Penn & Teller - Bullsh*t! - The First Season

Video:

Created expressly for television, Penn & Teller's Bullshit: The Complete First Season is presented in its original full-frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1. The quality of the video is very good; in fact, it's about as pristine and clear as one could imagine. There's a tad too much sharpness to the transfer, resulting in some occasional shimmering and line noise, but other than that I have absolutely no complaints about the quality of the video. Colors are strong, images are very sharp, contrast levels are exquisite, and the transfer features little in terms of compression noise or pixellation. This is a fine transfer.

Audio:

The audio is presented in both Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 (a mono Spanish dub is also included, which results in some unintentional hilarity as Penn explains how Creationism is utter horseshit with pure Castellano gusto). The soundtrack is mostly frontstage, with some expansion of soundfield to enhance the show's musical score. Dialog is clear, bright, and warm, while the score demonstrates some reasonably dynamic range. This is not an aggressive presentation, but it doesn't need to be. It gets the job done, and done well.

Extras:

The Bonus Features are contained entirely on Disc Three. Naked Promo is a seventeen second promotional clip for their "Sex, Sex, Sex" episode. Junkyard Ghost! is a fourteen-minute featurette that examines the phenomenon of ghostlike images appearing in various photographs and videotapings. Is there photographic existence of otherworldly phenomena? (Short answer: no.) Next up is a James Randi Interview with Penn & Teller, an eighteen minute conversation between Penn and famed magician/skeptic James Randi. This interview makes for a fantastic companion piece to the Bullshit series. Randi has offered up a $1 million prize to anyone who can prove that they have actual supernormal "powers." Number of prize-winners to date: zero.

More Bullshit! is a twenty-eight minutes of bonus footage that was excised from various episodes of the show, and makes for some extremely entertaining viewing. Bullshitting Around! includes ten minutes of bloopers, outtakes, and on-set footage. Behind the Scenes! consists of seven minutes worth of "behind the scenes" footage from the taping of the show. We get tons more naked people here, and, unless you're Michael Powell, that certainly can be considered A Good Thing. Wraparounds! runs just over six minutes, and features some more outtakes and bloopers that occurred during the filming of the introductions and conclusions to various episodes.

Penn & Teller Bio is a six-page text biography of the acclaimed duo. Wrapping up the extras are trailers for The Boys 2nd Street Park, A Woman's A Helluva Thing, Rio: Go Wild, and weblinks for the Showtime cable channel and the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, where Penn & Teller perform nightly (except for Tuesdays.)

Final Thoughts

There are loads of wonderful platitudes I could ladle upon Penn & Teller's Bullshit: The Complete First Season, but what impressed me most about the series is that, amidst the comedy, yuks, and acerbic criticisms thrown around these episodes, there is a real sense of warning and anger throughout the proceedings. For example, look at John Edward, James Von Praagh, and Rosemary Altea, three alleged "mediums" that have made a cottage industry out of convincing people that they can speak to the dead. When Penn rips them apart for exploiting people's inconsolable grief and mourning for their own financial benefit, there's genuine anger and bitterness in his tirade. Bullshit might be one of the funniest shows I've ever seen, but it's also one of the most incisive and informative.

So, no bullshit: Bullshit is definitely worth your time. As illusionists and magicians, Penn & Teller are self-professed purveyors of bullshit. But - as they remind us in the first episode - the difference between them and the people they go after is that Penn & Teller admit up front that their act is full of shit. But their investigations are as insightful and biting as their illusionary parlor tricks are gloriously silly and entertaining. Penn & Teller's Bullshit: The Complete First Season remains one of the best DVD box sets I've seen in a long while... and that's no bullshit.