I wonder if they were in part misdirected by the briefcase that ostensibly contained the prediction, so they weren’t looking for anything to be smuggled into a shoe. They were looking for something to be smuggled into a briefcase. A nice red herring. By the time it got to the shoe, they had to regroup, and I think they ultimately spent more time on the “how did it get written” and jumped took the obvious conclusion that the prediction traveled down his leg as a foregone conclusion. He did do all sorts of gestures with his pants (including re: the gloves) to misdirect that way.
I’m falling behind! Haven’t caught up on comments so I can’t wait to read them after I watch the episodes and post my thoughts. I think the show is starting to jade me. I can’t even be bothered to overanalyze some of the “not this again” tricks.
Episode 5!
Dyno Staat:
Reassembling the dollar bill… I mean after Penn gives him a dollar out of his pocket, he handles the bill so damn much that I don’t even care where he swaps the bills… he obviously does. And Penn obviously signs a folded up mis-assembled bill. All the usual moves including lots of holding the bill between the thumb and four straight fingers held tightly together. The misdirection of Teller’s jar misfiring and then the unexpected zap is a great misdirection to keep you from watching the jar at the critical moment to see where the bill really comes from. It’s all a bunch of palming and switching and whatnot. The having Penn or teller hold the bill bits for fleeting moments didn’t add anything much to me.
Aiden Sinclair:
This has nothing to do with the trick at all, and perhaps this is not fair to criticize, but I found his delivery was almost too… “casual” and “normal”. I guess I feel like the trick needs a more mysterious or authoritative voice with all that introduction. My first inclination was that the last person in this trick always ends up with the pearl because the way he holds the bag holds the Pearl back until he gives up the bag to the last person. Penn’s mention of the ring threw me off a bit. Maybe the ring has something like a magnet that tells him when the pearl is in the bag and when it’s gone, he knows who took it. The “remote” reference (his hands always being hidden when the doll moved or the board flipped is an obvious reference to them being remote controlled, which isn’t a big deal. The real “trick” is the question of how he knows who has the pearl, not how he reveals it.
Axel Adler:
Lovely contact juggling. You can see the awe in Teller’s eyes when watching him. He’s obviously very good at what he does, but I don’t think the trick/method is anything new or unusual. He’s just really good at it. I’m sure
David Parr:
Very cool trick and a nice performance. I noticed that he drops his hands to his lap for the early part of the trick, which is often a sign of ‘something’ going on, but it’s also a red herring often used on Fool Us, so I don’t know if it’s relevant. His shuffle does kind of look like it could be a deliberate non-shuffle - he always sweeps the card from his right hand on top of the pile in his left and it’s not clear to me if the rest of the deck is actually being shuffled behind them. What I can say is that he controls which blue card is placed in Alyson’s red deck (and through various methods of tracking, presumably controls it to be the 4D) which he ultimately reveals. I also can not see any way the card she placed into his blue deck is anything other than random. But he controls that deck. He very deliberately drops the “rest” of his deck into the card she places. I wonder if there’s already a red 4D in his deck, and perhaps the card he stops at has a sticky bottom or something that will prevent the random red card she placed from showing separately in the final spread. Whatever it is, it’s very nice.
P&T. Penn’s very deliberate “shuffle” which is really more a bunch of cuts and his repeated instructions to deal from the top one at a time suggests the half of the deck Penn retained was a dupe of the half he gave the Tim, in a preset order known by Teller, so whatever Tim shuffled and gave back to Penn, Penn just cut the deck a few times to ensure his half was back on top and once Tim revealed his card, Teller just has to count out how many cards to wait because he knows the order.
I should add that I a) really enjoyed the P&T Trick this week; I think I might have seen it before, but maybe not - is it new? And b), I really enjoyed this episode. He was one of the better ones in a while.
And Episode 6!!
Dan Sperry:
I enjoyed the presentation. He works his character wonderfully. The obvious two-headed quarter; obviously not intended to fool (I hope). The obvious pocket switch to a regular quarter after that part of the trick before Alyson signs makes that clear (he goes into his right-front once to get a normal quarter and again to ditch the two-header - I would have used at least one of those moves to take out the pen, but surprisingly, he has the pen in a whole different pocket, requiring a third reach; though he puts the pen pack in the right-front. But anyway, that’s not the real trick. The eye part is nicely done. I can’t only assume it does indeed (given you can see the “Me” on the coin) put trap the eye in his eye socket (though I think he suspends the coin from the bones of his eye socket in front of his actual eye, and not within his actual eyelids - that could cause serious infections. I think the moment when he must dislodge it and palm it (I think Penn suggests he lets it slide down his palm into his mouth temporarily) is somewhat obvious to see. I think the appliance on his abdomen is preplanted with a quarter that he then cuts, snatches the quarter out and palm-swaps with Alyson’s quarter in what is, sadly, not the most convincing move. He’s a great personality but he’s not the most skilled slight guy - though everyone starts somewhere. Keep practicing! Not sure where the rubber cement comes in (presumably in the wound?)
