After 25 years of head trauma, broken bones, and toy cars up the ass, Paramount has finally paid to put the Jackass back together. Per Variety, the original Jackass TV series is finally available to Paramount+ in its original form, meeting the high artistic standards of the punch-drunk masochists who made the thing. Ahead of the release of Jackass: Best And Last, the fifth and supposedly final Jackass movie in the series, the original three seasons of the MTV series have jumped into the Paramount+ shopping cart and presumably sent full speed directly into viewers’ eyeballs.
The new restoration restores “key creative elements that had been altered over time.” That’s because, since Jackass originally aired, the series has been re-edited, structured, and altered over the years, with sketches and stunts moved around and other excised completely. Like George Lucas forgetting to put a droid stepping in some bantha doo doo on Tatooine, team Jackass and Paramount have returned the series to the artists’ original intentions.
“In the time since the release of Jackass 26 years ago, the television episodes had been re-edited, re-sequenced, and re-scored to the point they were unrecognizable,” Knoxville said in a statement. “I found this out the hard way last year when attempting to watch them. Eeek! But kudos to Paramount for giving us the $$ to restore the shows to how they initially aired in the first place. We can’t wait until you see all the terrible things we did to each other way back then and in the manner we intended!”
In 2001, less than a year after the show premiered, Knoxville publicly quit the show to focus on his movie career. But MTV had already begun caving to outside pressure and giving notes to the gang at the beginning of season two, upsetting the cast, who were already underpaid for the years they were taking off their lives. At the time, Knoxville said that MTV would continue to air re-edited reruns. “The most objectionable things will be taken out. All the funny things will be gone,” he said. But the show was further rejumbled by DVD releases, which recompiled the series into new episodes, leading to inconsistencies between how the original series aired and how it was presented on home video.
The restored Jackass, finally in its original version, is available to stream on Paramount+ now.
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