“Penn & Teller: Fool Us” is a reality-TV competition shown on the CW, which is a broadcast network, which is something like a streaming service that’s always on. The show was recently renewed for its seventh season. The only other person I know who watches it is a skilled amateur magician and general magic geek who lives in Chicago. For him, the show is a chance to be exposed to some of the world’s greatest magicians and get an insight into their arcane techniques. For me, who doesn’t particularly like magic and has no intention of trying to do it, the show has a different appeal: It makes me a better person.

The formula is simple. In each episode, four or five magician contestants perform tricks in front of a Las Vegas audience that includes Penn Jillette and Teller, magic’s most recognizable buddy pair. At the end of each trick, the duo confer about how it was done. Usually, they know quickly: In addition to a near-45-year-long career performing together, and a pop-cultural omnipresence on Penn’s part that has threatened at times to approach Charo status, they are deeply serious scholars of magic’s history and technique. When they are stumped, which happens about once per episode, the winning act receives a guest spot in the duo’s Vegas show and a deliberately cheap-looking trophy that descends from the ceiling and is in the form of the letters FU.

All of which would seem to place “Fool Us” squarely in the schadenfreude-rich realm of reality talent shows. It wasn’t until I watched the show that I realized how deeply the more corrosive conventions of that genre had seeped into my bones. I expected, first of all, that some portion of the contestants would be picked explicitly to fail, their hubris acting as exculpatory justification for the pleasure of watching a disaster unfold. I could feel my shoulders notably relax when I began to realize the acts are all world-class magicians and nearly always flawless.