S05.E06: Penn & Teller Against The World

[The Crazed Spruce]

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Featured magicians include Taijyi Fujryama, Pit Hartling, Helen Coghlan and Menny Lindenfeld.

[Taeolas]

A week gone by and no comments on this ep? I'm just watching it now myself. 

Taijyi put in a really nice show, a quick change/swap artist with masks. All the aspects are things we've seen before, but a nice presentation in a different style. Penn and Teller were certainly not fooled but seemed to enjoy it. 

Pit put on a good show. Clearly some deck swapping going on, but I didn't catch where it happened and haven't looked back to see it. Still, I was impressed even if our magicians have seen it before. :)

I get the feeling Helen got (or bought) the racket trick at the request of the producers just to pad out her act time. The real trick was the milk glass and rod trick and that was certainly a puzzler. I noticed she was careful not to show the bottom of the glass and the back of the bottom disk. The overhead view was also carefully timed to show the glass after the milk had mostly filled it and milk is opaque so it doesn't show anything on the bottom. Still as the milk fills it from the side it looks like it is filling naturally. Plus, the big puzzler as Penn mentioned, the rod comes through dry.  I have to think there is a tube that somehow comes up and drops back. Or some other easy way to do it. :) 

Menny did some standard spoon bending tricks with other props. Considering that seemed to be his entire set of tricks I'm not surprised they weren't fooled, but they seemed impressed since he used multiple techniques apparently. 

[Xantar]

I think this was a great episode. All of the acts were really good when if they didn't fool Penn and Teller. 

Fujiyama's act reminded me of a Jeff McBride routine that I've seen once, so I figured Penn and Teller wouldn't be fooled. All the same, I was riveted for every second. It was just aesthetically beautiful. 

Pit's act was impressive, and I really liked his routine. I usually cringe at self-described comedy magicians, but Pit was just funny without forcing the humor. 

It's good to see a female magician who is also older than 35. Helen Coghlan's trick was too short, but there's no way to stretch it out. Unless there's some way to do that trick again with a variation. I still loved it and I'm going to be spending a lot of time trying to work it out.

Menny was good although I wasn't really into the bending saws. I would have liked to see the bending coins done last because the audience participation from Alyson made it seem the most amazing. 

[Amarsir]

That milk trick was pretty good. I can think of ways to engineer something that might work, but the work would have to be so precise that that alone is impressive.