Okay, I spotted this show running on the CW, a small network on US television. It’s actually a series filmed in the UK back in 2011, which was discussed in a thread here.
I started reading that thread after watching the first episode, but they were discussing shows and tricks I didn’t see, and I found that annoying, I want to discuss the shows as I see them, without reveals on shows that haven’t aired in the US yet. So I’m starting this thread.
The premise of the show: invite magicians on to perform for Penn and Teller and a studio audience. If the magician can fool P&T, they get to go perform at one of P&T’s Vegas shows. But if P&T can guess how the trick is done, they may reveal it to the audience and tv show. And at the end of the show, P&T perform.
The first episode is titled Stab a Card, Any Card
The first performer is Mark Shortland. The trick:
He pulls out a regular 6-sided die and hands it to the host (Jonathan Ross). Then he pulls out 6 brown envelopes, and 5 cheap phones. He has Jonathan place each of the phones in a separate envelope and seal them, and then take out his own personal phone and place it in an envelope and seal it. After shuffling the envelopes so no one can tell which envelope has which phone, he then pulls out stickers and has Jonathan place a number 1 through 6 on each envelope. Then he places the die from before into a clear plastic box to roll the die in. Having Jonathan roll the die, he then uses a mallet to smash whichever number the die rolls, until he only has one left. He even had Penn come up an smash one of the phones. The last phone, of course, is Jonathan’s and is amazingly safe.
P&T review the trick, try to inspect the die, and then point out after a few rolls that “he’s really lucky. Really really lucky.” In other words, the die doesn’t have a side 4, which is the envelope number with the host’s phone. I think he constrains the phone into number 4 because he handles the envelopes after they are sealed but before the numbers are added, so he can tell by feel which is the host’s phone, and then lays them on the table in such a way and directs the numbering to ensure that is the 4 envelope. He swaps the die when taking it from the host and placing in the box.
Nice trick and well-performed.
Next act: Mathieu Bich
Bich hands Penn an inflatable beach ball and has him throw it randomly in the audience, and asks that lady for red or black (red). She throws it, and he asks for hearts or diamonds (diamonds). She throws it, he asks low or high (high). She throws it, he asks for 7 through K, the guy picks 9. So the selected card is 9 of Diamonds.
He then goes to a table where he has a wooden box with a special deck of cards. The deck is all blank, no writing, which he shows us in bits. He does a lot of cutting and stacking and moving around, to reveal three printed cards that say “Your” “Card” “Is the”. He then fans the rest of the cards and reveals on the edge writing that says “Nine of Diamonds”.
The trick is impressive enough, but Penn makes a stab at guessing. He points out the selection is convincingly random and not forced selection. Then he says that magicians often use props that they look like they don’t care about, that seem extraneous to the trick, but really are intrinsic to the trick, so he says he thinks the box is important, and that there is more than one deck of cards. Bich is Mr. Cool, opens the box to show the word “No”. 
So Penn declares they were fooled.
My comment: given the way he was stacking and handling the cards, I think he uses exactly the trick that P&T used in their trick with the body painters - you have all the options available and then by careful arrangement reveal whichever card as the obvious and only solution. He appeared to use the three printed cards to separate sections for card, “of”, and suit. I’m surprised P&T didn’t guess that option.
Third act: Young and Strange. Two young magicians as a duo with those last names. Catchy. They do a fairly conventional escape from a box trick. Young puts on a tutu, climbs into a trunk and into a bag in the trunk, which is tied. The lid closed, Young is locked in, right? Then Strange goes off to the side to get a flag and some cheesy music, and comes prancing out with the flag, which is apparently an American flag. He then goes and gets a large screen and rolls it in front of the trunk. Then he takes the flag and prances behind the screen, and Young comes out the other side with the flag but no tutu. Young then rolls the screen out of the way, opens the trunk to reveal - a woman wearing the tutu. And then Strange appears at the back of the room.
The gimmick is, of course, getting Strange from the stage behind the screen to the back of the audience in little time without being seen. Penn points out that he and Teller pegged pretty quick it was going to be a girl in the box and Strange at the back of the room, so the only real important part was explaining how he got there so quickly. No tunnel, but then Penn says “We’re a duo, you guys are a duo. If we knew every move you made exactly, and performed every move you made exactly, would we be able to do the trick the way you did?” To which Young and Strange said “Thank you for having us on.” Penn then goes on to say that if they can keep that secret, they’ll be able to have a great act.
