Friedo has my response exactly. A very dumb trick, but hardly a plant. Still the worst trick on Fool Us. Except for that one with Simon Pegg.
I don’t know the technical definition of a plant you’re using, but they put a person in the audience who was in on the trick, deliberately selected him with something made to appear random, and the person from the audience was instrumental to making the trick happen. To me, that’s a plant, even if it doesn’t fit a particular narrow definition that magicians use. Worse that ruining that trick, to me it damages all of the tricks that use an audience member, because it puts that seed of ‘maybe she’s in on the trick, they allowed that before’ into my head.
I still think there’s a significant difference from the magician hiding in the audience and a helper planted in the audience. I think the reason the staff would allow it is the magician reveal. But the rest of the trick was crap because of that reveal.
However, a traditional plant wouldn’t pass the “sufficiently cool” muster.
Yes, the fact that he was in the trick was supposed to be part of the trick. He was part of the reveal. He didn’t just go along with the trick and play the role of the plant.
I think the main trick in that routine was that he was in the trick the whole time.
It was painfully obvious. So painfully obvious that it was embarrassing, but still, it was there.
Plants, to me, are participants that are never revealed to be part of the trick. I believe they do not allow that kind of lame trick on Fool Us.
If the guy had the resource of three(!) planted audience members I think he could/would have come up with a much more impressive trick - I agree it looked a little funny the way they all got up, but I think it’s much more likely due to something like a reshoot for some reason, or they all had to be fitted with microphones or sign waivers or something before coming on stage, etc.
Agreed. Stand where I tell you, wear the tag I place around your neck, hold the bag that’s handed to you, and follow all my overt instructions. Because nobody but plants would get that right.
I went back and looked again. The camera angle shifts between when he starts asking for assistance, and when he starts calling out the men. He’s clearly looking over at that area. The second man leans forward and then stops to adjust his tie, and the third is making eye contact with Kopf. I think making eye contact and hearing “three gentlemen” and “the one behind him” could prime an alert audience member for “I’ll be the third”.
It’s possible there was an edit for forms or a reshoot of that angle to speed up getting on stage or something. I think it’s also possible it ran clean and just looks funny.
Agreed. I was quite surprised to hear them say she was some kind of close up magic award winner. It was a very unimpressive trick and she was clearly fumbling with the bandaids when she put them on.
It seems a bit unfair to called P&T “fooled” just because they didn’t know exactly where the second set of pads went. They assumed they were still somehow attached to the bandaids.
I don’t know what their general standard is, but in the cases where they guessed wrong P&T they proclaimed they were fooled. Earlier in the season they there was a handoff in a card trick where the card ended up on the bottom of a skateboard. They knew it was a handoff but they assumed the handoff occurred at the wrong point in the act and they proclaimed that they were fooled.
Yes. Penn and Teller thought she had ditched the pads in the wrappers on the table. It seems she did something else with them so the stuff on the table was “clean”. Ergo, Teller looked at the easy place and didn’t find them, and apparently didn’t see her ditch them. Ergo, fooled on a technicality, just like a bunch of other contestants.
All magic is a technicality, if you can’t say exactly how it is done. “It’s a trick!” is not an explanation.
He didn’t say that particular line in a mystical way, it was quite matter of fact if I recall correctly - “you probably expect this to be a prediction like most tricks, but actually it’s not.”
Except yes it is…
When he hands it over to Penn, he says it’s a random bit of trivia.
When he gets to the envelope, he says
He goes on to have Penn explain the MRF link, and then state the date. Then he explains for the slow kids how the date on the paper matches the “random” numbers.
So yes, it serves as a prediction.
To my ear, he’s wrapping the whole thing in his mystical “randomness” schtick, but on that point he just flatly states it isn’t a prediction, and then turns around and uses it as one.
I guess in one way it isn’t a prediction. It’s simply a restatement of the foregone conclusion of the number he picked ahead of time. So technically he’s right. 
Is it done for the season? Hulu doesn’t have any episodes posted anymore and I know we were getting close to the end
The season is over. I think it’s been renewed for next year.
I know this episode is three or so episodes old now, but after spending several days catching up on old episodes, this one was still pretty knew to us. I’ve enjoyed reading the way you all dissect the acts and figure them out. But, the episode with the magnifying glass and the pen… You all missed the meaning of the magnifying glass, IMO. Penn keeps clicking it over and over. He’s not hinting at the magnifier, but the “clicker”. It’s a sign that someone is planted nearby to do the book database search and then send the correct numbers to the guy writing them on the page. You can tell the only thing he writes are those numbers… the word dictionary was already on the page. Look how he holds the page in relation to how he writes. All he has to do is jot down the digits he receives from his “clicker”. That same “clicker” receives the number from the digital pen.
Oh, and thank you for solving some of these acts that we simply couldn’t!
Simon Pierro’s trick relied on plants. The two women he took the photograph with in the audience are obvious plants since the photo that comes out of the printer has different people in the background than the shot from the audience.
But I agree the latest trick obviously wasn’t plants. If he were able to use plants, he would just have the woman be a plant and then the trick would be trivial. No need for any of the guys to be plants.
That means the picture was taken before hand, the women didn’t have to be in on it. His image was stuck in afterwards.
Yes, Penn was referring to a signal from a thumper. They pick the random audience members during the commercial or before the show. The people on stage were not signaling the magician. He had a thumper in the audience who could tell him which bag was being touched.
Do you know this somehow or you’re just theorizing?
He didn’t need anyone in the audience. They make electronic RFID devices that will send a signal to a device he can wear/carry in a pocket. He puts a tag in each bag that signals differently. The lady picks up the red bag, he gets a buzzzzz, and knows it’s red. She picks up green, he gets bzz bzz bzz and knows green.