Was it the pen?
S05E02 - 7/2/18 (Rematch episode)
Vinny Grosso: The Gilbert Gottfried gorilla switcheroo. Really surprised this one won right off the bat. I got the sense while watching the “live feed” that it was actually just a prerecorded bit with Gilbert and the name “Mark” was somehow superimposed at the end (which is what P&T “wrongly” guessed – although probably not too far off the mark). The other thing I thought was that Mark was a plant because of how forceful and stilted he acted, but Teller clearly threw the ball right at him (watch it again: the throwing/catching shots don’t match). If it really was done live, then someone off-screen could have easily inserted the name at the end.
Morgan & West: Time traveling spiffing magicians. My first impression is that there was sleight of hand involved with the coins, but the driver’s license reading threw me off. Penn drops a few hints: The Piddingtons, Mofo the Psychic Gorilla, some sort of reference to “Kodak” and implies about the glass dropping sounds being fake. Still can’t figure out the driver’s license though.
Paul Gertner: Wow, wasn’t expecting a second fooler this episode! Third time was a charm. There had to be some sort of deck switch involved because he showed the bottoms of the cards earlier, but it seems he won on technicality because Penn guessed it happened while his back was turned. I don’t even know how the first five predictions were done.
As a side-note, it seems like a surefire way to trick the boys is to tell them you’re doing one thing, and then quickly sneak something else at the very end that they’re not expecting.
Eric Jones: Wishing papers/coin trick. I saw a bunch of palming moves in this one, and I never notice those. Penn mentions a flip wallet, using the assistants as props and probably some coin stacking.
P&T: Misdirection with a cluck – er, chicken. Mostly for gags, but you can tell there is a lot of room in that box. They just did this trick on Fallon last week: Penn & Teller Give a Lesson in Misdirection Using a Vanishing Chicken - YouTube
I felt like something was edited out of this trick, or I just missed it. They said at the end that the prediction was in the envelop, and I thought “what prediction?” It was like Grosso took advantage of Gottfried’s persona to make it seem like he was fucking up the reading of the instructions so it wasn’t even clear what the trick was going to be about until it was over. That’s an odd sort of misdirection, if misdirection it was. If the only mystery is how the name “Mark” got in the envelop, is it possible they just recorded the end of the Gottfried video multiple times with every common men’s name?
They made such a big deal about how one of the guys maintained eye contact with Alyson Hannigan, and he didn’t have any way of receiving messages by eye or ear, but there are other ways he could be signaled. I was wondering if it was like the cheaters in Casino; a device under his clothes to press against his skin, and an off-stage assistant to see the coins and license and send the information to him.
I think Gertner must have removed the 10 through Ace of spades from the deck before the trick began, otherwise he runs the risk of one of the volunteers selecting one of those cards when they’re picking at random. Then, when he’s asking everyone their names and counting out cards, he shows the first card of each count and asks if that’s their card, which looked weird to me. I mean, that wasn’t supposed to be their card, so why ask? Now that I know how it ends, I’d want to see this one again to figure out how the cards got where they’re supposed to be.
I thought Grosso’s trick was odd also, had to rewind and watch to figure out what the trick was supposed to be. So he forced the gorilla somehow, not really clear how that worked but not that big of a deal, but the name on the ‘prediction’ was the real trick and seems pretty easy to arrange somehow in all that confusion
I think Morgan and West were using timing and codes just like any mentalists might do to communicate, no more impressive than the first forgettable time they were on.
Gertner was doing some funny dealing, the guys didn’t pick up anything in particular and spent their guess on the action with his back turned. Nothing all that special really.
All the acts seemed somewhat stilted, too much focus on trying to fool P&T with something they hadn’t seen before instead of putting on a good act I think.
What I found most interesting was the stories of how life-changing appearing on the show can be, especially since there had been some initial skepticism among magicians at the start.
Vinny Grosso: I was just confused. I lost track of what was going on.
Morgan & West: Time traveling spiffing magicians. Very entertaining, my favorite of tonight’s group, even though what they did apparently wasn’t very novel.
Paul Gertner: This one disappointed me. Apparently very difficult technically to do at the end, which impressed Penn and Teller, but for an average viewer like me this was drawn out and not very interesting. I thought the initial talk about odd vs. even number of letters in the names would be significant in the end, but seems to have been just used for a “grandpa Simpson story” stalling tactic. The fact that he got blind-sided by people having too long names suggests lack of preparation beyond the technical aspects.
