I think the chair was rigged for Alyson to feel things. She doesn’t say where she feels getting touched, so when he uses the fake finger to touch her throat on the video she raises her arm, but she doesn’t say “I felt a touch on my throat”, so she could have felt something from the rigged chair. There could be a remote control device in the balloon, it could be pretty small. I’m sure a dart or a BB gun could be used but P&T might not allow that because “You’ll put your eye out with that thing kid!”.
Chad Allen I think pulled that card while he was putting the deck in the bag and slipped it into a side pocket inside the bag to make it easy to stab. Excellent performance, I had no idea he couldn’t see at all.
I have to go back and look at the Spanish Mental Patient again, his act was so boring I couldn’t pay attention.
Sorry, I forgot that Javiar Botia had a serious problem with anxiety when I called him the ‘Spanish Mental Patient’. I just intended that to be a play on his overly dramatically flourished phrase “Spanish Mentalist”. I did not mean to make light of his serious anxiety issue.
Guy Bavli: Regarding the broom and the block of wood, Penn’s remarks made me think the table was rigged with an electromagnet, and there was simply a nail embedded in the props to get them to react.
There is actually a “Mentalism Chair” commercially available! Though Alison was on what appeared to be a simple stool, it surely could have been similarly rigged. Any number of ways the balloon could have worked.
Still, he took what was undoubtedly really simple stuff and made it into a highly entertaining act.
Javier Botia: I thought it was a fun bit, if chaotic. The chaos worked to his advantage, I think, hiding whatever the secret was. The flag reveal suggested he forced the colors rather than just knowing what they were. But he did rearrange the volunteers, so maybe a combination of both.
B.S. Reddy: A convincing illusion, I guess, but not hard to figure out. She moved so awkwardly and stiffly in that dress - the top half was clearly a hinged prop and all she had to do was lean from side to side to make it work.
Chad Allen: Nice act, and quite impressive. I didn’t catch his moves, but I guessed what he was up to as soon as Teller put his card exactly where he instructed him to. He had full control of the deck from that point on, and there was a little too much business with putting the cards in the bag as he was obviously setting up the payoff.
P&T Watermelon Trick: As usual, great fun showmanship from the guys on a trick that wasn’t all that astounding. I actually caught Teller switching out the ring at the beginning (I never catch Teller!) and of course he loaded it into the watermelon through his drill hole. Surely the “solution” was not toxic, probably just colored water.
The volunteer they chose was a bit annoying though. We don’t need witty banter from you, lady!
The P&T watermelon trick was even simpler. A recording shows that Teller keeps the ring and just pretends to hand it to Penn, who then drops a pellet of coloring into the beaker. The watermelon was pre-drilled with a hole that Teller conceals with his hand as he drops the ring inside and then turns the watermelon to seat the ring in the other side. Teller doesn’t actually drill anything since the hole was already there. Then the rest of the reveal is as portrayed – not much slight of hand, but great showmanship.
I disagree. Like @cluck said, the signalling device is attached to the balloon tether, not the stool. Bavli takes great pains to conceal the part of the tether holding the device (by holding it in his hand and hiding it behind the seat of the stool). And when Bavli ties the tether to Alyson’s wrist, you can see that he doesn’t loop the string several times around her wrist; rather, he presses the device against her wrist and then uses the rope to secure it there.
To be clear, the top part of the outfit fits loosely, and the assistant draws her knees up into it when the magician stands in front of her. The bottom part of the outfit is detached from her waist and fixed to the table. The magician really is turning the assistant, legs and all—she’s just holding them in place in a very tight kneel. At the end of the trick, the magician again stands in front of the assistant, obscuring her long enough to return to a standing position and reattach the lower garment.
I thought Chad Allen’s secret reveal was both surprising and quite touching. The trick itself was relatively straight-forward but worked OK, but like Penn said, the reveal made the trick a thousand times better.
Doing a Google search shows Chad has been performing for 20 years, but nothing that I’ve ever seen. I appreciate having P&T giving fellow magicians some more exposure, even though they rarely win at fooling P&T. As an example, we visited Las Vegas last year and decided to see the Mac King show (which is a real hoot, even if it’s a bit old-school).
