So the last guy’s trick. He just forces the lentils card and only has lentils prepared, right?
That’s the reasonable assumption. Looks like he used a Svengali deck, although there are a lot of possible forces.
So, no one had a chance to see the 7/27 show? Or just not posting because it was kinda a crappy episode? 
My two cents:
Robert Ramirez (Tic Tac Toe/mentalist): Amusing setup, but the boxers part trick is pretty easy to figure out, which is probably why Penn explained it so obviously. By placing the first X in the center he can easily guide the game to the desired outcome. I’m a bit more unsure about the actual prediction since it seems like he doesn’t ever reach for the piece of paper on the table, but I might just not have noticed (and I think there’s only 16 possible outcomes, so he could’ve had different ones secreted on his person).
Dominick (escape/illusionist): Probably one of the worst tricks I’ve seen on this show, as everything was pretty obvious. Not helped by some of the camera angles, either (at one point the camera is aimed sideways so you can see behind the blade after his hands have been cut off, and he’s still fixing the stumps because you can see where his hands bend in his shirt sleeves). They really need to work on their acting too for the post-cutting sequence. Penn and Teller seemed unimpressed too, and Penn’s explanation sounded nice at first but he only really said that he liked that he cut his own hands instead of woman’s, and that the blade looked cool, which I think is damning with faint praise.
Joel Ward (tennis trick/comedy magician): Another one where a lot of the tricks feel pretty obvious (it’s hard not to notice him constantly going into that big bag) but his stage presence makes up for it.
Madhi Gilbert (card trick/close up): This one was actually pretty good. Sure as heck looked like the typical oil and water trick to me, but he said it wasn’t (or at least didn’t use a rough/smooth deck)… interesting.
Really liked the Blast Off trick too, especially with the explanation afterwards.
Penn and Teller have been performing Blast Off on TV since the 90s (as well as the transparent cup & balls and a few others) and it really should be retired. At this point, the main thing that’s impressive about the trick is that Teller still has the physical dexterity to perform all of those moves.
Yeah this episode was a bummer. I sort of was aghast at the escape artist because I was waiting for some kind of trick and P&T looked super baffled/unimpressed/offended too.
I’m glad Madhi fooled them and I bet they are happy about it too. Because excelling at something that all but requires hands when you don’t have any hands - goddamn dude, wow.
Not surprising, the set did look a bit… old-fashioned. I hadn’t seen it before, I suppose I have a lot to catch up on. 
Watching it now.
Wow, the axe falling to chop off hands trick looked very, very average. It falls into the category of tricks that if I saw live, I’d say, “I don’t have the money and practice to make that prop and do that trick, but if I had a bunch of money and a couple months, I think I know how he did it and could do it myself.”
Totally underwhelming and I predicted Penn would just compliment the presentation and so forth. Yep, he did.
The one thing I can say in favor of the axe was that they did a good job of working it into the moment of panic. Using the fire extinguisher was maybe the only touch I liked.
On Penn’s Sunday School from a few months ago he mentioned they are pulling the act out for the last time now. I believe he mentioned they are retiring it. Due in no part, perhaps, because Teller can’t actually do it anymore
I was also pretty underwhelmed by the latest episode, except for Mahdi Gilbert’s oil and water routine (:eek:). The dismemberment illusion in particular seemed pretty poorly executed; those things require a lot of lightning-fast timing so you don’t give the audience a chance to see your shenanigans, and they took about about three times as long to do the reveal as they should.
I did appreciate Penn’s comment about him doing the illusion to himself rather than torturing his assistant. That speech itself was a great summary of P&T’s whole philosophy of performance.
ETA: I remember seeing P&T do Blast Off on Broadway when I was around 11 years old (so early 90s.) That act blew my mind then and continues to blow my mind every time I’ve seen them do it since (a lot.) I agree that it’s kinda stale at this point, though.
Just getting through ep 2.
The sword swallower’s trick wasn’t even worth discussing. It’s obvious what it was and it wasn’t even done well, but he was a decent personality.
To add to discussion of Hanlon’s trick, the normal execution of the trick involves surreptitiously rotating a card 180-degrees (either the card after or before the chosen card, as part of the reveal of the front of that card) because the top half of the back of each card contains the final frame of the animation with the final card being whatever the previous card in the deck is (which is why you always see the riffle shown only as the bottom half of the deck). I believe the overt and obvious deck rotation was intended to bait P&T and had NOTHING to do with the way he performed the trick on the show.
someone mentioned palming after the bear is caught, but I believe I see his left palm pretty clearly right before he grabs the deck and it looks empty. There does appear to be a very very clear grab from under the table as he picks up the deck and seems to slide a card onto the bottom of the deck, but Penn calls him out on the “fake” grab, and kind of says he didn’t, but I do wonder if that was part of it and that’s where the final frame comes from. I wonder if he has a form of index under the table. There’s also a few camera cuts while he does his imaginary card talk at the table where he could in theory have “set up” the 10 card under the table in prep for the later move. Interestingly, the first video I pulled up to explain what “going to the movies” meant, the first card that was pulled was ten of hearts.