Eric Jones: Apparently a fairly standard routine but I was impressed.
It’s kinda why I dislike mentalism acts. Nowadays we have incredibly small devices to send and receive information that it kinda kills the mystery for me. Even if they do not use electronic devices it still has lost a lot of its interesting appeal. However if an act did it entirely naked, that could be neat since it shows people there is no hidden electronics.
That’s what Grosso did for his first FU. But it was more comedy than magic, and it still doesn’t eliminate electronic communication. I never find mentalism acts entertaining because they aren’t showing you anything. It gets a little better with the act Grosso did on this episode where you see something physically change, but this kind of mentalism act is about the performers doing as little as possible. It’s just boring and what particular method they use of communicating doesn’t matter much when they’re communicating such small amounts of information.
I tend to think the opposite; not so much in this specific case, but for magicians in general. They plan, and rehearse, everything. If there’s a prop on the magician’s left, and he picks it up with his left hand and then passes it to his right hand, that was deliberate. When they act like something has gone wrong, it’s not something they hadn’t thought of and prepared for. Of course it looks natural. Misdirection doesn’t work if you know you’ve been misdirected.
Vinny Grosso: Really the only mystery here was how the name “Mark” got on the prediction card. It’s possible that Gottfried was actually appearing live, and another accomplice was able to print the card and switch envelopes at some point. I wasn’t paying attention to the evelope and really wasn’t invested enough in the trick to go back and watch again.
Morgan & West: At first I figured the secret was simply code words: “Happy?” means penny; “Thank you” means dime, and so forth. Guessing the total amount of change was more impressive, I suppose, but could have been accomplished with the help of an overhead camera and an offstage accomplice relaying information to a vibrating or tapping device in a pocket (there’s a name for it in magic circles that I don’t remember, but it’s a fairly common technique). And with all the technology available these days, there certainly could have been a scanner or camera embedded in the tray. A fun act, but not really all that mystifying.
Paul Gertner: Just some really great card mechanics. I’m sure he was second-dealing and bottom-dealing, and all kinds of other manipulations as well, but it was all smooth enough that I didn’t see the moves. Think about the fact that he had to keep track of ten different cards and produce them all at the right times. Even though the narrative was a bit convoluted, this was incredibly impressive. I suspect P&T pretty much knew what he was doing, but he “fooled” them because they didn’t catch exactly what he did when he did it.
Eric Jones: My least favorite act of the night. He was good, but close-up coin magic is just such well-worn territory that I feel like I’ve seen it all before. Clearly, so have Penn and Teller.
It’s quite possible that one of the magicians (whichever one was dropping the coins in the glass) counted up how much change the volunteer had given him, and then added some coins to make an amount that they had a pre-arranged signal to give to his partner. The guy from the audience wouldn’t catch on unless he knew exactly how much change he was handing over, and who bothers to know exactly how much change they have in their pockets?
I saw an old Harry Anderson routine where he asked for a five-dollar bill from someone in the audience, tore it in half, and handed one of the pieces back. I always thought if I saw him in person I should check the serial numbers of any bills I was carrying; see if the half I get back is really from the bill I gave him.
Paul Gertner’s last move was pretty simple actually, he just had some prearranged piles of cards with backs exactly matching the color of the table under each of those five piles he was dealing. You can actually see in the end that there are a lot more cards in each pile than those he counted. For example the fourth pile should consist of only four cards, cause the woman’s nickname had five letters in it, and minus the card she chose. But there’s obviously more than four cards in the fourth pile under the king of spades.
Shin Lim used a similar table and cards with backs mathing the table’s color: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thIlxChNYqk
So the tricky part was the first one where he found all the five cards of those people on stage. But he even admitted that it was a trick Penn and Teller could have already known, so it must be something relatively standart, although I’d like to know exactly how it’s done.
When the royal flush is shown, you can also see that each of the top cards is higher on their piles than you would expect them to be, supporting the theory that the back of the cards are velvet. It’s very noticeable on the Ace of Spades, but almost as apparent in the other cards.
It was the box.
I like it. I’m curious whether Teller actually took the chicken or if it’s hidden in there somewhere, still, at the end.
I note that they’re wearing the same suits as they wear on the show. Maybe they’re trying to comment on people commenting on everyone complaining about Allison wearing the same thing.