Jean-Pierre Parent:
So my post an hour ago in respect of the shoe trick reveal about whether the tricks need to be doable with a random volunteer in place of Alyson in a normal show applies here. Is this the way this trick is normally done with him picking an audience member to help him “instead of an assistant” as he said here? I assumed his comment about “not wanting to travel with an assistant” was patter to use a random volunteer, but Alyson just because she’s the host - but I find it hard to believe that trick would work with a random volunteer who has no active part in the trick.
Nathan Phan:
I’m always so confused when there is an apparent slight of hand for no reason. Right at the first moment of the trick as he gives the first two breathes into the balloon it looks like such an obvious slight of hand misdirection and the inflation sounds of those blows sounds like a sound effect… but it just feels so odd… I think what that all means is that he’s actually helium inflating a balloon from a concealed tank and Penn’s talk of “opposites” is that he’s really trying to keep the balloon DOWN, not trying to lift it. He obviously has something to keep it stick to the table (magnet inside? Not sure). But that would explain his “holding it” from the top. It’s a pretty cool trick in any event. Reminds me a bit of Teller and the red ball, but not quite as elaborate. The flyout at the end is wonderful.
Richard Forget:
Cool act. It has a few issues with the closeup cameras. The page he tars and folds is clearly different colour and materials from the rest of the paper. The old “fake second hand” holding the paper trick is obviously present at times, but it’s still a nicely executed routine. The object on the top edge and flying under under the hanky is an old bit, but the flapping wings added a nice new touch.
P&T:
Cool to see Piff back. I really liked his act. I guess he had enough other stuff to make a full act. My initial reaction is that the books are all specially prepared plants that only have 26 lengthy words (one for each letter) and so once they know “T” they know the correct word.
I thought of this, but I feel this leaves too much chance of the 3rd person realizing there’s only one stone to pick from when there should be two.
Almost certainly. No opportunity for them to switch. Teller is in the Penn suit; random helper is in the Teller suit, and Penn is off somewhere doing the speaking… whenever Penn says "my face is in the mouth - see my face? That’s always an obvious ploy to lead the audience to believe that Jimmy can see Penn and confirm that Penn is the one in there, but presumably Jimmy can’t see anything.
Thing is that I think it’s even more impressive that he hands Alyson his deck. Remember, he’s the one who put a card into her deck - so he controlled which card that was. If she reveals the card he put in her deck AND he reveals the other card, you might think he just swaps during the reveal and reveals a matching card… However, but handing his deck to her, she reveals the card she put in his deck, implying that she controlled that card and he never handled it.
Doesn’t matter much if it’s H or He, I don’t think. Remember that the air you blow in is the same bouyancy as the air outside… so the only amount of H or HE you need is enough to offset the weight of the rubber itself… that’s not a whole lot, I don’t think. The rest can be air, or it can be empty. I don’t think it makes a difference.
Who’s Matt Donnelly? But yeah, I think if Alyson is going to act as an assistant (in on the trick) and not as a surrogate audience volunteer, that should be stated clearly, because when magicians use Alyson it’s always as a volunteer, not as an assistant. That’s one of the things that confused me.
He finds the relevant card quickly in the deck (impressively fast, but he uses cards a lot in his work so…) and he quickly recuts the deck to put it on the bottom (I think). then I think he uses a no-look move to move it to the top and when he puts the Ace atop the deck, I think he grabs the two back to back and, as he’s fanning he quickly flips them and puts them back atop the deck to leave the Ace there. A quick magic move.
One more comment on David Blaine’s subsequent trick since someone asked… I can only assume… I must assume that he forces the first two cards.
First thing that impresses me is that he does it with the same deck as the previous trick, so that tricked out card (I assume) is hidden in the deck the whole time he does the previous trick, potentially noticeable… unless he plants it during the next trick.
He shows “all different cards” before the trick but in reality is just finding the two cards he needs and is setting up the deck. His “you choose a card” spread SEEMS very natural, but he simply must force the selections. I don’t know what else to say. It’s not a great camera angle to tell.
He has the girl with the Queen put her card in the deck where he says “stop” (so he controls where the card goes in…) though he then lets her shuffle. The other girl he just has her toss her card in anywhere. He isn’t using that card, so it doesn’t matter, but his “stop” technique would normally suggest to me the need to control placement if not for the subsequent shuffle.