I thought it was a bit cocky and ballsy that he baited P&T by acting in his talk with Allison like “he assumes P&T have seen it and know it” and playing like he assumes they will guess it. I found Penn’s reaction to seeing that the guy changed the trick slightly was a bit over the top.
I’m kind of curious if this is the best-selling trick ever on the basis of the famous america’s got talent performance, or if it already sold amazingly before that. I mean, it’s a cool trick, but I’ve seen far more impressive and far more common tricks that are sold that’d expect to have outsold this one.
For the Ryan Joyce piece, I think it’s clear that the silhouette is obviously not coming from an assistant in the cage, and that it’s not terribly complicated to create a false silhouette, but as to the precise details, I leave that to this more imaginative, nor do I quite know what to make of the footwear comment.
Blast off is one of P&Ts oldest signature bits. It is a prime example of their “show you how it’s done and still impress you by it” style. I feel as thought I’ve read that they’ve retired blast off a few years ago because teller was just getting too old for it. I guess they maybe just retired it for the nightly show? (or maybe I mis-remember and they were only talking of potentially retiring it), but they only have so many tricks to fill a full season of this series every year. I know they did blast off with Shaq as Penn a few years ago on some show where Shaq was trying other peolpe’s jobs.
Oh, and the final note on the very obvious lentil trick, I echo the previous posters who note the riffle “stop” force is such an old fashioned and annoying force method. To see both this kid and Penn use it in a trick is a bit disappointing as there are so many nicer ways to force a card that make it seem like you have more control. At least though Penn doing it and teller doing it, they aren’t making any pretense that they are really doing “amazing” magic. P&T’s tricks were just basic forces not really “trying” to impress.
Did anyone else feel a twinge of ‘eww’ that they chose to include the falling axe bit on the same episode as Mahdi Gilbert’s appearance?
New thought: maybe Mahdi should somehow adapt that illusion into his set. Probably do a better job presenting it.
mmm
Penn specifically says “one assistant has big clunky footwear and the other is barefoot”. He also said he wouldn’t speak in code. So I believe it does have something to do with the outside assistants (who seems to travel to parts of the stage at times that they didn’t need to be in.
When the assistant first disappears, the male assistant is conspicuously hidden behind the cage, whereas “good showmanship” would probably have him mostly visible. When he leaves, he walks very carefully in profile and I wonder if somehow she is walking behind him. They keep the camera trained to the right as he walks off left, so it’s hard to tell. It may be part of the reason the stage is covered in smoke - so extra feet won’t be visible. I also thought that the white panels might allow the assistant to come onstage standing behind one of the other helpers who is obscured in silhouette behind a white panel, but there was no opportunity for her to exit the stage that way. Right before she returns, the male assistant “appears” from the back of stage right and is almost invisible as he does so, so she could also have entered hiding behind him. I don’t see as much opportunity for the female helper to hide the girl, and I assume it was the female helper’s clunky shoes Penn was referring to.
It was as if they saw the Amazing Jonathon and thought, “We can do that!” Wrong.
I don’t know what Mahdi did with the oil and water trick. He may have been good enough that he didn’t need to prep the cards. I’d think anything else that helps cards stick together would qualify as ‘rough and smooth’. Doesn’t matter, he was impressive because I can’t do it that well and I have freakin’ hands!
I thought this must be what they’re talking about but there’s still plenty of room for her to slip into the base. P&T may have seen this act before though, the guy said it was from his stage show, perhaps in the full show there’s more done so that the only way the girl can disappear is by going out the back covered up by an assistant. He could even switch girls in the act that way.
I don’t think he used gimmicked cards either. At least for the first part, I think the sleight happens when he gathers the cards just before the reveal. You’ll notice he doesn’t stack them in a nice pile, there is one red kind of side by side with the black. All he needs is one red card to get in with the blacks and the trick will work because he always keeps the bottom card hidden. As for the part two repeat of the trick however, I have no idea as there are too many camera cuts to tell what’s going on. Whether I’m right or not, VERY impressive trick.
So s03e03… I’ll steal magnusblitz’s setup
Robert Ramirez (Tic Tac Toe/mentalist): A good performer, and a nice routine, but a bit flawed, imo. As Penn implied, tic-tac-toe is a pretty simple game. I was hoping his coin toss would determine which of penn or robert went first in the game, which yields far more variation. Or else, whether RObert would be X or O. With Robert going first, and choosing the centre square (as X), there are basically two responses, teller could have chosen a corner or a side. As Penn demonstrated, every corner and side are the same. The game just rotates. Whether O chooses corner or side, every subsequent move by O can be forced by where X goes (because every subsequent O move is defensive). Whether O goes corner or side first, you can force the exact same game result as X, which is what I assume he did. Note that because teller drew a face on the paper, it was made more obvious that the “prediction” was not upright compared to the game they played. I would theorize that he has two reveals (one with red X’s or one with blue X’s) Maybe his undershirt has the opposite one, or perhaps he has a way of swapping out that butt panel, as it kind of looked separate.
