It was a tough night for the Magicians. Fooling Penn & Teller twice is pretty hard.
I felt so bad for the Spanish guy with the thread trick. He performed the slight of hand so flawlessly. Such rotten luck that Teller has been researching that exact Trick to perform himself.
Anyone else shocked that Penn said they had been researching that trick for months? Months??? Just to perform a slight of hand trick with Thread?
I thought the handcuff act had potential. But that huge screen hid too much. We needed to see her struggle to get out.
That’s not what they do. P&T tend to create new interpretations of classic tricks (and wholly original stuff) and it takes a lot of time and experimentation to come up with the best way to do that.
Helen Couglin bugs the shit out of me. She’s managed to get two fools but she’s the dullest presenter to ever be on the show. Use some damn showmanship.
Many others have already made the point but hearing Penn and Teller tell the evolution and polishing of a trick for YEARS will make the point. This American Life #619 will tell the story in the magical duo’s own words.
Man, she really is bad at it isn’t she. Her tricks are mechanical in nature also. I dunno, maybe magic shows are different on the bottom of the world.
Her advantage is having unique tricks to perform that she and her dad made up. Any trick that’s ever been written down or told or sold or taught or shared is easy for P&T to catch, but if it’s a newly created effect they can be fooled, even without much showmanship or other skills.
And showmanship and presentation count. Check out Mathieu Bich, who invented his own trick(including, I think, making the cards). In this trick, he:
presents it beautifully
anticipates Penn and Teller’s guess and messes with them
gets a genuine standing ovation from Teller, a true honor
It’s a great trick called Spreadwave and he sells it. His newest version can do all 52 cards instead of being limited.
It’s one of the great fooling moments of the show and also fits into the category of “totally fooled them” instead of getting them to guess slightly wrong.
I thought she looked pretty plain for a stage magician, but maybe that was part of the deception. Viewers would tend to think she was some dowdy housewife, kind of like Susan Boyle, but she uses that perception to her advantage somehow.
Agree 100% - maybe his humor lost something in translation, but I found the scatalogical references to Alison sitting on the card (“number 2”, “dung” beetles) completely tasteless, and the “beetle” eating (I assume they were just candies or something) completely pointless.
I’m not sure I completely understood Penn’s double-speak, but it was pretty clear to me that Danny was miming the chair pulling him and that he was actually locked to the stage somehow, and holding the chair up (pretending it was pulling him up). I think Penn and Teller were a little impressed that he had a device in his pants that supported the whole length of his leg (so he could be leaning way over without falling) and yet let him walk normally.
Not sure how the string guy made the string come together, but it was obvious even first time through that he had the chance to add something at least. And one rewind made it super clear how he palmed the string and substituted the chalk or whatever he crumbled.
And I was wondering 'is that really Penn? It doesn’t look like him!" during his trick.
Just caught up on the first two episodes. Most of my thoughts have been covered already.
I agree that Helen Coghlan’s trick was not good. There are three possible reasons that the assistants were out of our sight line for as long as they were:
They were undoing her locks. This is the obvious and most likely explanation, and she lawyered away the definition of “inside the enclosure” by contending they reached in or something.
They were red herrings. She wanted P&T to think this was the answer to throw them off. I don’t care for this tactic, but it’s a possibility.
The trick was just that poorly designed and performed. Given what we’ve seen of her, I’d believe this.
Whichever it was, this whole act was a clunker.
Regarding Rebecca Herrera, I thought maybe the chair was rigged with a thumper-type device, which would explain why Penn didn’t detect it on her person. The music explanation sounds right, though.
Going back to the previous episode, I wanted to mention Giancarlo Bernini and the time travel act. He seemed very likable, and the bit had a nice narrative flow, but unfortunately, I think it was clumsily executed. The point of having Alison hold the box off to the side was completely negated when he took it back to his own custom-made table to produce the items. Maybe the drawing was a copy, and maybe there were two platypuses (platypi?), but that wasn’t necessary, as it would be relatively trivial for a skilled sleight of hand artist to get the items from one table to the other at some point.
As for the running stopwatch, we never actually saw him open the stopwatch app; he always had the phone turned toward him. So I think we were simply seeing a video he had loaded onto the phone. That could be what Penn was talking about with the “you don’t know where it’s coming from” spiel.
With a little more polish, this kid could be really good, but he’s not there yet.
The trick with the guy with his hands in the clay in the Legos was astonishing - was that the first time P&T awarded the trophy without even a discussion?
It makes it a little easier for sure. I don’t know why they were so baffled, he needed a way to get the right card fed down his sleeve to put it in the box just like any of the ‘sealed envelope’ type tricks.
S06E03: The “Inventor” Episode - originally aired 7/1/19
Arkadia: Pirate-themed magic. I gotta admit, I was distracted by the red-and-black wardrobes of Arkadia and Allison, which seemed to perfectly complement each other. The faded stamp “tattoo” was pretty terrible, but the (obviously) freshly engraved “Red Bandit” was a nice touch. I’m guessing it was some sort of device in the box? Cool props, but it seemed like it needed a bit more polish.
Harry Keaton: Left/right brain tricks. I loved this act. Maybe the best part was watching P&T’s expressions being transformed back to wide-eyed 5-year-old kids. I could definitely see Harry’s hand going behind the box after every “transition” and somehow performing the switcheroo, but it was seamless and perplexing and amazing to watch. A well-deserved win.
Jandro: LEGO my card-o. This was a lot of fun, not least because Penn got to wield a bat. Whatever Jandro’s hand was doing inside the clay, he was clearly buying time with a lot of banter. Like the previous trick, I have no idea how it was done but it was a pleasure to behold. The only thing I can think is that there was a bottom compartment to the alarmed box, but still, how could he slide a 2 of diamonds in there without seeing the card (or handling it after the fact)? I think Penn was so overjoyed by the pure illusion that he had to award it immediately because it might have started to fall apart under further consideration.
Derek Selinger: Hangmagician. A very cool visual gag with a lot at stake. I think the key to the whole thing is that we never see/verify what number the audience member pulls out of the bag (or what happens with the assistant behind the gallows). My uneducated guess is that whichever noose was pulled down around his neck deactivated the trapdoor (or maybe his standing there acted as a counterbalance of some sort). Nonetheless, I was entranced throughout.
Penn & Teller (& Mike Jones): Musical floating napkin. Invisible wire(s), right?
This was a great episode because it seemed to go back to the roots of Fool Us, which is presenting wholly original acts that the boys hadn’t seen before.