Penn also mentioned a Dawn? Don? Allen. What was he referring to?
Don Alan. Very good with close-up card magic. He’d often have two people sitting at the table with him (just like Chad Allen did on P&T), he kept the amusing patter going with the people at the table, and he could do amazing things with cards.
Here’s a YouTube video of him doing his thing, and you can see that the setup is much like Chad Allen used. After a few preliminary tricks, he gets to the “cards in a bag; use a knife to find the signed card” one, at roughly 5:00 or so in
After seeing this, I’m not surprised that Chad Allen got the Don Alan reference immediately. The two routines (Chad’s and Don’s) are pretty much identical.
Hans Klok: The fastest magician. I feel like P&T are not the biggest fans of watching other people’s stage magic, but it was a neat impalement effect.
Michael Borada: Metamorphosis and puns. I think the “magic” itself might be in the prop whiteboards copying each other? I don’t see how else this could be done. It seemed awfully deliberate the way he kept them directly on top of each other as they were drawing.
Hedné: Card reveal. So I think the key to this is that he never reveals the backside of the other cards. So the free choice of 10 of clubs ultimately doesn’t matter.
Vincenzo Ravina: 3D effect. I like that Teller was skeptical enough to not put his glasses on all the way. “Almost all the glasses were exactly the same” was Penn’s clue, but I have no idea how that would have given Alison the knowledge that butterfly was the answer, unless hers had speakers on the ear part or something (“Are you receiving something?”). But I’m guessing there must have been something projected on the helmet that only Alyson could see by the way she was laughing, and from the way Penn says, “Just like Alyson, we saw the light.”
For the P&T trick, I’m assuming there was some additional information the home audience wasn’t privy to?
For P&T’s trick, could they have given Karen 52 envelopes, 51 of which she throws on the floor after Matt selects the eight of diamonds? (Or maybe the other envelopes go into the paper On which she writes her name.)
Technically, everything Penn said would still be true.
All 52 audience members were given the “This is not the chosen card” card, including Karen. Teller had an index of 52 envelopes on his person. We don’t see everything because of camera cuts, but at 38:09 in this video, Teller has Karen writing her name on the pad, and her envelope is not in view. He’s either “holding” it for her, or he stealthily switched it from her left hand while she was otherwise occupied.
I was much more impressed by the “assistant’s revenge” than the levitation/impalement. The shrink-wrap and tape looked legit. I’m thinking the pole was gimmicked somehow, but still, the entire switch happened in under 3 seconds and was seamless.
Right, his picture prediction only shows one back and one front, but I’m missing the key here, unless Penn was describing a way he changed the opposite sides of the real cards.
So somehow the selected 10 of Clubs has to have a 4 on the back, and card number 33 has to have a King of Spades on the front. I can see for instance being able to peel away a thin backing on a card so they all can have 4 on the back. Is this what Penn says about ‘thinly separated’? But initially he says nothing was rigged? What did he mean by “what everybody in the world thinks you did and what you actually did are two different things…”?
I noticed the assistant on the left kept a hand on the wrapping on the assistant the whole time, as if it might fall if he wasn’t. How about they simply used a blade to slice the ‘cocoon’ all the way down the back along the pole. Then all the wrappings can be pulled foward a bit, the magician steps out, the assistant steps in, and they simply press the wrappings back into place. Perhaps normally the ‘stickiness’ of the wrap is enough to keep it steady, but for some reason it didn’t this time, so to make sure the assistant keep his hand pressing it into place.
Maybe. My guess is that the pole splits in two (you can see a vertical indentation down the beam), thereby stretching the cocoon enough for Hans to duck down out of it and the assistant to quickly take his place.
However they did it, it was one of those illusions that wasn’t super mysterious, but nevertheless looked cool and was fun to watch.
Any idea what Penn meant about how Hedne didn’t do the thing we thought he did, but did something else that just as impressive? It’s very intriguing but I have no idea what it could be.
