“NASA might…be…bulls**t?”

To hear the review

      I love the way that saying NASA might be a crock appears to cause Penn and Teller physical pain.  They are, after all, pretty nerdy.  And like most kids, thy grew up dreaming of being an astronaut.  However, a closer examination of the institution of NASA reveals that this is now pretty much their only function.  They get billions and billions of dollars in funding every year with the goal of…inspiring kids to become astronauts.  And they don’t do a heck of a lot else.  Penn And Teller Bu*****t is a show that exposes the ridiculous stuff we do, and the ridiculous stuff the government does, like NASA.  They’ve been doing it for years - for a review of Season Five, click here.

     Season Six is even better than Season Five, as the comedian-magicians take us on a tour through NASA, Sensitivity Training, World Peace and the Good Ol’ Days.  The season kicks off with an episode on porn, and you know where these guys stand on that subject, given their tendancy to infuse every single episode (even the one on World Peace) with a ton of naked boobs.  Of course, they show clips of people who argue against the evils of porn, and then dissect their reasoning to show that it’s BS.  But then, seconds later, I got irritated when they used the same reasoning they had just argued against to defend porn.  But my irritation was unfounded - they quickly point out that they are doing the same thing, and that it’s still BS.

     Of course, when I say “they”, I really mean Penn.  Because he is still the only one who talks, as Teller runs around like a modern-day Harpo Marx, never saying a word and providing the phyiscal comedy.  The best episode on the disc is one where they take on New Age Medicine, and Teller has many good moments in little skits and set pieces.  As Penn and Teller go through the different places that “feel your aura”, or use tuning forks, or whatever it may be, they decide to up the ante.  They set themselves up as a New Age Medicine clinic, and blow kazoos in peoples’ ears.  And, perhaps not surprisingly, all the people who come in for the kazoo treatment say they feel a lot better!

     This is similar to the episode about dolphins.  And the people who think dolphins have some kind of mystical power for some reason.  And the people who get dolphins to help with child birth, and with new-age healing.  Most of the stuff on this two-disc set I know about - NASA and new age medicine and sensitivity training.  But I had no idea that there was a group of people out there who believe that dolphins are magical, mystical beings that are smarter than human beings.  This is what makes the show terrific - not only do we get humour, intelligence and muckraking documentary type stuff, we also learn about weirdos we didn’t even know existed!

     Penn And Teller BS Season Six comes out on DVD May 12th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 12th, 2009 at 5:10 am and is filed under 2008, Comedy, Documentary, TV series. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.