Why don’t his parents kill him? Why don’t his friends kill him? Why doesn’t somebody kill him?

If these are the kind of questions you ask yourself when watching the antics of one Bam Margera, a pro skater better known for his off-the-board activities than for his actual skating, you’re not alone. This is a guy who has made his money tormenting anyone and everyone around him; little in the way of actual talent, plenty in the way of youthful, “I’m untouchable” arrogance.

But if you’re asking these questions, this show probably isn’t intended for you in the first place, so quit your griping.

For the uninitiated, “Bam” is Bam Margera, a 26-year-old high school dropout from West Chester, Pennsylvania who captured the attention of the skating subculture first through the CKY (Camp Kill Yourself) videos, featuring Bam and his cohorts pulling off wildly self-destructive stunts, and later, after hooking up with “Johnny Knoxville” and others, on MTV’s over-the-top Jackass. The videos and show became cult favorites among the 20-something crowd, with Bam and Knoxville getting the most attention. Before long, MTV gave him his own show, Viva La Bam!, in which he does, in his words, “Whatever the fuck I want.”

And that’s the show, really. Bam and his friends film their refusal to grow up, torment his parents and uncle (the hilarious “Don Vito”), smash up abandoned houses and vehicles, and generally act like the kind of anti-social kids you hope stay the fuck off your lawn. There is no mystery to why this stuff is such a hit with the younger crowd. It’s at times painfully boring and at times utterly hilarious, but it’s always filled with attitude and the kind of antics every teenage boy wishes he could experience.

Paramount brings seasons four and five of Viva La Bam! together in a three-disc set that has enough extra material to satisfy Bam fans, but which won’t convince strangers to the CKY world that there is merit to be had here. Over the course of the two seasons’ 16 episodes (MTV is apparently very generous in its use of the word “season”), we get some truly fun watching and some horribly telegraphed, clearly staged nonsense that made me want to throw the remote control through the TV.

In the opening episodes, Bam’s parents go on vacation to France for their anniversary. Bam and his friends, of course, follow them, surprise them, drag along the fat, fumbling and funny Don Vito, and make a mess of Europe and the anniversary. Funny stuff. In a later episode, the crew flies down to Brazil for a few days of sightseeing, skating and partying (making life miserable for Don Vito the whole time, of course). Great day job, if you can get it.

With their bag of crazy stunts and mean-spirited pranks all but used up, however, the West Chester crew of troublemakers begins to rely heavily on staged scenarios and scripted events to keep up the image of anarchy and chaos. And that, my friends, sucks. Episodes such as the one where the whole gang set up crusty old campers at the side of a stagnant pond and live a bohemian life for a while are entertaining enough, in a mindless, vacant way, but other episodes grate the nerves by being so overtly staged as to be distracting. (Are we supposed to believe the “CKY Crew get jobs?" episode was real? Give me a break.) For instance, in one episode Don Vito, fed up with being picked on, teams up with skater Mike Vallely to get back at the CKY crew. Phony conversations, a transparently scripted house destruction at the end (“Gosh, Don, they are going to tear the house down. Let us escape, post haste.”), and other obviously pre-arranged events (the guy closing shop at the bowling alley lets them sleep there on the spur of the moment? The hell he does) really take away from what is most fun about the kind of riffs a show like this offers, namely the shock of seeing unscripted craziness unfold in the real world. Tom Green understood it. Once people got his shtick and recognized him, he could no longer pull off his pranks. Rather than keep trudging on, he ditched the act because he knows that scripted pranks are lame.

It’s a mixed bag – Bam and friends are clearly running out of ideas at this point – but if Jackassian antics fill you with cheer, this might, might scratch that itch. As far as I’m concerned, the allure of Bam Margera and the CKY crew has run its course, but let’s be realistic: this is all nit-picking at a show that isn’t really intended for me.

Presentation
No surprises in how these discs look; a bit better than broadcast quality. The source material is scattered, filmed on everything from handheld digitals to crisp 16mm, making the image quality of the show equally scattered. With MTV’s heavy-handed quick editing, though, you’re never looking at any one piece of film for too long, and even the worst of footage looks to be some gimmicky “effect” rather than just an example of low quality source material.

In other words, it looks fine for what it is.

Sounds fine, too. The needle-drop, largely metal soundtrack will rock your speakers quite nicely, the dialogue is usually easy to understand, and the audio commentaries are listenable (if not all that crisp). This set is what it is – an MTV show on some silver platters.

Extras
The pleasant surprise here is that for a relatively minor MTV-crowd TV series, Viva La Bam!: Seasons 4 & 5 has some strong extras that will give fans a good bang for their buck.

First up are audio commentaries featuring pretty much the whole damn crew on every episode. Often chaotic, rarely focused and annoyingly filled with plugs for CKY videos, the commentaries aren’t essential listening but do manage to reveal some fascinating tidbits of information. One of the guys was paid $10,000 for the trip to Brazil, for instance, but none of the footage he shot was used in the episode. Bam makes about $2 million a year from his Element Skateboards sponsorship alone … simply for wearing their clothes. And if you read between the lines, Don Vito lets it slip (though the others tried to cover for him) that the episode in which he has Bam’s Hummer tossed into a quarry and destroyed was staged (surprise, surprise). Not bad listening overall.

The third disc is where the rest of the extras are, and the assortment is pretty nice. To start, Paramount tosses in an assortment of deleted scenes from various episodes of the show. As with any selection of deleted scenes, they range from funny to forgettable. Plenty of extra antics, though, which will delight fans. Next is the Bam Margera segment from MTV Cribs, which takes viewers on a tour through the Margera household. This is actually a pretty worthless segment – it's not as if we don't see every last corner of the house throughout the show – but we do get to see what a prick Bam is as he treats his friends and (now ex) girlfriend like shit just to show off for the camera, so that makes for good entertainment. Aside from some other odds and ends, the best bit of the extras bunch is the Viva Le Top 5, essentially a highlight reel of great moments from through the series' history. Because it cuts out all the bullshit, this is really funny stuff, a feature worth revisiting.

All in all, hats off to Paramount for making this set worthwhile. The recent TV on DVD trend appears unstoppable, but for this consumer the lack of extra material makes such purchases questionable when most of these shows are still available on TV. A solid slate of extras is always desirable, and that's just what we have here.

The Bottom Line
Far from high art, and at this point far from shocking entertainment, Viva La Bam! is empty-headed teenage nonsense from a bunch of anti-social misfits who refuse to grow up – which is kind of the point, I suppose. Again, if you watch this stuff and wonder why Bam doesn’t get his ass beat every other day, this show probably isn’t for you. I do wonder why his friends and family don’t beat his ass, so the show clearly isn’t for me. But the show is for someone, and those someones are folks who still dig the Jackassian antics of misfit 20-somethings. While I think the show has gotten stale, I can understand the appeal. There are better avenues for that humor than Viva La Bam!: Seasons 4 & 5, but if you’re a fan, it’s hard to deny that this set packs in enough of the insanity you want plus enough quality extras to make it a worthy purchase.