Viva La Bam: Complete Seasons 2 and 3

From Candid Camera to American Idol, American television viewers' appetite for watching other folks get embarrassed, humiliated, or worse at the hands of both themselves and others never seems to wane. How else to explain the fact that MTV's Jackass, a show built on dangerous, painful, and stupid stunts, could spawn not only a feature film but a spin-off like Viva La Bam, issued here in a three-disc set compiling the show's fourth and fifth seasons with extensive bonus material? This is classic MTV fare, made by and for slackers, stoners, and skateboarders, the tattoo and heavy metal crowd who get off on the kind of jejune, puerile behavior that Bam Margera and his crew celebrate in every one of these 16 episodes. A combination of The Tom Green Show, Paris Hilton's The Simple Life, and the aforementioned Jackass, Viva La Bam is hardly what one would call innocent, but it's neither as cruel nor as mean- spirited as others of its ilk. It focuses less on outrageous stunts than on Bam's good-natured tormenting of his family, including mother April ("Ape"), dad Phil, and especially uncle-clown Don Vito (the latter two have a combined girth roughly equal to the Earth's circumference); in the two-parter that opens the fourth season, for instance, they follow Phil and Ape to Europe (later adventures take them to Brazil, Mexico, Finland, and Russia), wreaking havoc everywhere they go and pretty much living up to the stereotypical image of the boorish, ignorant American abroad. There are guest appearances by rockers like the Bloodhound Gang, Hanoi Rocks, HIM, the cartoonish Gwar, and even Billy Idol, along with ace stunt bikers the Metal Mulisha, but unless your idea of hilarity involves folks dumping food on one another (even better if the dumpee is asleep), Viva La Bam's appeal will be limited, to say the least. On the other hand, folks who do enjoy that kind of thing should be delighted