One other flaw was on his prediction paper. Why did he put underlines? It’s like a fill in the blank, but why “predict” in that manner? It also says “he does not save the _____ [puppy]” but if it was the money, it wouldn’t be “saves”, it would be “win” - unless he had a whole shtick where if teller lost, the money would be burned, but he never said that so the prediction reads oddly.
My theory is that that either he has multiple predictions or that the prediction paper unfolds a couple of different ways.
I wonder if he has contingencies in case the audience member either is stupid or intentionally throws the game. Can he handle a “loss”? Minor issues, but I think his boxer prediction was drawn too clean and straight compared to his own handwriting, so it looked “prepared” - more handwritten in his own handwriting would be more “this was my prediction before the show”. Finally, as penn says, if the prediction had included teller’s personalized touches, it would be amazing, but the fact that it doesn’t makes it more obvious that there’s a force to a predictable outcome.
Great performance though.
Dominick (escape/illusionist): I agree this was just pretty amazingly bad. I mean, the guy constructed a cool looking rig (as penn appreciated) and the concept of the rig isn’t terrible (fake wrist stubs - has someone done that before?), but the performance was god awful (sorry Dominick). First thing he says after the trick is that this isn’t his comfort zone and he normally doesn’t talk. It showed in spades. Terrible actor, especially in terms of an engaging performance. No real danger or seriousness or humour at all. Penn was very gracious. Suggesting the guy fooled everybody except P&T is a reach. The actual physical execution of the trick was also poor, perhaps not helped by the fact that this was brand new. His “struggle” to unlock the cuffs and the shackles and then the whole fake wrists (which were comically long and very obvious) to the very phony “medical attention” he was given, focussing on the guy with the cooler which is clearly where the fake wrists disappeared to) was a bit embarrassing at the level of this show. Why didn’t he do something artsy and silent from his existing works? I would like to see that, but maybe it’s all so derivative, he thought it would be easily guessed. Did he really expect this to fool P&T though? What was the point of taking penn’s watch though? I don’t get it. It played no part in authentication/identification of anything. He might be a great prop builder, but not a performer (at least not a speaking performer). Maybe it was just a shill to try and get some prop-building work from P&T.
Joel Ward (tennis trick/comedy magician): Decent showmanship. A clear swap of the balls when he picks up his racket. Lots of time with his hands obscured in the bag though, and clearly time to slap her ball into the rigged can. Also either the ball was already split (and he concealed that the whole time) or he has something in the bag that can put a slit in the ball so he can slip the ring inside. Lots of other ways he could it (swapping the ring in after cutting the ball), but I suspect it was more direct, as I said
Madhi Gilbert (card trick/close up): It’s amazing to watch him manipulate cards with stumps with such finesse (that said, if that’s how he was born, I’d expect him to have learned to use what he has in the same way a child learns to use hands, so I’m not surprised he has so much dexterity. The trick itself seems pretty straightforward as a misdirection trick. He puts out 3 red, then three black on top. Then he flips the stack face down (seemingly checking the order briefly before he drops them), separates into two piles “red” and “black” and then flips the black pile face up again.
I believe that by the time he splits that one pile into two, he has already swapped a red and a black in the way he gathered and flipped them. He laid the reds one at the bottom, and then two on top, staggered with the top card (9H) to the left, then he puts the first black card (QS) to the right, albeit clearly on top of the 9H. I suspect in gathering the cards afterwards, he manages to re-order those two)
Then he puts them back into piles alternating from the red and black pile, except he only shows us SOME of the cards. He shows us the 1st red, then flips the black pile AGAIN and deals off the bottom on (“black”) unseen - one trouble I have with this trick is too much flipping of the cards. It comes of as unnecessary and makes it clear when something is “happening”. The unseen black is supposed to be the QS, as we see the other two blacks face up. Then he shows a red faceup and places it, then a black that’s already faceup, then a red he doesn’t show (would be the 9H) and then the final black goes facedown, though we’ve already seen it faceup earlier. Indeed, when he’s done, the 9H and QS have switched places. That’s the easier part of the trick.
The second half of the trick is a second method. Again, there’s a lot of camera cuts on this trick, and I can’t quite pin down exact moments without reviewing with a fine tooth comb, but the very brief riffle of the second pile of three to “prove” they are red-black-red and the use of his mouth, and the play at the end of the table all suggest moves to me.
Impressive that he is able to do such precise card magic given his disability, no doubt.
Blast OffAs I said in another post, this is a classic P&T(Here’s a very old performance on an older set of props). I thought they said they don’t do it anymore because of Teller’s age and his back. I see that they have slightly tweaked the trick. Teller moves a bit slower at the end of the trick, but the biggest change is that they added false legs for teller. In the original trick, teller actually stuck his legs up through the stage and out the sides, which I guess is the hardest part on his back, so the fake legs is a cute alternative.
After a few minutes of extra thought, I realized that if Teller had chosen the other colour, I didn’t run out the possibility, but Robert might have been able to open with a corner or side O and still direct Teller (as X) to the same exact game result, so that he only needed one reveal (not two) no matter what colour was chosen. It’s still the paper prediction that is more interesting. All the more question as to whether Robert’s trick could handle a “bad move” by the volunteer.