OK, I had the benefit of rewinding and watching one more time, but :
The Gorilla trick was insultingly easy. Why does Gilbert turn off the video? Wouldn’t it be funnier and more interesting if he was able to interact with the volunteer, while they’re picking him and LOUDLY SAYING HIS NAME? Could it be that he’s still getting audio, and is sitting at a computer/printer, about to type the volunteer’s name and stuff the newly printed sheet of paper into the manila envelope, before putting the envelope back in place and turning on the camera?
Forcing the actual stuffed gorilla was good sleight-of-hand but hardly mysterious. Either Penn and Teller intentionally let themselves be fooled, or they’re kicking themselves about how they blew it.
The time-travellers were good, but I assume it was sophisticated code-words/timing codes.
Gertner hardly seemed worthy of a fooled-us award, either. You don’t even need slow-mo to see him obviously bottom-dealing the person’s chosen card when he makes the piles (though maybe he was intentionally being sloppy to distract P&T?). And I agree that my guess would be the Royal Flush cards were black-velvet backed and in place the whole time (why else would he have a table with a tablecloth AND a square of velvet on the table?).
The chicken-gorilla trick was pretty lame, too. Obviously there’s one gorilla hiding inside the coop from the beginning behind the false back, and a second gorilla doing the distraction.
Just caught up on the latest episode, “Penn & Teller Get Loopy” (S05E03, 7/9/18).
Ryan Chandler: Card trick/music looper. This felt like a new idea, but seemed unnecessarily complicated. I think Alyson’s card was forced and he learned how to say five of spades in reverse (or it was prerecorded). I don’t think there’s anything more to the trick than that, but I wish there was.
Ryan Hayashi: The Samurai of coin magic. I’ll be honest, this act started out dull (we’ve all seen these moves before), but like P&T expressed, it got more complex as it went on and I just enjoyed it for what it was. I don’t think they were necessarily fooled, but I was glad the guy won because he clearly had so much veneration for the art and treasured the experience.
Losander: Floating table routine. I never understand the physics of levitation acts and I didn’t notice any obvious mechanisms or apparatus, so it enchanted me. The guy said he invented it over a period of 25 years, so it was kinda painful to see it get shot down so quickly. I think it was worth it just to watch the look of delight on Alyson’s face while she participated in it. I guess the disappearance had a fairly standard explanation, but I still don’t know what it was.
Ed Ripley: Nuclear metallurgist and his money printing machine. I don’t care how it was done, just give it to me! (Penn’s keyword: “Pocket.”)
I don’t like to criticize magicians (and I obviously couldn’t do any better), but this episode did feel a bit like amateur night.
Ryan Chandler was engaging but the audio trick was too long and complicated for the payoff. Watching people loop sounds wasn’t entertaining even when people first found that feature on their Casio keyboards 20 years ago. I lost interest very quickly.
Losander’s table trick was performed well, but really, isn’t that one of the most basic illusions that every 12 yo magician learns? It does look great on stage if you have no idea how he does it, but he’s supposed to be trying to fool P&T. It’s this kind of trick that makes me think the show is devolving into just a venue for run of the mill magic acts, rather than the original premise.
Ed Ripley’s magic money machine was intriguing. At first it seemed ridiculously simple and an old trick, but then he did things that were confounding and opened up the machine. It was cool how P&T were so impressed with the workmanship, which seemed to mean to mean a lot to him.
P&T’s trick was pretty lame - it was clear from the side shot that the box was suspiciously deep - I guess at this point they’ve done so many of their better tricks on the show already that they’re running out of stuff.
I, too, was surprised the coin bit “fooled” them. I certainly didn’t follow every move, but I caught a few of them, and figured Penn & Teller could keep up with no problem. I guess he was just that good.
The table levitation was a variation on the old ball-and-handkerchief trick that’s been around forever. Still, it was nicely done. I’m guessing the table was made of balsa or some other super light material. Not sure exactly how he accomplished the vanish, but it was the sort of thing we’ve all seen before. A nice visual, but he had zero chance of fooling P&T.
It was cool to see a twist on the old money roller trick that practically everybody knows. I’m thinking he pocketed the relevant piece (the one that makes the trick work) when he dismantled the machine. But I didn’t see him do so, and I have no idea how he produced the different-sized bills at the right times. Fun bit!
I agree that the coin trick maybe didn’t technically “fool” them, but they gave him the award for beating them into submission since it was very well done and just kept going and going.