Penn and Teller: Fool Us – Series 2: Episode 1

(P.S – Sorry I’ve put this overview up late, but overviews of the remaining episodes will arrive far closer to the initial broadcast)

Four years after the original series finished airing in Britain, Penn and Teller: Fool Us has returned on the American cable network The CW. The series is now filmed in America instead of Britain, with the participating magicians being mostly American as a result. However, iconic illusionists Penn and Teller and original host Johnathan Ross are still on the show, and, most importantly, the format remains unchanged. Every week, four magicians perform for Penn and Teller, and the two will try and figure out the secrets behind the magical routines they see. If Penn and Teller are “Fooled” by their performance, the lucky magician wins the opportunity to open for them in Vegas.

The four magicians who performed in this episode were:

Jon Armstrong – A magician inspired by his love of comic books, Jon Armstrong did a routine involving a small toy plunger that could allegedly read minds. It was supposed to pick up one card at a time, but Jon used it to pick up the entire deck, then to pick up a randomly chosen number of cards. He then did a trick in which he used the plunger to cut to a card chosen by Penn, then to one chosen by Teller. Although there was a minor (possibly intentional) misstep when Jon had to instruct Teller to change his selection because he hadn’t covered up the plunger when Teller was showing his initial selection to the audience, Jon was fun to watch and his routine was very clever. Penn loved Jon’s trick, calling it “the only original card trick I’ve ever seen”, but he acknowledged that Teller had performed a similar routine in the past, and this meant that Jon did not fool the two magicians.

Xavier Mortimer – Also seen on Americas Got Talent the day after this episode aired, French magician Xavier Mortimer provided an enjoyable routine in which he took on his own reflection. It was made up of several smaller tricks, including the reflection appearing to touch and rip sheets from a newspaper held by Xavier and stealing his phone, hat and wallet. Xavier responded by putting his hand in the reflection and taking the items back, and the routine climaxed with Xavier and the reflection switching heads, with Xavier trapping the reflection in the mirror and making him vanish. The routine was inspired by the silent movies of iconic French director and magician George Meliés, and managed to update their style without losing sight of the charm and precise timing that made them so memorable. However, whilst Penn and Teller admired the performance, they were able to recognize the equipment Xavier used in the trick, and therefore he did not fool them.

Greg Dow AKA “The Shocker” – Greg Dow performed under the alter-ego of The Shocker, with a look and performance style combining magic and wrestling. After producing streamers in his hands and making a low-brow joke about Spider-Man, The Shocker performed a mentalism trick in which he made not one, but three predictions. He began his routine by throwing a wrestler’s mask to an audience member, and asked him to think of a female friend (Donna), before writing down a prediction of the chosen name and placing it in a sealed envelope. The Shocker then instructed the first volunteer to hand the mask to the woman behind him, told her to think of an activity she enjoyed doing with a man (Wrestling) and wrote down his prediction of this in the same way. Finally, he got Teller to pick a card (which resulted in an enjoyable piece of comedy as Teller was instructed to name his card in spite of his signature mute persona, so Penn had to reveal the relevant information instead) and put his prediction in the third and final envelope. The first two envelopes were then opened, revealing that The Shocker had correctly predicted the woman chosen by the first volunteer and the activity chosen by the second. He then opened the third prediction to reveal that it was incorrect. Instead of showing the name of Teller’s chosen card (the Three of Clubs), it actually showed the name of a different one (the Eight of Diamonds). The Shocker responded to this by first revealing that all the cards in the deck were the Eight of Diamonds except for the chosen one, before changing the initial prediction, in full view of the audience, into a correct prediction of the initial chosen card. I wasn’t really into The Shocker at first, but he grew on me – I liked some of his jokes and enjoyed the climax of the routine. However, his tricks were relatively easy to figure out compared to the other magicians in this episode. As a result, The Shocker did not fool Penn and Teller, and his attempts to get them to choose him as an opening act anyway were in vain.

Steve Brundage – Steve Brundage performed a routine centred on two Rubik’s Cubes. He began by mixing up one and getting Penn to mix up the other. Teller chose one of the two cubes, and after a failed attempt to solve it in Teller’s hand, Steve did a series of tricks involving solving his Rubik’s Cube in a number of magical ways. First, he gradually solved a thoroughly mixed Cube by returning it to increasingly early states before fully restoring it to its original state. He then reshuffled it before making it transform into a solved cube inside an empty bag. Steve followed these tricks with one where he shuffled the cube and changed it into a solved cube in plain sight- three times in a row. Finally, he changed his cube to perfectly match Teller’s on all six sides. It was a baffling routine, and Penn and Teller wasted no time in saying that Steve had fooled them. As a result, he won the Fool Us trophy and the chance to open for Penn and Teller in their Vegas Show.

As was the case in the previous series, Penn and Teller end every episode by performing one of their signature routines. For this episode, they did their classic Phone in Fish trick. Penn and Teller got a volunteer to hand them their phone, put it into a paper cup, and made it vanish. They then revealed that a sealed polystyrene box had been hidden underneath a random seat the entire evening, and a large fish was inside it. Penn and Teller then cut open the fish, and found the missing phone inside it. I’ve had the privilege of seeing Penn and Teller perform this trick live, and though the presentation was mostly unchanged, there were a couple of new touches, such as testing the phone’s video camera by taking a video of the volunteer next to a life-sized cardboard cutout of fellow Vegas mainstay Criss Angel. Penn and Teller were as brilliant as ever, and I can’t wait to see if they will show off any new or unfamiliar routines on this show.