Overall, I thought that it was an average episode. I agree that the bottle trick was the most entertaining and I appreciate that it was sleight of hand although I have no idea how the trick was done.
The book trick just wasn’t interesting to me. OK, it wasn’t a book switch. IMHO, magic is supposed to make you wonder “How did he do that?” and in this case, I just didn’t care.
ISTM that Allyson Hannigan was trying too hard to be a female Jonathan Ross.
Did anyone play along with the P&T trick at the end? I foolishly told myself ahead of time that I’d just mentally pick 4 cards and do it in my head. Obviously, that didn’t work out so well.
Knowing how the bottle trick is done it didn’t impress me. They pointed out his skill, he was quick, but I didn’t find the routine all that entertaining, and it would not fool any magician. They may have been taking a dig at the AGT winner who did that as an encore performance and didn’t do it anywhere near as well. Don’t let my jaded exposure to the art detract from it though, if others find it entertaining then it is.
Farquhar did something simple designed simply to fool P&T. By the rules, and verified by someone he could not be pulling a switch or using a memory technique, but as they pointed out it was all misdirection by using a trick with known methods but coming up with a new technique whatever it was.
Nathan Burton is boring. He’s got a big stage show but he’s never done anything impressive that I can recall. I haven’t gone back to look at his disappearance yet but P&T told us how it was done.
I didn’t play along, and glad I didn’t, it ran too long.
Regarding the book trick, maybe it was just me, but I thought I saw printed pages on his copy of the book when he was standing back to back with Alyson. Yet he claimed there was no book switch.
I didn’t see printing but there was at least one real lens in the glasses when he was doing the trick, he just switched glasses or popped out the lens(es) at the end. So they could have been magnifiers to look at a something with tiny print telling him what to say about each page. Or it could even have been Google Glass.
I’m thinking he’s got something like roughed pages, where alternate blank and printed pages stick to one another, making them all look blank when the book is flipped-through. The printed pages just need to have the number of paragraphs and the first few words of each page written, so they don’t even need tiny type.
They’re not real bottles, they’re painted shells that nest, often made of aluminum now, they used to be very common in an inexpensive form made with plastic shells. You can pick out that the ‘bottles’ are different sizes when he has a lot of them out. As he picks up the tubes he can hold on to the whole stack of bottles revealing the glass, or just the tube and leaving the whole stack looking like one bottle, or leave the bottom bottle in the stack and pick up the rest with the tube so he can drop some more. As P&T pointed out he does this very well. His motion is very rapid and he doesn’t give away any of the manipulation. IIRC in their explanation P&T give away the name that the trick can be purchased under.
That’s a lot easier to do on video than live. On video I can disappear wine bottles as well as he does, so can you.
Hey friends! Good to see you all back for another season.
Regarding Shawn’s trick, I didn’t see any writing in the book (he was careful to conceal it to the cameras), but I definitely noticed lenses in his glasses the first two times he put them on. When he says at the end that there weren’t even any lenses in his glasses, I knew that was a misdirect and it probably had something to do with it. Is there such a technology where print is only visible through a certain lens, kind of like an “invisible” ink?
I’ve seen P&T do the cups and balls (etc) trick so many times, I don’t think they’ll ever be fooled by that or any of its derivatives, although it’s fun to watch when it’s done quickly.
Nathan Burton is such a show magician, you always know there’s something else going on with his contraptions, and P&T would know every trick in that book, so it felt like a mostly wasted effort.
The golf ball in jar trick was kind of interesting, although it dragged, and I’m not sure how it was done other than the fact that the pole changed heights. What is “the work of the Devil” in reference to?
I hated the card trick at the end (it went on and on), although I’m pretty amazed it worked out…for the most part. I don’t understand why the Asian dude and Allyson were the only one with mismatched halves, unless they both f’ed up (or was that part of the act?). The ending was all handled rather awkwardly.
I do miss Jonathan Pryce and his dry sense of humor. Allyson seemed genuinely amazed at everything which made me feel like she would make a better audience member than host. Well, at least she has some experience in magic. She can make flutes disappear. :rolleyes:
By the way, does anyone know if Wizard Wars is still a thing?
The Devil’s Handkerchief is a very old technique. It’s usually a cloth with a secret pocket in it. When Allyson picked a card naming the item she was pulling the card out of a pocket he had loaded with cards that all said golf ball.
Did the pole actually change height? I don’t see why since he loaded the jar with the golf ball in the box before he put it on the pole.
Yeah, that’s true. Maybe another part of misdirection? I’m not sure why Penn spent so much time talking about it (it wasn’t really apparent to the viewers at home).
Maybe the pole didn’t actually shrink, but they were pointing out that they noticed that he was using the ladder or chair in the first place, because that related to the sleight of hand used to swap the jars?
Might be, it gives him a little time and motion to cover something up, but I think the loaded bottle was already in the box, I’ll have to watch the video again. I thought when I watched it they were just continuing his joke about the increasing height of the pole.
Last night, I told my wife, “Jonathan…Pryce is not in this year’s season. Wait, not Pryce. That’s Elizabeth Swann’s father in Pirates. And the priest in GoT.”
I googled it and quickly remembered Ross.
I love that we both had the same name swap happening.