Anyway, he then flips the deck over and simply looks through it, finds the queen and then cuts the deck exactly how he wants it … he’s not even shameful about it. Just blatant. Since he “doesn’t know” the two cards, it doesn’t much matter at that point if he looks. So then he does ANOTHER force on the third girl to give her the queen. Then again to force it again… (I always wonder with the “you can change your might” bit if magicians use that as reverse psychology when they screw up the force and they are gambling to hope you give them a do-over…)
At that point it doesn’t matter which girl has the card. If it goes the way the it went, it works perfectly. If the other girl ends up with it, he probably plays the “oh you think I screwed up, but you’re holding your card - look in the queen’s hand” or some “multiple out” dialogue. He says he’s going to pick two girls for the trick so he can use the “she’s holding her card” line at the end. Nice job on that trick.
I’m very confused by all this. So they did the trick multiple times, or just the banter was reshot? And did Alyson not attend the rehearsal or practice it ahead of time? At least we know why the monitor was there (P&T definitely should have been informed of its involvement). That seems kind of messed up. Can they retroactively use their earlier guess and take the trophy back? (No WONDER they looked so bummed when they got back there!)
Thanks for the detailed run-through. I actually had to read it a couple times in order to get it. Lots of forces and clever maneuvers that are too quick for me to catch. I too always wonder about the “you can change your mind” option and whether that would affect anything – it always seems to raise the stakes.
I know David Blaine would have nothing to get out of it, but I’d really like to see him on Fool Us just to give P&T a run for their money. 
numeroussyrup clearly said that she DID rehearse this trick which is usually not the case when she is the surrogate innocent volunteer. In this case, sounds like she was acting more like an assistant knowing how the trick is done in advance.
Also, sounds like he had trouble with the banter in rehearsal, so they gave him a teleprompter for the performance.
Usually “you can change your mind” seems to be used where it honestly doesn’t matter what card is chosen. This seems like that was not the case. I am just guessing but if the trick relies on a doctored card, it means the girls must have picked those two cards at the start. That means there has to be a force. It can’t work any other way. Then it’s just a matter of how it was forced.
That is correct. The reason that they do these kind of illusions is more about having something good to look at on TV because they are “big” and flashy. I said somewhere before that if they were serious about fooling P&T it would all be crazy card tricks which while cool, is boring to watch.
Apparently Parent is a cruise ship magician and the original banter he has just wasn’t meshing with the show so they rewrote it to the airline bit.
Overall, Matt Donnelly full took the blame for this and Penn seemed okay with it.
…except when we guess at his slight, and are completely wrong 
To know more about rubber cement, find the old Harry Anderson “Needle Through Arm” gag he did often in the 80s. I finally got to see a local (full-time) magician do it, close up, and was still amazed, even knowing how it works. Then found out another magic-loving buddy of mine (who knows and does a ton of geek type tricks like this) also did it.
- A
I was very impressed by this one. The concept of an audience volunteer for something along these lines is done at least by one magician. We have Ben Ulin here in Iowa. He’s a full time magician who has also been performing 30 years at our local Adventureland amusement park.
He has a “cut a woman in half” trick that is sort of like Zig Zag Lady. A lovely assistant is put in the box, then the top part of her body are slid off to the side while you still see her feet below and moving. It’s an excellent illusion, and his version looks very good - even knowing how it works!
BUT, he does it with someone from the audience!
The first time I saw this, I “knew” the volunteer had to be in on the gag. But I was wrong. It was someone different, actually from the audience, every time.
The volunteer is just “taught” what to do as she is being put in the box, and plays along. He lets them know they should not reveal the secret for free Heh.
At the very least (using one method I imagined), Alyson would have had to be told to “play along” even if she didn’t know what was about to happen. If the box was deep enough, should could have just stepped in backwards (note that!) and it could simply be tilting her feet back, bringing her to a more “laying on your stomach” position (note her head tilt). She would have had to know to keep trying to tilt her head back so she would face forward.
It might be as simple as that - the side camera angles made that look impossible, but magic boxes are always deceitful to look at with much more space than it would seem I’d have to check when he steps around. He ducked down to show us below (ducking under the body?) and then up - but at the moment, I thought he was directly behind her. Or did he never actually do that, and it was just misdirection and I saw what he intended me to see?
However it works, I loved it.
IF the pearl is always the last one chosen, then it’s probably just something like an egg bag (split bag).
Say you have four choices with one being special. Three (and a hidden fourth, possibly already in the bag) get dropped in to one side of the bag, and the special one in the other side. When you open to let someone reach in, they are taking from the side with the four duplicates. The last person is allowed to reach in the other side where there is only one thing left - the pearl.
Penn speaks about him from time to time on his podcast.
I’m not sure what Blaine has done that would fool them - so many of his TV show tricks have been off-the-shelf things that are well documented in books and video tutorials. He just made them and the concept of “street magic” famous.
