they consider to be B.S. harshly. They were always in sympathy with people trying to make sense of their world, and they made it abundantly clear that they only set out to truly ridicule charlatans who aimed to profit from confusion and simple human frailties.
And it’s those motherf***ers who should be shunned. No B.S.
