Penn & Teller: Bullshit!
Showtime
Thursday 8 p.m. / 7 p.m. Central
Remember when the Information Age was supposed to make us smarter? All those facts and ideas right at our fingertips. Instead we're awash in spam that bears viruses, pitches pyramid schemes and promises millions of dollars to those willing to give their financial data to a huckster in Nigeria, all sustained and spread by the willingness of someone somewhere to fall for it. Spirit mediums do cold readings on cable TV to connect the impressionable with the dearly departed. Charlatans sell bogus patent medicines by Internet and infomercial. Crackpots peddle crystal skulls via e-commerce. Alas, even the most advanced society can still be full of suckers.
In the last century, Harry Houdini dedicated himself to exposing fraudulent occultists. Now his spiritual descendants Penn and Teller have taken up the skeptic's crusade with their original Showtime series, "Penn & Teller: Bullshit!" If you haven't heard of it, you're not alone. Last year, the show's first season drew little attention beyond a devoted cult following. This winter, reruns of the same episodes have been buried on Thursday nights, up against both "Survivor" and the valedictory season of NBC's Must See TV. Those who have sought it out, though, have been rewarded with a show that delivers at least as many losers as reality TV. This time, however, they're presented in their natural habitat — new age fairs and motivational seminars — where they can be properly studied and ridiculed.
"Bullshit!" follows a familiar magazine format. Penn and Teller introduce
the week's topic from the studio, then provide commentary over video from the
field — that is, Penn does; Teller remains mute as always. As equal
opportunity debunkers, they don't limit themselves to the fruitcake fringe,
and show no concern for political correctness or conventional wisdom. The show's
targets have included everything from secondhand smoke to creationism to "environmental
hysteria." Even a relatively mainstream practice like feng shui comes out looking
pretty bad when four different "experts" give markedly different readings of
the same room, rearranging a sectional couch in more configurations than the
Knicks' starting lineup. In a show about the distressingly low quality of much
bottled water, they plant a "water steward" in a fine restaurant who sells
glass after glass of exotically named premium varietals, all filled from the
same green garden hose, to diners who swoon over the striking diversity in
flavors.
Such "Dateline"-style targets are all well and good, but the best episodes deal with traditional, straight-up hooey: clairvoyants, ouija boards and alien abductions. It would be simple enough to pass half an hour cracking cheap jokes at the expense of harmless rubes, and there is definitely an ambush quality to interviews in which said rubes are questioned about their oddball beliefs. At the same time, Penn and Teller muster both intellectual rigor and righteous anger in exposing those who cash in on the gullibility of innocents. A young woman walks across a bed of fire and is convinced her life will change dramatically. You think, why not? The power of positive thinking, the placebo effect, that kind of thing. But a psychologist reports that this euphoria will wear off in a matter of days, and her failure to follow through on any of her resolutions will leave her even more demoralized than ever. And she'll be out 80 bucks, to boot.
But she'll be back — the people who fall for these things do so again and again. One woman interviewed at a relationship seminar seemed to see no irony in the fact that she'd been attending the same seminar regularly for three years without results. This time, the tough-talking guru called her lucky that her beloved husband had died, it having been a co-dependent relationship. These are lonely, confused people desperate for something to fill their lives. There may be little harm in believing in UFOs in the comfort of your own home, but building a lifestyle around emotional victimization is another story.
The theme of consequences gives "Bullshit!" its redeeming social value and provides moral cover for the guilty pleasure of watching a loser get taken by a skilled con man. Whatever the game and whoever is running it, every grifter — from a phony psychic to an industry lobbyist — has in common a talent for deceit well-developed enough to earn a living with. The pitch is part performance art, part blood sport. The herd is thinned while we watch from safe cover, smug in superiority to the fallen.
Although the last episode from the first season airs tonight, a new season will begin in April, and a new herd of sacred cows will be led to the slaughter. What if Penn and Teller enlighten the populace so well that the hucksters all go out of business, leaving the show a victim of its own success? We'll have to take our chances.
— J. Daniel Janzen (dan at clownyard dot com)