Re the pearl in the bag, I wouldn’t rule out holding back the black pearl because of the possibility that the third person (or all of the first three) can feel that the number of pearls is wrong. Volunteers are probably nervous and excited, unlikely to feel carefully enough in that second or two and unlikely to trust their assessment if they do feel one is missing. And even if a volunteer is sure a marble is missing, it’s unlikely he or she would say so and spoil the trick. They may tell their friends when they get back to their seats, but I think volunteers often come back to their seats with secrets to tell. Certainly the instant stooges do, the ones who are told what to do and asked to play along.
I was quite intrigued by the trick with Alyson shrinking in the box but it’s a bit of a letdown to hear that she was more than just a volunteer and had practiced it. If it had been the magician’s assistant in the box, I would have assumed that she knew how to contort herself to work with the contraption. Still a nice trick, but not so puzzling as to how it’s done. But with a “volunteer” like Alyson, I was wondering how he assumes the person can and will go along with moving into whatever awkward position is required. Now we know. (I suspect she’s squatting and the machine sort of swings her feet up and to the rear. Sounds awkward and uncomfortable, thus my thought that you couldn’t expect just any volunteer to go along with that.)
I was also surprised to hear that a cruise ship magician’s patter would be so bad that the show had to give him lines on a monitor. I know they want the show to be smooth and entertaining foremost, but it seems like too much help. Shouldn’t his onstage demeanor and lines be part of the act he’s presenting to P&T, for better or worse?
This is pretty much what I figured was happening.
I found that move more than a little odd; he crouched down well behind the cabinet to show us he was back there, but didn’t move closer, or crawl under – which would have been cool – or even wave his arm into the space. This led me to think there may have been mirrors in play as well. This type of big-box illusion doesn’t really do much for me.
I really enjoyed Dan Sperry’s bit. The juxtaposition of the blood-and-gore, death-metal look with a quirky nerdy character was quite fun. The trick itself, though, was really a very small one, albeit with lots of theatrics.
Nathan Phan’s balloon act was nice to look at, but once you realize there’s helium in the balloon, not very perplexing.
Richard Forget, while putting a fresh spin on some old, off-the-shelf illusions, was essentially doing old, off-the-shelf illusions – some much better than others.
Overall, this was perhaps the weakest collection of acts I can recall on one episode.
Pretty sure it’s SHIN LIM that’s also been on AMERICA’S GOT TALENT this year. On there, he got amazing reactions for his close up magic. Which did look good. Moving quarters around under cards. But to my eyes, he was using a rigged table top that was SO OBVIOUS, I couldn’t believe he wasn’t called on it. It looked it was covered in black velvet that somehow had a mechanism that must have moved the coins around under the cards. Perhaps a revolving turntable operated by someone else?
With the balloon trick, Penn said something about him “losing his bearings” so I assume he had put some ball bearings into the balloon and the table had a magnet in it.
Dan Sperry was cool, but you could see the rubber cement on his stomach though.
It might be OK to rely on no one noticing in a stage trick, but I think that’s kind of risky, and would definitely be too risky if you were doing a ‘seance’ type setup, especially if you’re trying to actually convince people. It seems to me that it would be easy enough to have the right number of balls in the bag for people to feel all along, presuming I read the ‘ring’ cue right. You show three marbles, but actually put four marbles plus the black pearl into the bag (ordinary sleight of hand). Black pearl has iron in the middle, and your ring is magnetic so it grabs the pearl leaving 4 round things for the first three people to choose from, that are actually all not the pearl. On the last person, you use two fingers and/or your hand to hold the last marble out of the choosing area, and release the pearl so they find it (not very difficult sleight of hand). When you put the bag down/away, you get rid of the last marble from it (ordinary sleight of hand). Then when you’re done, no one ever felt too few balls in the bag and people can examine all of the props you used and not see any gimmick like a fake pocket in the bag.
OK, on tonights episode and the first act: Ricardo Berdini.
What did he even do? It looked like he just used Alysson as a plant to say different words. Or were the cards with the words on them “magic eye” things where up close you see one set of words but a bit further away you see a different set of words?
Penn said he did good magic but those are the only two possibilities I can think of. Which don’t really involve magic at all. Just a plant or trick cards.
That trick made me think of those cards where you can see two different pictures depending on the angle – like you might get a slight animation effect as you tip the card back and forth. You used to see them in greeting cards years ago, but I haven’t seen any for ages. I believe its done with, well, sort of prism-like plastic in narrow bands.
It might fit, given that P & T and the audience were seated at less than stage height, while Allyson was looking down at the card.
Just a guess.
On googling, what I’m thinking of is called Lenticular Printing.