Except I think he gives too much away, even with his circumspect approach. I’m going to be open because it goes to my point. I think the trick is that Strange has a twin brother (which is commented in the other thread and proven to be true). My point is that doesn’t seem the kind of thing that one can keep secret for long today with the world so interconnected and social media everywhere. In the past maybe you could get by with nobody knowing, but nowadays, you’re just one facebook page away from someone who grew up in his hometown and knows his family. And that’s assuming you don’t have an accidental facebook account staring out at the world. :smack:
Anyway, it was an entertaining duo, but not particularly challenging.
Fourth performer: Daniel Madison. Madison is a card trick specialist, who says he’s more about understanding the psychology than about fooling people. He has a pretty nifty trick for dealing a winning poker hand from a deck of cards provided by P&T, while blindfolded.
He starts off by having P&T provide a standard card deck and shuffle them. Then he hands Teller a blindfold and has Teller inspect it to make sure it isn’t gimmicked and really does block sight. After the blindfold is in place, Penn shuffles the cards, and then places them in Madison’s hands face down. Madison deals through the cards, and then every once in a while, turns a card face down on the table. When he gets to the end, he has Penn turn over the cards to reveal the 10, J, Q, K, and A of diamonds. Neato.
Penn says they may be more impressed because they know what he did. He then tells a story about a dear friend of his, Jerry Camero, who did the move dealing out the cards that Madison did, and that his move was so perfect, he would go around teaching it to magicians, but the magicians could never learn the move because it was so difficult. But Camero was able to perfect it because he spent 14 years in prison for first degree murder, practicing that move every day. So for this guy to do it that well and not have done hard time, that was impressive.
As for the move: I see two key places for the trick. First, the deck is face down because that allows Madison to palm in his stack of winning cards to the bottom of the deck as he takes it from his right hand to his left hand. She slides a few onto the bottom. Watching it in slowmo on TV, I can just see a moment when a few extra cards get lined up to the bottom. Then when he’s counting the cards through, he throws in a few false deals, i.e. he’s pulling the card from the deck and setting down in a discard stack, and misses his grab. That’s important to help people trying to count the cards to lose track. Throw in a smooth bottom deal whenever he wants to select a card. All that is reasonable.
The real trick, the one I think Penn means, comes at the end of the deck. He’s down to about 3 cards left, but actually has about 8 in his hand. He takes one, in his right hand, holding the remainder of the deck in his left, he sets the last few cards down holding one more card in his left. Then he weighs these two cards before selecting the right one and putting the left on the discard deck. What is really smooth is putting the discards in such a way that you aren’t supposed to realize he has too many cards left in his stack. The weighing/evaluating the two at the end gives him a way to set down several cards without dealing them one at a time.
It was very smooth, I almost didn’t see it the first time through. Slow-mo helps. Still, great trick.
The final act is, of course, Penn and Teller pulling off one of their famous tricks, Stab a Card. This trick involves Penn being a loud and annoying dick to Teller and to an audience member to get the audience in the right frame of mind to root for injury to Penn. They start with Teller riffling the deck and an audience member selecting a card at random. Teller shows the audience, then “loses” the card in the deck with a quick shuffle. As they move on, Penn begins to deride Teller for his “obvious elbow move”. That turns to going back to the lady, asking her if she thinks the card is lost in the deck, then seeing if she would bet 100 pounds that Teller really doesn’t know where that card is. Like I said, being obnoxious. So he demonstrates that the card is always where it needs to be. Then he has her select a new card, does a “false cut, false shuffle” and the card is “ostensibly lost in the deck”.
Then he takes American dollar coins and athletic tape and tapes the coins over Teller’s eyes to make a blindfold. Then he takes the deck over to another audience member, asks her to go through the deck and find the card, and then make sure it’s lost in the deck. While she’s looking, he sticks the selected card to his own forehead. And she doesn’t notice. Then, after explaining how he palmed the card right in front of her, he gives her the card to really lose in the deck.
Finally he takes the deck over to Teller, who is blindfolded and holding up a knife. He does a few more annoying tricks to Teller while he’s blindfolded - moving the cards, poking him, etc. Teller stabs at the board and just misses Penn’s hand. “Way not cool.” Then he does the knife stab to select a card, but it isn’t the right card. Penn reaches over ostensibly to spread the cards and look through them or something, when Teller stabs again, right through Penn’s hand, and oh, by the way, through the card that was previously selected. 
Join us again next week for round 2. (That’s this week. Hey, I’m behind.)
